Jair

Biblical Record

Jair is a judge who appears in Judges 10:3–5. The judges were the leaders of Israel before the monarchy. Scripture records that after Tola "arose Jair, a Gileadite, and judged Israel twenty and two years." Gilead is the region east of the Jordan River.

The text gives only a few details about Jair's life:

• He had thirty sons who rode on thirty ass colts.
• He had thirty cities in the land of Gilead, which were still called "Havoth-jair" (the villages of Jair) at the time of writing.
• He died and was buried in Camon. The exact location of Camon is unknown.

There is no record of Jair fighting foreign enemies. The following passage (Judges 10:6 and following) turns to the story of Jephthah.

Significance in the Bible

Jair is commonly classified as a "minor judge," one of the judges whose activities are recorded only briefly. The listing of the numbers of his sons, donkeys, and cities is generally interpreted as an indication that he was a prominent man of considerable wealth and status. A similar expression appears in the account of Abdon in Judges 12:14. Another commonly cited explanation is that the text contains wordplay, since the Hebrew words for "donkeys" and "cities" sound alike.

The New Testament does not mention Jair the judge directly. The name of the synagogue ruler Jairus in the New Testament is generally regarded as the Greek form of Jair, but the two men have no connection.

Interpretations and Debates

Relationship to Jair the son of Manasseh. Numbers 32:41 and Deuteronomy 3:14 mention "Jair the son of Manasseh," who in the time of Moses took the villages of the region of Bashan and called them Havoth-jair. According to 1 Chronicles 2:22, this Jair was a descendant of Manasseh. Because these records and Judges 10:4 account for the same place name, there are several views on how the two figures are related:

• One view regards Jair the judge as a descendant of the Jair of the line of Manasseh.
• Another view regards the accounts as distinct traditions associated with the same place name.

The number of cities also differs among the texts: Joshua 13:30 gives sixty, 1 Chronicles 2:22 gives twenty-three, and Judges 10:4 gives thirty.

Other people with the same name. Several other people named Jair appear in Scripture. 1 Chronicles 20:5 mentions Jair, the father of Elhanan, who slew Lahmi the Philistine. This verse is frequently cited alongside 2 Samuel 21:19 in comparisons of the texts concerning Goliath. Esther 2:5 mentions Jair, the father of Mordecai. "Ira also the Jairite" in 2 Samuel 20:26 is understood to have been a member of the house of Jair or a native of Havoth-jair. All of these are distinct from Jair the judge.

In the Korean Church

Because the account of Jair is brief, he is rarely the sole subject of a sermon. He is more often introduced briefly as one of the minor judges in surveys of the Book of Judges or in studies that treat the judges in sequence.