MASH

A descendant of Shem through Aram. (Ge 10:22, 23; 1Ch 1:17, Sy and six Heb. manuscripts) At 1 Chronicles 1:17 the Masoretic text reads “Meshech” instead of “Mash.” But this is probably a scribal error, since Meshech is listed as a “son” of Japheth.​—Ge 10:2; 1Ch 1:5.

Some link Mash and his descendants with Mons Masius, a mountainous region of northern Mesopotamia mentioned by Greek geographer Strabo. (Geography, 16, I, 23) Others associate Mash with a part of the Syro-Arabian desert called the “(country of) Mash” in Assyrian annals and described as “the desert where parching thirst is at home, where there are not even birds in the sky and wherein neither wild donkeys (nor) gazelles pasture.”​—Archaeology and the Old Testament, by M. F. Unger, 1964, p. 98; Ancient Near Eastern Texts, edited by J. B. Pritchard, 1974, p. 299.