The tribe of Judah as a compact and definite whole first makes its appearance at a later period, and, unlike the other tribes of Israel, represents a geographical rather than an ethnographical unity.[272] Jews were commingled in it with Edomites, as well as with other tribes—Dan, Simeon, and Levi. Its cities were only partly Israelitish; even the future capital, Jerusalem, retained its Jebusite population, and the temple was built on land that had been bought from a Gentile owner. Nevertheless, the fact that both tribe and territory bore to the last the name of Judah indicates that in this mixture of nationalities the Hebrew element remained the stronger and more predominant. It is true that Hebron, the first centre and capital of Judah, had been conquered, not by a Jew, but by the Kenizzite Caleb, and that his brother Othniel was the first ‘Judge’; but it is also true that the settlement of the country was in the main due to an amalgamation of Hebrew and Edomite elements. Gedor, Socho, Zanoah, Keilah, and Eshtemoa traced their second foundation to a Kenizzite father and a Jewish mother (1 Chron. iii. 18, 19), and Hebron itself soon ceased to be distinctively Kenizzite and became Jewish. Caleb the Kenizzite had been one of the spies sent out from Kadesh-barnea when the Israelites made their first, and unsuccessful, attempt to invade Canaan. He consequently belonged to the generation which had escaped from the bondage of Egypt, of which he and Joshua were said to have been the only survivors at the time of the passage of the Jordan. Hebron had been the chief point and goal of exploration on the part of the spies, and it was from its neighbourhood that the grapes were brought which testified to the fertility of the land. It was natural, therefore, that Hebron should again be the object of Caleb’s aim, and that while the Ephraimitish general was establishing himself in the north Caleb should lead his followers to its assault. The destruction of Lachish had opened the way; and the steep path which led up the limestone hills from Lachish to Hebron was left undefended. Modern writers have seen in the name of Caleb a mere tribal designation denoting the ‘Calebites’ or ‘Dog-men.’ But the cuneiform inscriptions show us that Caleb or ‘Dog’ was the name of an individual, and they also explain how it came to be so. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, as well as in later Assyrian letters, the word _Kalbu_ or ‘Dog’ is used in the sense of ‘officer’ or ‘messenger’; the king’s officer was his ‘faithful dog,’ and the term was an honourable one.[273] It conveyed none of those ideas of contempt or abuse with which it was afterwards associated in the Semitic mind, and which may have had their origin in Arabia. It is possible that Caleb had been an ‘officer’ of the Pharaoh before he became a Hebrew spy.