Massa named in Gen 25:14 (= 1Ch 1:30) along with Dumah and Tema. But he proceeds in a hair-splitting way, and with ingenious hypothesis, without any valid foundation. That this Dumah is the Dumat el-jendel (cf. under Isa 21:11) lying in the north of Nejed, near the southern frontiers of Syria, the name and the founding of which is referred by the Arabians to Dûm the son of Ishmael, must be regarded as possible, and consequently Massa is certainly to be sought in Northern Arabia. But if, on the ground of 1Ch 4:42., he finds there a Simeonitic kingdom, and finds its origin in this, that the tribe of Simeon originally belonging to the ten tribes, and thus coming from the north settled in the south of Judah, and from thence in the days of Hezekiah, fleeing before the Assyrians, were driven farther and farther in a south-east direction towards Northern Arabia; on the contrary, it has been shown by Graf (The Tribe of Simeon, a contribution to the history of Israel, 1866) that Simeon never settled in the north of the Holy Land, and according to existing evidences extended their settlement from Negeb partly into the Idumean highlands, but not into the highlands of North Arabia. Hitzig thinks that there are found traces of the Massa of Agur and Lemuel in the Jewish town[1] of טילמאס, of Benjamin of Tudela, lying three days' journey from Chebar, and in the proper name (Arab.) Malsā (smooth), which is given to a rock between Tema and Wady el-Kora (vid., Kosegarten's Chestom. p. 143); but how notched his ingenuity here is need scarcely be shown. By means of more cautious combinations Mühlau has placed the residence of Agur and Lemuel in the Hauran mountain range, near which there is a Dumah, likewise a Têmâ; and in the name of the town Mismîje, lying in the Lejâ, is probably found the Mishma which is named along with Massa, Gen 25:14; and from this that is related in 1Ch 5:9., 1Ch 5:18-22, of warlike expeditions on the part of the tribes lying on the east of the Jordan against the Hagarenes and their allies Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab,[2] it
- ↑ Cf. Blau's Arab. im sechsten Jahrh. in the Deutsch. Morgl. Zeits. xxxiii. 590, and also p. 573 of the same, regarding a family of proselytes among the Jews in Taima.
- ↑ Mühlau combines Nodab with Nudêbe to the south-east of Bosra; Blau (Deut. Morg. Zeit. xxv. 566), with the Ναβδαῖοι of Eupolemos named along with the Ναβατοῖοι. The Kamûs has Nadab as the name of a tribe.
