The Aramaic-speaking peoples of Syria, whose chief kingdom was DAMASCUS — Israel's nearest and most persistent rival through the ninth and eighth centuries, and (in the King James Bible and the Septuagint) called SYRIA. The family connection is old and awkward: Abraham's kin at Haran are Arameans, Rebekah's brother Laban is 'the Aramean', and Deuteronomy 26:5 has every Israelite farmer recite 'a wandering Aramean was my father.' ⚠ Amos ends his Damascus oracle by sending them into exile 'to KIR' — which at 9:7 turns out to be where they came from, so the sentence is that their own national origin-story is being cancelled. Aramaic outlasted the kingdoms: it became the administrative language of the Persian empire, parts of Ezra and Daniel are written in it, and it was the everyday speech of first-century Galilee.