Jair

Passages on this topic

From Nave’s Topical Bible (1896), a historical reference index. The groupings are Nave’s; the verses are shown in the text used across this site.

1. Son of Manasseh. Founder of twenty-three cities in Gilead

• Numbers 32:41 Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, went and captured their villages and called them Havvoth-jair.
• Deuteronomy 3:14 Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, took the whole region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and Maacathites. He renamed Bashan after himself, Havvoth-jair, by which it is called to this day.
• Joshua 13:30 The territory from Mahanaim through all Bashan— all the kingdom of Og king of Bashan, including all the towns of Jair that are in Bashan, sixty cities;
• 1 Kings 4:13 Ben-geber in Ramoth-gilead (the villages of Jair son of Manasseh in Gilead belonged to him, as well as the region of Argob in Bashan with its sixty great cities with walls and bronze bars);
• 1 Chronicles 2:22–23 Segub was the father of Jair, who had twenty-three cities in the land of Gilead. But Geshur and Aram captured Havvoth-jair, along with Kenath and its sixty surrounding villages. All these were descendants of Machir the father of Gilead.

2. A judge of Israel

• Judges 10:3–5 Tola was followed by Jair the Gileadite, who judged Israel twenty-two years. He had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkeys. And they had thirty towns in the land of Gilead, which to this day are called Havvoth-jair. When Jair died, he was buried in Kamon.

3. A Benjamite

• Esther 2:5 Now there was at the citadel of Susa a Jewish man from the tribe of Benjamin named Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish.

4. Father of Elhanan

• 1 Chronicles 20:5 Once again there was a battle with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.