Numbers 24:22

Until Asshur shall carry thee away captive - The Assyrians and Babylonians who carried away captive the ten tribes, 2 Kings 17:6, and the Jews into Babylon, 2 Kings 25, probably carried away the Kenites also. Indeed this seems pretty evident, as we find some Kenites mentioned among the Jews after their return from the Babylonish captivity, 1 Chronicles 2:55.

Render, For Kain shall surely not be destroyed (literally "be for destruction") until Asshur, etc. The words are not, as they appear in the King James Version, a prediction of evil to the Kenites, but a promise, on the contrary, of safety to be long continued to them (compare Numbers 10:32; Jeremiah 35:19).

24:22 The Kenite - Heb. Kain, that is, the Kenite, so called, either by a transposition of letters, which is very usual in the Hebrew tongue; or from the name of some eminent place where they lived, or person from whom they were descended, though now the memory of them be utterly lost, as it hath fared with innumerable other places and persons, famous in their generations, mentioned in ancient Heathen writers. Shall be wasted - Shall be by degrees diminished by the incursions of divers enemies, till at last the Assyrian comes to compleat the work and carries them into captivity. For the Kenites who lived partly among the ten tribes, and partly with the two tribes, were carried captive with them, part by Salmaneser, the King of Assyria, and part by Nebuchadnezzar, who also is called an Assyrian, Ezra 6:22 nu 24: , Isaiah 52:4 , .