MIDIANITES Manisa/et), the descendants of Midian, the son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen. xxv. 2, 4), who, with the other sons of Abraham's concubines,migrated eastward from Canaan during Abraham's life (Gen. xxv. 6). In the time of Jacob their mer chants had caravans from Gilead through Palestine to Egypt (Gen.
xxxvii. 28, 36). In the time of Moses we find them in Arabia Petrrea, under the government of a high-priest (Exod. ii. 15), and leading their flocks as far as Mount Sinai (Exod. iii. I) ; but they did not extend to the west of this mountain, for the Israelites did not come in contact with them in their march from Egypt, but, on the contrary, Jethro, their high-priest, came out of his country to visit Moses, when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of Sinai (Exod. xviii. 1-5 ; Numb. I. 29). They subsequently frequently harassed the Israelites till Gideon defeated them and the Amalekites in the plain of Jezreel, and pursued them beyond the Jordan. They were still known, however, in the time of Isaiah (lx. 6) as a commercial tribe.
The exact country of the Midianites is not determined with certainty. Some, indeed, suppose that those in Arabia PetrLea, mentioned in Exodus (ii. 15) were quite a different nation from those on the east of Palestine, the former being related to the descendants of Cush, the son of Ham (Numb. xii. 1 ; Hab. iii. 7). But the more common and more
probable opinion is, that the Midianites were all descended from the same stock, and those on the iElnnitic Gulf were sometimes called Ethiopians, while those near the Dead Sea are occasionally called Ishmaelites ; and there may have been other bodies of them in the western part of Arabia (1 Kings, xi. 18). The Arabian geographers Abulfeda and Edrisi mention a town, Median, on the eastern side of the iElanitie Gulf of the Red Sea, somewhat to the north of the modern Moilah, which is probably the Miatava of Ptolemy (v. 17) and the Ma5favi of Josephua (` Ant.' xii. 11, 1), and of which the ruins were to be seen in the time of Eusebius and Jerome.
The Midianites were governed by their elders (Numb. xxii. 4), and by chiefs or kings (Numb. xxv. 15, 18; xxxi. 8; Judges, vii. 25; viii. 3, 5). They possessed many camels, and had acquired great wealth, probably by commerce (Judges, vi. 5 ; vii. 12 ; viii. 10, 24; Is. lx. 6). Their religion was the worship of Baal-peor.