The Hagrites (also spelled Hagarite or Hagerite, and called Hagarenes, Agarenes, and sons of Agar) were associated with the Ishmaelites mentioned in the
Gilead
Gilead or Gilad (, ; ''Gilʿāḏ'', , ''Jalʻād'') is the ancient, historic, biblical name of the mountainous northern part of the region of Transjordan.''Easton's Bible Dictionary'Galeed''/ref> The region is bounded in the west by the J ...
.For "sons of Agar," see Baruch 3:23, ''Revised Version.'' For ''Agarenes'' see Baruch 3:23, ''King James Bible.'' Their name is understood to be related to that of the biblical
Hagar
According to the Book of Genesis, Hagar is an Egyptian slave, a handmaiden of Sarah (then known as ''Sarai''), whom Sarah gave to her own husband Abram (later renamed Abraham) as a wife to bear him a child. Abraham's firstborn son, through Haga ...
. They lived a nomadic, animal-herding lifestyle in sparsely populated land east of the
Israelites
Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age.
Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...
tribe of Manasseh
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Manasseh (; Hebrew: ''Ševet Mənašše,'' Tiberian: ''Šēḇeṭ Mănašše'') was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. After the catastrophic Assyrian invasion of 720 BCE, it is counted as one ...
in Gilead brought 44,760 to battle with the Hagrites and defeated them. Through the battle, the Reubenites captured the Hagrite land as well as 50,000
camel
A camel (from and () from Ancient Semitic: ''gāmāl'') is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. Camels have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provid ...
s, 250,000
sheep
Sheep (: sheep) or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to d ...
, 2,000
donkey
The donkey or ass is a domesticated equine. It derives from the African wild ass, ''Equus africanus'', and may be classified either as a subspecies thereof, ''Equus africanus asinus'', or as a separate species, ''Equus asinus''. It was domes ...
s. Finally, the Reubenites captured 100,000 Hagrites, men, women and children and held them as captives. According to Theodor Nöldeke, these numbers are "enormously exaggerated".
King David
David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament.
The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damas ...
of Israel made Jazziz the Hagrite steward of his flocks, but the Hagrites are not mentioned in the historical books as a distinct people after the reign of King David.
In Psalms 83:6, the Hagrites are included in a list of ten peoples that form a coalition to attack Israel for the purpose of wiping it off the map. Because the war described in Psalm 83 has not yet occurred historically, it is often designated a prophetic psalm describing future events.
See also
*Comfort, Philip and Walter Elwell, ''Tyndale Bible Dictionary'', Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001