1 Samuel 27:8

Went up. The Geshurites inhabited the high table land which forms the northeastern portion of the wilderness of Paran. Like the Kenites, they seem to have broken up into scattered tribes, as we find one portion of them in the neighbourhood of Bashan ( Deuteronomy 3:14 ), and another in Syria ( 2 Samuel 15:8 ). Probably, like the Amalekites, they were a Bedouin race, and so great wanderers. Hence the verb translated invaded is literally "spread themselves out" like a fan, so as to enclose these nomads, whose safety lay in flight. Gezrites . The written text has Girzites, which the Kri has changed into Gezrites, probably from a wish to connect a name never mentioned elsewhere with the town of Gezer. But Gezer lay far away in the west of Ephraim, and the connection suggested in modern times of the Girzites with Mount Gerizim in Central Palestine is more probable. They would thus be the remains of a once more powerful people, dispossessed by the Amorites, but who were now probably a very feeble remnant. For those nations, etc. The grammar and translation of this clause are both full of difficulties, but the following rendering is perhaps the least objectionable: "For these were (the families) inhabiting the land, which were of old, as thou goest towards Shur," etc. Families must be supplied because the participle inhabiting is feminine. What, then, the narrator means to say is that these three Bedouin tribes were the aboriginal inhabitants of the northwestern portion of the desert between Egypt and South Palestine. On the Amalekites see 1 Samuel 15:2 . We need not wonder at finding them mentioned again so soon after Saul's expedition. A race of nomads would sustain no great harm from an expedition which soon began to occupy itself with capturing cattle. On Shur see 1 Samuel 15:7 .