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is with certainty concluded that in the Hauran, and in the wilderness which stretches behind the Euphrates towards it, Israelitish tribes have had their abode, whose territory had been early seized by the trans-Jordanic tribes, and was held “until the captivity,” 1Ch 5:22, i.e., till the Assyrian deportation. This designation of time is almost as unfavourable to Mühlau's theory of a Massa in the Hauran, inhabited by Israelitish tribes from the other side, as the expression “to Mount Seir” (1Ch 4:42) is to Hitzig's North Arabian Massa inhabited by Simeonites. We must leave it undecided whether Dumah and Têmâ, which the Toledoth of Ismael name in the neighbourhood of Massa, are the east Hauran districts now existing; or as Blau (Deut. Morgl. Zeit. xxv. 539), with Hitzig, supposes, North Arabian districts (cf. Genesis. p. 377, 4th ed.).^[1] “Be it as it may, the contents and the language of this difficult piece almost necessarily point to a region bordering on the Syro-Arabian waste. Ziegler's view (Neue Uebers. der Denksprüche Salomo's, 1791, p. 29), that Lemuel was probably an emir of an Arabian tribe in the east of Jordan, and that a wise Hebrew translated those proverbs of the emir into Hebrew, is certainly untenable, but does not depart so far from the end as may appear at the first glance” (Mühlau).^[2]
If the text-punctuation lying before us rests on the false supposition that Massa, Pro 30:1; Pro 31:1, is a generic name, and not a proper name, then certainly the question arises whether משׂא should not be used instead of משּׂא, much more משׂא, which is suggested as possible in the article “Sprüche,” in Herzog's Encycl. xiv. 694. Were משׁא, Gen 10:30, the region Μεσήνη, on the northern border of the Persian Gulf, in which Apamea lay, then it might be said in favour of this, that as the histories of Muhammed and of Benjamin of Tudela prove the existence of an old Jewish occupation of North Arabia, but without anything being heard of a משּׂא, the Talmud bears testimony^[3] to a Jewish occupation of Mesene, and particularly of Apamea; and by the mother of Lemuel, the king of Mesha,

1. Dozy (Israeliten in Mecca, p. 89f.) connects Massa with Mansâh, a pretended old name of Mecca.
2. These German quotations with the name of Mühlau are taken from the additions to his book, which he placed at my disposal.
3. Vid., Neubauer's Le Géographie du Talmud, pp. 325, 329, 382.