This expression is translated from the Hebrew miz·rachʹ, meaning literally “sunrising” (De 3:27; 1Ch 4:39), and from nouns derived from the verb qa·dhamʹ, meaning “be before (in front).” (Eze 48:2) It was the practice of the Hebrews to face the rising sun when determining direction, which meant that E was in front of them, W was behind, N on the left hand, and S on the right hand.

Sometimes qeʹdhem was used to mean a generally eastward direction, as at Genesis 11:2. At other times it meant the “east” in relation to something else, as at Numbers 34:11, where the expression “east of Ain” is used. At still other times it referred to the area that lay E and NE of Israel. This included the lands of Moab and Ammon, the Arabian Desert, Babylonia, Persia, Assyria, and Armenia.

The various peoples living in the lands referred to by the word “east” were spoken of as “sons of the East.” Job was called the greatest of all the “Orientals,” or “sons of the East.” (Job 1:3) He lived in this eastern area. When Jacob went to Mesopotamia to get a wife, he went, we are told, to the land of “the Orientals,” or “sons of the East.” (Ge 29:1) The people to the E of Israel were also called “sons of the East,” or “Easterners,” as at Judges 6:3; 8:10.

In Palestine the E wind was a hot wind that blew in from desert lands to the E and was destructive to vegetation. (Eze 19:12) This is the basis  for the expression “fill [one’s] belly with the east wind.”​—Job 15:2.

The tabernacle, the temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel, and the second temple as rebuilt by Herod all faced the E. (Nu 3:38) Ezekiel’s visionary temple faced eastward. (Eze 47:1) The coming of Jehovah and Christ to the temple would therefore be expected from the E.

At Isaiah 46:11, Cyrus, the Persian king, is spoken of as coming from “the east” (KJ), or “the sunrising” (NW). The reports foretold as coming from “the east” (KJ) are, literally, out of “the sunrising,” or miz·rachʹ. (Da 11:44) In the book of Revelation back-reference is made to Darius and Cyrus as prophetic of “the kings from the rising of the sun,” in connection with the drying up of the symbolic Euphrates in the time of Babylon the Great’s judgment.​—Re 16:12, 19.

The astrologers that came to see Jesus after his birth came from the direction of Babylon, from “eastern parts.” (Mt 2:1) When they said that they saw his star “in the east [Gr., a·na·to·leiʹ, literally, “rising”],” as some Bible translations state, they did not mean that it was E of where their land was but that they saw it from the East or when they were in the East.​—Mt 2:2, ftn.