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KEDAR

(Heb. qēḏār)

The second son of Ishmael (Gen. 25:13 = 1 Chr. 1:29). Elsewhere in the OT this term refers to his descendants (the Kedarites), either specifically to the most prominent of the north Arabian “sons of Ishmael” or generally and collectively to Arabic nomads or Bedouin. In Ps. 120:5 the “tents of Kedar” are equated with peace-hating Meshech, which is probably not a region of Asia Minor (as in Gen. 10:2) but a Kedarite subgroup. Cant. 1:5 pictures them as dark skinned (cf. qāḏar, “to be black”), and some repoint MT “Solomon” here to “Shalmah,” a tribe that lived south of the Nabateans in the 3rd century b.c. Isaiah describes them as (1) warriors and archers whose glory will end (Isa. 21:16-17; some see a reference to Nabonidus’ 552 campaign; but not Jer. 49:28-29, concerned with Nebuchadnezzar’s attack on Arabs [“Kedar and the kingdoms of Hazor”] S of Damascus in 599/98); (2) inhabitants of desert villages (Isa. 42:11; probably temporary, fortified enclosures); and (3) poetically paired with sheep-breeders of Nebaioth (60:7; perhaps a reference to the Nabateans of north Arabia; cf. Gen. 25:13; also Ezek. 27:21, where the “princes of Kedar” are paired with the Arabians as sheep/goat-traders with the Phoenicians). Assyrian inscriptions as well name them along with the Arabs and Nebaioth. Finally, the poetry of Jer. 2:10 uses a merism to antithetically parallel Kedar with the Kittim (“Cypriots/Greeks”) as representatives, respectively, of the East and West.

Bibliography. I. Ephʿal, The Ancient Arabs (Leiden, 1982).

W. Creighton Marlowe

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

KEDAR

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)