Not far from the camping-places of the Kadmonites was the land of Uz,
famous as the home of Job. Uz, in fact, was a province of Edom; Edomite
colonists, so we are told in the Book of Lamentations,[11] inhabited it.
Indeed, it has been suggested that the difficulties presented by the
language of the Book of Job are due to the fact that it is the language
of Edom rather than of the Jews, differing from the latter only as an
English dialect may differ from that of a neighbouring county. At all
events, Job was as much a hero of Hebrew as of Edomite tradition, while
the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs contains the wise sayings of a
king whose territory adjoined the land of Edom. Lemuel, according to the
Hebrew text, which is mistranslated in the Authorised Version, ruled
over Massa, and Massa, the Mash of Genesis, is described in the Assyrian
inscriptions as that part of northern Arabia which spread eastward from
Edom. The Hebrew of Palestine doubtless included it in the country of
"the children of the East."

The larger part of northern Arabia, however, was the home of the
Ishmaelites. They lived, it is said, "from Havilah unto Shur," like the
Amalekites or Bedâwin. But whereas the Amalekites were the wild,
untamable natives of the desert, the Ishmaelites came of a cultured
ancestry, half Babylonian, half Egyptian, and the traditions of it were
never forgotten. They lived a settled life in fenced villages and
fortified castles, as their descendants still do to-day. Like the
Israelites, they were divided into twelve tribes, the eldest and most
important of which were the Nabatheans, who spread from the frontiers of
Babylonia to Petra in the far west. Kedar was another powerful tribe; in
the days of the later Assyrian empire its kings contended in battle with
the armies of Nineveh.