Here, as elsewhere, these Transjordanic tribes are spoken of as “valiant(92) men,” “men able to bear buckler and sword and to shoot with the bow, and skilful in war.” Their numbers were considerable. While five hundred Simeonites were enough to destroy the Amalekites on Mount Seir, these eastern tribes mustered “forty and four thousand seven hundred and threescore that were able to go forth to war.” Their enemies were not “quiet and peaceable people,” but the wild Bedouin of the desert, “the Hagrites, with Jetur and Naphish and Nodab.” Nodab is mentioned only here; Jetur and Naphish occur together in the lists of the sons of Ishmael.(93) Ituræa probably derived its name from the tribe of Jetur. The Hagrites or Hagarenes were Arabs closely connected with the Ishmaelites, and they seem to have taken their name from Hagar. In Psalm lxxxiii. 6-8 we find a similar confederacy on a larger scale:— “The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagarenes Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre, Assyria also is joined with them; They have holpen the children of Lot.” There could be no question of unprovoked aggression against these children of Ishmael, that “wild ass of a man, whose hand was against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”(94) The narrative implies that the Israelites were the aggressors, but to attack the robber tribes of the desert would be as much an act of self-defence as to destroy a hornet’s nest. We may be quite sure that when Reuben and Gad marched eastward they had heavy losses to retrieve and bitter wrongs to avenge. We might find a parallel in the campaigns by which robber tribes are punished for their raids within our Indian frontier, only we must remember that Reuben and Gad were not very much more law-abiding or unselfish than their Arab neighbours. They were not engaged in maintaining a _pax Britannica_ for the benefit of subject nations; they were carrying on a struggle for existence with persistent and relentless foes. Another partial parallel would be the border feuds on the Northumbrian marches, when— “... over border, dale, and fell Full wide and far was terror spread; For pathless marsh and mountain cell The peasant left his lowly shed: The frightened flocks and herds were pent Beneath the peel’s rude battlement, And maids and matrons dropped the tear While ready warriors seized the spear; ... the watchman’s eye Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy.”(95) But the Israelite expedition was on a larger scale than any “warden raid,” and Eastern passions are fiercer and shriller than those sung by the Last Minstrel: the maids and matrons of the desert would shriek and wail instead of “dropping a tear.”