Jerusalem's citizens, captives at Sepharad, shall return to occupy the city and southern Judaea (Obadiah 1:20). Jerome's Hebrew tutor thought Sepharad was on the Bosphorus. Jerome derives it from an Assyrian word "limit," i.e. scattered in all regions abroad (so James 1:1). The modern Jews think Spain. As Zarephath, a Phoenician city, was mentioned in the previous clause, Sepharad is probably some Phoenician colony in Spain or some other place in the far West (compare Joel 3:6, to which Obadiah refers). C Pa Rad occurs before Ionia and Greece in a cuneiform inscription giving a list of the Persian tribes frontNiebuhr, Reiseb. 2:31). Also in Darius' epitaph at Nakshi Rustam, 1:28, before Ionia in the Behistun inscription (i. 15). Thus, it would be Sardis (the Greeks omitting the -ph) in Lydia. In favor of Spain is the fact that the Spanish Jews are called Sephardim, the German Jews Ashkenazim.
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