Concerning Kedar... — The name belonged to a tribe of the Bedouin type, descended from Ishmael (Genesis 25:13), and at this time conspicuous as supplying the markets of Tyre with sheep and goats (Ezekiel 27:21). In PP. 120:5 it appears as the representative of the fierce nomadic life of the Arabians. Hazor appears as the name of many cities in Palestine (Joshua 11:1; Joshua 15:23; Joshua 19:36), but the combination with Kedar points to quite a different region. The probable explanation is that Jeremiah uses the term (as a like word, hazçrein, is used in Isaiah 42:11 for the “villages” of Kedar) for the region in which the Kedar Arabs had ceased to be nomadic, and had made a permanent settlement. According to Niebuhr (Assur u. Bab., p. 210) it answers to the modern Hadschar in the angle formed by the southern course of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf.
Spoil the men of the east. — Literally, the B’eni-Kedem. or children of the East. The term appears in the Old Testament history from a very early date (Genesis 29:1; Judges 6:3; Judges 6:33; Judges 7:12; 1 Kings 4:30; Job 1:3), and has, as might be expected, though obviously indicating a nomadic form of life, like that of the Midianites, a somewhat wide and undefined connotation. The picture of the attack on them presents a marked contrast to that of the attack on Damascus: not palaces and treasures, but tents and flocks, the curtains or hangings of the tent, their implements (weapons, kneading troughs, and the like), their very camels, seized by the conquerors.