"O God, do not remain quiet; Do not be silent and, O God, do not be still. For behold, Your enemies make an uproar, And those who hate You have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Your people, And conspire together against Your treasured ones. They have said, “Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, That the name of Israel be remembered no more.” For they have conspired together with one mind; Against You they make a covenant: The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites; Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria also has joined with them. They have become a help to the children of Lot." Psalm 83

The first seven groups named in Psalm 83 were all located east of Israel. They were tribes whose moving boundaries often overlapped.

The first two, Edom and the Ishmaelites, are synonymous today with the entire Arab-Muslim world. Ishmael is a significant figure in Islamic theology. So in modern terms, these names could be referring to Saudi Arabia, which backed front-line Arab forces in 1948 and 1967, and/or to the entire Arab-Muslim world that stretches from Morocco to Oman.

Moab was located east of the Dead Sea, with Edom to its south and Ammon to the north. The other listed eastern tribes--the Hagrites, Gebal and Amalek--mingled in this area. The name Ammon, of course, is with us today. It is the capital of Jordan. Tyre was the leading city of Phoenicia in early Bible times. This area is now part of Lebanon.

The Philistines were believed to have sailed from Canaan to the Greek island of Crete, or from the Anatolian region of western Turkey. Wherever they originated, iron-wielding Philistine warriors proved formidable enemies to the Hebrew tribes, but were eventually absorbed by attacking Assyrian forces and disappeared as a separate people group.

Philistia was resurrected by the Romans, who applied that name to the Promised Land in an attempt to obliterate the Jewish connection to Zion. This occurred after the Roman legions destroyed Judea in AD 70. The main Philistine town was named Gaza, which today is the current seat of the Palestinian autonomy government, while the Gaza Strip is home to over one million Palestinians. This fact gives us a hint that they are today's equivalent of the ancient Philistines. The very name "Palestinians" is likely derived from the ancient Philistines.The last nation mentioned is the Assyrian empire, which acts as "a help to the children of Lot.”

The Biblical Hebrew states that Assyria became an extension of Lot's descendants and covered the enormous territory of several modern countries, ranging from western Iran, to parts of Turkey, most of Syria, and even down to portions of Egypt's Nile River. Although it was centered in what is known today as Iraq, the capital of Assyria was Nineveh, situated on the banks of the Tigris River.

From David Dolan's “Israel's Next War” commentary on Psalm 83.