Translations
Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!
Woe is me, that I have sojourned in Meshech{H4902, that I dwell among the tents of Qedar!
Woe is me! A stranger exiled in Meshech, a wanderer who lives among the tents of Kedar!
Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech, that I live among the tents of Kedar!
Footnotes
Meshech was a people of the far north, near the Black Sea, descended from Yefet/Japheth (Gen. 10:2); Kedar was an Arab nomadic people of the southern and eastern desert, descended from Ishmael (Gen. 25:13). The pairing of these geographic and ethnic extremes—north and south, settled and nomadic, Japheth and Ishmael—may be figurative for total, all-encompassing exile among violent strangers. The psalmist cannot be literally in both places simultaneously; the juxtaposition says: wherever I am, I am among enemies of shalom. F.O.G. preserves the Hebrew Qedar; F.O.G.M. uses the traditional English spelling Kedar.

