The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;
The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes. As the Edomites were not a wandering people, 'tents' are to be understood here as referring to their camp tents while engaged in the invasion of Israel. Edom, Moab, and Ammon were the ring-leaders; and around them respectively are grouped those allies whom they had induced to join in the expedition. This view accounts for the otherwise unaccountable separation of Moab and Ammon, which are elsewhere always joined together. With Edom are associated the Ishmaelites, because Edom dwelt in the desert of Arabia, between the Dead Sea and the Elanitic gulf of the Red Sea. What aggravated the conduct of Edom, Ammon, and Moab was, that this was the ungrateful return they made for the forbearance of Israel; because the Israelites, when they came out of Egypt by God's command, had turned from those peoples and destroyed them not, because of their original tie of kindred through Jacob with Esau or Edom, and through Abraham with the children of Lot (2 Chronicles 20:10-11).
The Hagarenes were a wandering Arab tribe east of Jordan, descended from Hagar, which in Saul's days was dispossessed of its country by the Reubenites under God, to whom the latter cried in the battle (1 Chronicles 5:10; 1 Chronicles 5:19; 1 Chronicles 5:22). The Hagarenes moved to the neighbourhood of Moab, and are therefore mentioned here as the ally of Moab, which latter people held the region east of the Dead Sea as far as to the river Arnon.