the Week of Proper 27 / Ordinary 32
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Bible Encyclopedias
Hagarene or Hagarite
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or [commonly Ha'arite] (Heb. Hagri', הִגְרַי fiugitive [compare Hagar, from the same root as the Arab. Hegirah, i.e. fight]; but, according to First, s.v., a patrial from some ancestor Hagar, otherwise unknown; 1 Chronicles 11:38, Sept. Ἀταρα ‹, Tulg. Agarai, A.V. "Haggeri;" 27:31, Ἀγαρἰτης , Agariols, "Haggerite;" in the plur. Hagrim',הִגְרַים.,l Psalms 83:6, Ἀγαρηνοί , Agareni, "Hagarenes;" fully Hagriim', חִגְרַאַים, 1 Chronicles 5:10; 1 Chronicles 5:19-20, Sept. in 1 Chronicles 5:10 πάροικοι, in 1 Chronicles 5:19-20 Ἀγαραῖοι,Vulg. Aagarei, A.V. "Hagarites;" Baruch 3:23, υὶοί ςΑγαρ, Jilii Agar, "Agarenes"), occurs apparently as the national or local designation of two individuals, and also of a tribe or region, probably the same Arab people who appear at different periods of the sacred history as foreigners to the Hebrews. (See ARABIA).
I. Of individuals it is twice used in connection with the royal staff in the time of David (q.v.).
1. In 1 Chronicles 11:38 of MIBHAR (See MIBHAR) (q.v.), one of David's mighty men, who is described as בֶןאּהִגרַי , υἱὸς Ἀγαρι, filius Agarai, "the son of Haggeri, er, better (as the margin has it), "the Haggerite," whose father's name is not given. This hero differs from some of his colleagues, "Zelek the Ammonite" (1 Chronicles 11:39), for instance; or "Ithmah the Moabite" (1 Chronicles 11:46), in that, while they were foreigners, he was only the son of a foreigner-a domiciled settler perhaps. (See HAGGERI).
2. In 1 Chronicles 27:31 of Aziz (q.v.), another of David's retainers, who was "over his flocks." This man was himself a "Hagarite," οΑ῾᾿γαρίτης , Agareus. A comparison of the next paragraph (II) will show how well qualified for his office this man was likely to be from his extraction from a pastoral race. ("A Hagarite had charge of David's flocks, and an Ishmaelite of his herds, because the animals were pastured in districts where these nomadic people were accustomed to ‘ feed their cattle" [or, rather, because their experience made them skilful in such employments], Bertheai on Chronicles [Clarke's ed.], 2, 320.) One of the effects of the great victory over the Hagarites of Gilead and the East was probably that individuals of their nation entered the service of the victorious Israelites, either voluntarily or by coercion, as freemen or as slaves. Jaziz was-no doubt among the former, a man of eminence and intelligence among his countrymen, on which account he attracted the attention of his royal master, who seems to have liberally employed distinguished and meritorious foreigners in his service. (See HAGGERITE).
II. Of a people three times who appear in hostile relation to the Hebrew nation.
1. Our first passage treats of a great war, which in the reign of king Saul was waged between the trans-Jordanic tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh on the one side, and their formidable neighbors, the Hagarites, aided by the kindred tribes of "Jetur, and Nephish, and Nodab," on the other. (Kindred tribes, we say, on the evidence of Genesis 25:15. The. Arab tribes derived from Hagar and Ishmael, like the earlier stocks descended from Cush and Joktan, were at the same time generally known by the common patronymic of Ishmaelites or Hagarenes. Some regard the three specific names of Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab, not as distinct from, but in apposition with Hagarites; as if the Hagarites with whom the two tribes and a half successfully fought were the clans of Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab. See Forster's Geog. of Arabia, 1, 186-189.) The result of this war was extremely favorable to the eastern Israelites: many of the enemy were taken and many slain in the conflict (Genesis 25:21-22); the victorious two tribes and a half took possession of the country, and retained it until the captivity (Genesis 25:22). The booty captured on this occasion was enormous: "of camels 50.000, and of sheep 250,000, and of asses 2000" (Genesis 25:21). Rosenmü ller (Bibl. Geogr. [tr. by Morren], 3:140), following the Sept. and Luther, unnecessarily reduces the number of camels to 5000. When it is remembered that the wealth of a Bedouin chief, both in those and these times, consisted of cattle, the amount of the booty taken in the Hagarite war, though great, was not excessive. Job's stock is described as "7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 she-asses" (1, 3.). Mesha, king of Moab, paid to the king of Israel a tribute of 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams (2 Kings 3:4). In further illustration of this wealth of cattle, we may quote a passage from Stanley's Jewish Church, i, 215, 216: "Still the countless flocks and herds may be seen [in this very region conquered from the Hagarites], droves of cattle moving on like troops of soldiers, descending at sunset to drink of the springs-literally, in the language of the prophet, ‘ rams and lambs, and goats and bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.' "By this conquest, which was still more firmly ratified in the subsequent reign of David, the promise, which was given as early as Abraham's time (Genesis 15:18) and renewed to Moses (Deuteronomy 1:7) and to Joshua (Joshua 1:4), began to receive that accomplishment which was consummated by the glorious Solomon (1 Kings 4:21). The large tract of country which this accrued to Israel stretched from the indefinite frontier of the pastoral tribes, to whom were formerly assigned the kingdoms of Sihon and Og, to the Euphrates. A comparison of 1 Chronicles 5:9-20 with Genesis 25:12-18, seems to show that this line of country, which (as the history informs us) extended eastward of Gilead and Bashan in the direction of the Euphrates, was substantially the same as that which Moses describes as peopled by the sons of Ishmael, whom Hagar bore to Abraham. "They dwelt," says Moses, "from Havilah Iuito Shur, that is before Egypt as thou goest towards Assyria" — in other words, across the country from the junction of the Euphrates with the Tigris to the Isthmus of Suez; and this is the spacious tract which we assign to the Hagarites or Hagarenes. The booty taken from the Hagarites and their allies proves that much of this territory was well adapted to pasturage, and therefore valuable to the nomadic habits of the conquerors (Numbers 32:1). The brilliancy of the conquest, moreover, exhibits the military prowess of these shepherds. Living amid races whose love of plunder is still illustrated in the predatory Bedouins of Eastern Palestine, they were obliged to erect fortresses for the protection of their pastures (Michaelis, Laws of Moses, art. 23), a precaution which seems to have been resorted to from the first. The sons of Ishmael are enumerated, Genesis 25:16, "by their towns and by their castles;" and some such defensive. erections were no doubt meant by the children of Reuben and Gad in Numbers 32:16-17. (See ISHMAELITES).
2. Though these eastern Israelites became lords paramount of this vast tract of country, it is not necessary to suppose that they exclusively occupied the entire region, nor that the Hagarites and their kindred, though subdued, were driven out; for it was probably in the same neighborhood that "the Hagarenes" of our second passage were living when they joined in the great confederacy against Israel with, among others, Edom, and Moab, and Ammon, and Analek (Psalms 83:6 [Hebrews 7; Sept. 72:6]). When this combination took place is of little importance here; Mr. Thrupp (Psalms, 2, 60, 61) gives reasons for assigning it to the reigns of Jehoash and of his son Jeroboam 11. The psalm was probably written on the triumph of Jehoshaphat over the trans-Jordanic Bedouins (2 Chronicles 20). (See PSALMS).
The nations, however, which constituted the confederacy with the Hagarenes, seem to confirm our opinion that these were still residing in the district, where in the reign of Saul they had been subjugated by their Israelitish neighbors. Rosenmü ller (Bibl. Geogr. [trans.] 3:141) and Gesenius (Thesaur. p. 365) suggest that the Hagarenes when vanquished migrated to the south-east, because on the Persians Gulf there was the province of Hagar or Hagjar. This is the district which the Arabian geographers have carefully and prominently described (compare De Sacy's Chrestomathie Arube, 2, 123; Abllfeda [by Reinaud], 2, 1,137, who quotes Jakut's Moshtarek for some of his information; and Rommel's Commentary on Abulfeda, De Prov. Hagiar, site Bahh-rain, p. 87, 88, 89; D'Herbelot, s.v. Hagr). We will not deny that this province probably derived its name and early inhabitants from Hagar and her son Ishmael (or, as Rabbi D. Kimchi would prefer, from Hagar, through some son by another father than Abraham): but we are not of opinion that these Hagarenes of the Persian Gulf, whose pursuits were so different, were identical with the Hagarenes of the Psalm before us, or with the Hagarites of 1 Chronicles, whom we have identified with them. Nothing pastoral is related of this maritime tribe; Rommel quotes from two Arabian geographers, Taifashi and Bakiu, who both describe these Hagarenes of the coast as much employed in pearl-fishing and such pursuits. Niebuhr (Travels in Arabia [Engl. tr.], 2, 151, 152) confirms their statement. Gesenius is also inexact in identifying these maritime Hagarenes with the Ἀγραῖοι of Ptolemy, 5, 19, 2, and Eratosthenes, in Strabo, 16:767, and Pliny, 6:28. If the tribes indicated in these classical authors be the same (which is doubtful), they are much more correctly identified by an older writer, Dr. T. Jackson (Works [ed. Oxon.], 1, 220), who says: "The seat of such as the Scripture calls Hagares was in the desert Arabia, betwixt Gilead and Euphrates (1 Chronicles 5:9-10). This people were called by the heathen Ἀγραῖοι, Agraei, rightly placed by Ptolemy in the desert Arabia, and by Strabo in that very place which the Scripture makes the eastern bounds of Ishmael's posterity, to wit, next unto the inhabitants of ‘ Havilal." Amid the difficulty of identification, some modern geographers have distributed the classical Agraei in various localities. Thus, in Forster's maps of Arabia, they occupy both the district between Gilead and the Euphrates in the north, and also the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
The fact seems to be that many districts in Arabia were called by the generic appellation of Hagarite or Hagarene, no doubt after Hagar; as Keturah, another of Abraham's concubines, occasioned the rather vaguely- used name of Ketureans for other tribes of the Arabian peninsula (Forster, Geog. of Arabia, 2, 7). In the very section of Abulfeda which we have above quoted, that geographer (after the author of the Moshtarek) reminds us that the name Hajar (Hagar) is as extensive in meaning in Arabia as Shsam (Syria) and Irak elsewhere; in like manner Rommel, within a page or two, describes a Hagar in the remote province of Yemen; this, although an unquestionably different place (Reinaud, 2, 1-137, note), is yet confounded with the maritime Hajar. In proof of the uncertainty of the situation of places in Arabia of like name, we may mention that, while Abulfeda, Edrisi, Giauhari, and Golins distinguish between the Hagarenes of the north-east coast and those of the remote south-west district which we have just mentioned, Nassir Edin, Olugbeig, and Bü sching confound them as identical. Winer, Realw. s.v. Hagariter, mentions yet another Chhqjcr, which, though slightly different in form, might; be written much like our word in Hebrew חגרא, and is actually identical with it in the Syriac (Assemanni, Biblioth. Orient. 3, 2, 753). This place was in the province of Hejaz, on the Red Sea, on the main route between Damascus and Mecca. Such being the uncertainty connected with the sites of these Arab tribes, we the less hesitate to place the Hagarees of the Psalm in the neighborhood of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, in the situation which was in Saul's time occupied by the Hagarites, "near the main road which led" [or, more correctly, in the belt of country which stretched] "from the head of the Red Sea to the Euphrates" (Smith's Dict. of Geog. s.v. Agrei; see also Bochart, Phaleg [edit. Villemandy], 4:2, 225). The mention both of Ishmaelites and Ragarenes in this Psalm has led to the opinion that they are separate nations here meant. The verse, however, is in the midst of a poetic parallelism, in which the clauses are synonymous and not antithetic (comp. 1 Chronicles 5:5-11), so that, if "Edom and the Ishmaelites" is not absolutely identical in geographical signification with "Moab and the Hagarenes," there is at least a poetical identity between these two groups which forbids our separating them widely from each other in any sense (for the dispersed condition of the Hagarenes, see also Fuller, Misc. Sacr. 2, 12).
Combinations marked the relenting hostility of their neighbors towards the Jews to a very late period. One of these is mentioned in 1 Maccabees 5, as dispersed by Judas Maccabaus. "The children of Baean" (υἱοὶ Βαίαν ) of 1 Maccabees 5:4 have been by Hitzig conjectured to be the same as our Hagarenes; there is, however, no other ground for this opinion than their vicinity to Edom and Ammon, and the difficulty of making them fit in with any other tribe as conveniently as with that which is the subject of this article (see J. Olshausen, die Psalmen, p. 345).
3. In the passage from Baruch 3:23 there are attributed to "the Agarenes" qualities of wisdom for which the Arabian nation has long been celebrated, skill in proverbial philosophy (comp. Freytag, Arob. Prov. tom. 3, praef.); in this accomplishment they have associated with them "the merchants of Meran and of Theman." This is not the place to discuss the site of Meran, which some have placed on the Persian Gulf, and others on the Red Sea; it is enough to observe that their mercantile habits gave them a shrewdness in practical knowledge which rendered them worthy of comparison with "the merchants of Theman" or Edom. Forster makes these Themanese to be inhabitants of the maritime Bahrain, and therefore Hagarenes (1, 303); but in this he is flagrantly inconsistent with. his own good canon (1, 291): "The n me of the son of Eliphaz and of his descendants [the Edomites] is uniformly written Teman in the original Hebrew, and that of the son of Ishmael and his family [the Hagarenes or Ishmaelites] as uniformly Tema [without the n]." The wisdom of these Themanese merchants is expressly mentioned in Jeremiah 49:7, and Obadiah 1:8. The Hagarenes of this passage we would place among the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf, where (see 1) Gesenius and others placed "the Hagarites" after their conquest by the trans-Jordanic Israelites. The clause, "That seek wisdom on earth" [that is, "who acquire experience and intelligence from intercourse with mankind"] (οἱ ἐκζητοῦντες τὴν σύνεσιν οἱ ἐπἱ τῆς γῆς, is surely corrupt, because meaningless: by the help of the Vulgate and the Syriacit has been conjectured by some [by Havernick and Fritzsche, ad loc., for instance] that instead of οἱ ἐπι we should read τὴν ἐπὶ, q. d. "the wisdom [or common sense] which is cognizant of the earth its men and manners;" an attainment which mercantile persons acquire better than all else), seems to best fall in with the habits of a seafaring and mercantile race (see Fritzsche, das Buch. Baruch, p. 192; and Havernick, whose words he quotes: "Hagareni terram quasi perlustrantes dicuntur, quippe mercatores longe celeberrimi antiquissimis jamjam temporibus").
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Hagarene or Hagarite'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/h/hagarene-or-hagarite.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
