Kedar was a son of Ishmael, and the name came to mean a people who lived in tents in the open country. A psalmist laments, “Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!” The bride in the Song of Solomon calls herself dark “as the tents of Kedar.” Isaiah warns that the glory of Kedar will fail, yet also hears the villages of Kedar lift up a voice, and says “All the flocks of Kedar” shall be gathered for worship. Ezekiel lists its princes as dealers in lambs, rams and goats. Isaiah 60 is a gentle place to begin.
7 verses
And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam,
Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Within a year, according to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail:
Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory.
Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
Dark-skinned, the second son of Ishmael (Gen. 25:13).
It is the name for the nomadic tribes of Arabs, the Bedouins generally (Isa. 21:16; 42:11; 60:7; Jer. 2:10; Ezek. 27:21), who dwelt in the north-west of Arabia. They lived in black hair-tents (Cant. 1:5). To “dwell in the tents of Kedar” was to be cut off from the worship of the true God (Ps. 120:5). The Kedarites suffered at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 49:28, 29).
William Smith, 1884
(dark-skinned), the second in order of the sons of Ishmael, (Genesis 25:13; 1 Chronicles 1:29) and the name of a great tribe of Arabs settled on the northwest of the peninsula and on the confines of Palestine. The "glory of Kedar" is recorded by the prophet Isaiah, (Isaiah 21:13-17) in the burden upon Arabia; and its importance may also be inferred from the "princes of Kedar" mentioned by Ezekiel, (Ezekiel 27:21) as well as the pastoral character of the tribe. They appear also to have been, like the wandering tribes of the present day, "archers" and "mighty men." (Isaiah 21:17) comp. Psal 120:5 That they also settled in villages or towns we find from Isaiah. (Isaiah 42:11) The tribe seems to have been one of the most conspicuous of all the Ishmaelite tribes, and hence the rabbins call the Arabians universally by this name.