Aramean (Air´uh-mee´uhn)

1 Designation of a people occupying most of Syria in the second millennium BCE. Subsequent centuries found Israel at war with the Arameans in the times of the Israelite and Judean monarchies. 2 In Genesis, the people from whom Bethuel and Laban came (Bethuel was the father of Isaac’s wife, Rebekah; Laban was her brother). 3 According to an ancient Israelite confession of faith, Abraham was an Aramean (Deut 26:5). 4 The ancestry of the concubine of Manasseh, who bore Asriel and Machir, the father of Gilead (1Chr 7:14).