KEDAR ke’ dər (קֵדָ֥ר, LXX κηδάρ, prob. meaning dark, swarthy) A son of Ishmael; also a North Arabian tribe.

1. Importance in OT. Kedar is named second in each of the two lists of Ishmael’s sons (Gen 25:13; 1 Chron 1:29), but the OT contains no further information about him. The name occurs ten other times as a designation of an Arabian tribe which does not enter directly into the OT history at any point, but must have been well known to the Israelites. It is used along with the name of Mesech (Ps 120:5), a different ethnic group that lived in an entirely different area, in a figure for the situation of one dwelling among barbarous strangers, either in a place distant from his own home, or in a homeland in which the people have turned against truth. In Isaiah 42:11 and 60:7 it is fig. used to indicate the future wide extension of God’s kingdom. In Jeremiah 2:10 it is used to point to the distant E, in parallel with Chittim for the distant W. Isaiah 21:17 refers to its many skillful archers and mighty warriors. The great multitude of its flocks, camels and tents is mentioned in Isaiah 60:7; Jeremiah 49:28, 29 and Ezekiel 27:21. In Ezekiel 27:21 trade with the princes of Kedar is listed as one of the marks of the greatness of Tyre. The tents of Kedar are used along with the curtains of Solomon as a figure to depict the dark beauty of Solomon’s beloved one (Song of Solomon 1:5). All these comparisons show how well known distant Kedar must have been to the Israelites in the years between 1000 and 500 b.c. Isaiah predicts that God will soon remove the glory of Kedar and destroy its powerful forces (21:16). Jeremiah 49:28, 29 predicts a later destruction, this time at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar.

2. Extra-Biblical references to Kedar. In view of the many Biblical references to the North-Arabian tribe of Kedar, it might seem strange that early Arab. lit. contains no reference to it. Arabic lit., however, does not begin to any extent until the rise of Islam in the seventh cent. a.d. Pre-Islamic North-Arab. material is extremely limited in quantity. Almost 1200 years intervened between the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the rise of Islam. In the nineteenth cent., new light came from the discovery of the annals of Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria (668-c. 632 b.c.). The account of Ashurbanipal’s ninth campaign includes the record of an expedition against the people of Kedar, which was evidently a powerful factor in N Arabia, both in his reign and in that of his predecessor. More recently an Aram. inscr. from the fifth cent. b.c. has been found in Egypt, indicating that Geshem the Arabian (perhaps the same Geshem as is mentioned in Neh 2:19 and 6:1-6) was a king of Kedar, and that there were at that time Kedarites on the eastern border of Egypt, prob. stationed there as guards by the Persians. Thus the importance of Kedar in Biblical statements is attested by archeological discoveries.

After the blows inflicted by Ashurbanipal and Nebuchadnezzar the tribe prob. dwindled rapidly and in the course of a few centuries disappeared or was assimilated into other Arab. tribes. In constructing a genealogy of Mohammed the Islamic hagiographers traced his descent from Abraham and Ishmael through Kedar. See Children of the East.

Bibliography M. Streck, Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergang Niniveh’s (1930); A. L. Oppenheim, tr., “the Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts,” in J. B. Pritchard, ed., ANET (3rd ed. 1969); I. Rabinowitz, “Aramaic Inscriptions of the Fifth Century B. C. E. from a North-Arab Shrine in Egypt,” JNES XV (1956) 1-9.