NAOMI Oily], from ?1/), to be pleasant; Sept.
• 7:7 •• 7 NcorAciv ; Alex. wife of Elimelech of Bethlehem, and mother-in-law of Ruth, in whose history hers is involved [Runt].
; refreshment ;' NaOls ; Na ; Nap his), a son of Ishmael, and the name of the tribe and nation which sprang from him (Gen. xxv. 15). Naphish, in the three passages in which the name occurs, is grouped with Jetur (i Chron. i. 31 ; v. 19). Jetur was unquestionably identical with the Greek Iturea and modern ; a small province situated at the eastern base of Hermon, and bordering on Damascus and Bashan. The story of the conquests of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, east of the Jordan, given in Chron. v. 18-23, throws some light on the terri tory then occupied by the tribe of Naphish, and upon their habits. Jetur and Naphish were then allies, and apparently dwelt together. The Israel ites conquered them, and took from them 50,000 camels, 250,000 sheep, and 2000 asses. They were manifestly a pastoral people, like the great modern tribes of the Anezeh, some of which have flocks and herds equally numerous. Then, having conquered the people and captured their cattle, we are told that the children of the half-tribe of Manasseh dwelt in the land: they increased front Bashan unto Baal-Hermon, and Senir, and unto Ofount Hermon.' From this it may be concluded that the people of Naphish had a settled home situated between the range of Hermon and Bashan, that is, along the eastern declivities of the moun tains. Like all nomads, and semi-nomads, how
ever, they pastured their flocks over a much wider region, running out, doubtless, across Argob and Bashan to the Alidbar, or pasture land' of Arabia. The name Naphish has altogether dis appeared. There is no trace of it even in the earliest Arab writers, nor in the Greek and Roman geographers. It is probable that the tribe was amalgamated with others, and thus embraced under a common name, just as subdivisions of the Anezeh are now. Ptolemy mentions an Arab tribe called Agrai, as inhabiting northern Arabia (Geogr. vi. 19). This word is doubtless a Greek corruption of Hagar, the name generally given by Arab writers to the descendants of IshmaeL Ptolemy places the Agrmi between Bashan and Mesopotamia (Forster, Geogr. of Arabia, i. 312). After the defeat of the Naphishites by the Israelites, the former probably retired to the fastnesses of the desert, as is common at the present day with border tribes; and there they became mixed up with their more powerful brethren, and thus lost their historical individuality.—J. L. P.