GONER (gO'iner), (Heb. go'mer, perfec tion).
1. The eldest son of Japheth, son of Noah (B. C: after 2414), whose descendants Bochart (Phal, in. 8) supposes to have settled in Phrygia (Gen. x :3; comp. Chron. i:5). Most of the preters take him to be the ancestor of the Celtx, and more especially of the Cimmerii, lituueptot, who were.already known in the time of Homer (Odyss. xi :14). To judge from the ancient his torians (Herodotus, Strabo, Plutarch, etc.), they had in early times settled to the north of the Black Sea, and gave their name to the Crimea, the ancient Chersonesus Taurica. But the greater part of them were driven from their territories by the Scythians, when they took refuge in Asia Minor in the seventh century before Christ (Herod. iv :12).
They attacked the northern frontier of the Assyrian empire in concert with the Minni, the Medes, the people of Sepharad (Saparda), and other populations whose territories they had al ready overrun ; but in B. C. 677 their leader, Teuspa (Teispes), was defeated by Esarhaddon, and they were driven partly eastward, where they overthrew the old kingdom of Ellipi and built Ecbatana, partly westwards into Asia Minor. Here
they sacked Sim5pe and Antandros, which they held for TOO years, and finally invaded Lydia. Gyges or Gugu, the Lydian king, sent an embassy to Nineveh for help ; in the end, however, he was slain in battle, and his capital, Sardis, captured by the invading hordes. His successor, Ardys, succeeded in exterminating or driving them out of the country. (A. H. Sayce, Hastings' Bib. Diet.) In the Scriptures, however, the people named Gomer would seem to imply rather an obscure and but vaguely known nation of the barbarous north (Roserimiiller, Altertlt, 1. 235, sq.).
Josephus (Antiq. i :6, 1) says expressly, that the ancestor of the Galatians, a Celtic colony, was called Gomer (Michael. Su/5/5/. p. 335, sq.). The Gomeri are generally considered to have been identical with the Cimbri of Roman times, and the Cymry of Wales. Cambria and even Cum berland still preserve the memory of their name.
2. The name of the daughter of Diblaim, a harlot who became the wife or concubine (ac cording to some, in vision only) of the prophet Hosea (Hos. i :3), B. C. about 785.