The son of Ishmael.His (Genesis 25:13) name signifies, blackness. The posterity of Kedar dwelt in the deserts called Arabia-deserta, (Isaiah 42:11) and their employment was chiefly that of keeping cattle. They dwelt in tents made of hair cloth, which from the alternate heat of the scorching sun, and heavy rains beating on them, gave a dirty blackness rather forbidding to the eye of the traveller. And this may serve to explain to us, in some measure, those passages in Holy Writ in which the church complains of her sorry appearance. "Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar." (Psalms 120:5) The expression is figurative, meaning, that in this world a child of God finds himself not at home, nor those with whom he sojourns favourable to the promotion of the work of grace in the heart; and hence the soul goes lean from day to day, and to her own view appears wretched and black, like the tents of Kedar. The spouse in the Canticles makes use of a similar expression in relation to herself, while taking comfort from the consciousness how differently she appeared in the eyes of her Lord from his beauty put upon her. "I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." (Song of Solomon 1:5) And the whole doctrine is blessedly explained Ezekiel 16:1-14. Indeed, the spouse's figure of the black tents of Kedar, and the golden curtains of Solomon, that is, the wretchedness of a desert, and the rich tapestry of a palace, is very obvious. Believers, considered in themselves, and carrying about with them, as they do, a body of sin and death, are always black. Hence mount Sinai covenant is represented as a dispensation, like the mount itself, of blackness and darkness and terror; because it set forth that dread of conscience which filled the mind when under a conscious sense of having broken it. On the other hand, the covenant of promise full of grace and mercy, giving as it doth, a joy and peace in believing to the soul, lightens the countenance, and makes the child of God comely. The apostle Paul hath beautifully set these things forth in his allegory. (Galatians 4:22-26) I only add, how blessed it is to have such views as the church had, in one and the same moment, of ourselves. Considered in nature, we are black as the tents of Kedar; viewed in grace, comely as the curtains of Solomon; and still going humble and softly all our days, from the consciousness of the remains of indwelling corruption; still taking comfort in the assurance, that we are "beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, and terrible as an army of banners." (Song of Solomon 6:4)