Dumah

silence, (Compare Psalms 94:17 ), the fourth son of Ishmael; also the tribe descended from him; and hence also the region in Arabia which they inhabited ( Genesis 25:14 ; 1 Chronicles 1:30 ).

There was also a town of this name in Judah ( Joshua 15:52 ), which has been identified with ed-Domeh, about 10 miles southwest of Hebron. The place mentioned in the "burden" of the prophet ( Isaiah 21:11 ) is Edom or Idumea.

(silence ).

1. A son of Ishmael, most probably the founder of the Ishmaelite tribe of Arabia, and thence the name of the principal place of district inhabited by that tribe. ( Genesis 25:14 ; 1 Chronicles 1:30 ; Isaiah 21:11 )
2. A city in the mountainous district of Judah, near Hebron, ( Joshua 15:52 ) represented by the ruins of a village called ed-Daumeh , six miles southwest of Hebron.

DUMAH

du'-ma (dumah, "silence"):

This word occurs in the Old Testament with the following significations:

(1) the land of silence or death, the grave (Psalms 94:17; 115:17);

(2) a town in the highlands of Judah between Hebron and Beersheba, now ed-Daume (Joshua 15:52);

(3) an emblematical designation of Edom in the obscure oracle (Isaiah 21:11,12);

(4) an Ishmaelite tribe in Arabia (Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30).

According to the Arabic geographies this son of Ishmael rounded the town of Dumat-el-Jandal, the stone-built Dumah, so called to distinguish it from another Dumah near the Euphrates. The former now bears the name of the Jauf ("belly"), being a depression situated half-way between the head of the Persian Gulf and the head of the gulf of Akaba. Its people in the time of Mohammed were Christians of the tribe of Kelb. It contained a great well from which the palms and crops were irrigated. It has often been visited by European travelers in recent times. See Jour. Royal Geog. Soc., XXIV (1854), 138-58; W. G. Palgrave, Central and Eastern Arabia, chapter ii. It is possible that the oracle in Isa (number 3 above) concerns this place.

Thomas Hunter Weir