Tema (Arabian living at the time of the Patriarchs)

Tema was an oasis town in the north Arabian desert on the caravan route between Damascus and the Arabian interior, named for a son of Ishmael whose descendants settled there (Genesis 25:15; 1 Chronicles 1:30). Job's friend Eliphaz compares the failed hope of Job's rescuers to the caravans of Tema (Job 6:19), and a large inscribed stone found at the site records that the Babylonian king Nabonidus made Tema his residence for a decade in the sixth century BC, confirming its importance into the exilic period.