The Hittites : $b The story of a forgotten empireSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
History
The Hittites : $b The story of a forgotten empire
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Hittites
for the kings of Syria, did they bring them out by their means.' The
Hebrew merchants, in fact, were the mediatories between Egypt and the
north, and exported the horses of Egypt not only for the king of Israel
but for the kings of the Hittites as well.
The Hittites whose cities and princes are thus referred to in the later
historical books of the Old Testament belonged to the north, Hamath and
Kadesh on the Orontes being their most southernly points. But the Book
of Genesis introduces us to other Hittites--'the children of Heth,' as
they are termed--whose seats were in the extreme south of Palestine. It
was from 'Ephron the Hittite' that Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah
at Hebron (Gen. xxiii.), and Esau 'took to wife Judith the daughter of
Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite' (Gen.
xxvi. 34), or, as it is given elsewhere, 'Adah the daughter of Elon the
Hittite' (Gen. xxxvi. 2). It must be to these Hittites of the south that
the ethnographical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis refers when it
is said that 'Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Heth' (ver. 15),
and in no other way can we explain the statement of Ezekiel (xvi. 3, 45)
that 'the father' of Jerusalem 'was an Amorite and' its 'mother a
Hittite.' 'Uriah the Hittite,' too, the trusty officer of David, must
have come from the neighbourhood of Hebron, where David had reigned for
seven years, rather than from among the distant Hittites of the north.
Besides the latter there was thus a Hittite population which clustered
round Hebron, and to whom the origin of Jerusalem was partly due.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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