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They are afterwards mentioned in the usual way among the inhabitants of the Promised Land (Exodus 23:28). They were closely allied to the Amorites, and are frequently mentioned along with them as inhabiting the mountains of Palestine. When the spies entered the land they seem to have occupied with the Amorites the mountain region of Judah (Numbers 13:29). They took part with the other Canaanites against the Israelites (Joshua 9:1; 11:3).

After this there are few references to them in Scripture. Mention is made of “Ahimelech the Hittite” (1 Samuel 26:6), and of “Uriah the Hittite,” one of David’s chief officers (2 Samuel 23:39; 1 Chronicles 11:41). In the days of Solomon they were a powerful confederation in the north of Syria, and were ruled by “kings.” They are met with after the Exile still a distinct people (Ezra 9:1; comp. Nehemiah 13:23-28).

The Hebrew merchants exported horses from Egypt not only for the kings of Israel, but also for the Hittites (1 Kings 10:28, 29). From the Egyptian monuments we learn that “the Hittites were a people with yellow skins and ‘Mongoloid’ features, whose receding foreheads, oblique eyes, and protruding upper jaws are represented as faithfully on their own monuments as they are on those of Egypt, so that we cannot accuse the Egyptian artists of caricaturing their enemies. The Amorites, on the contrary, were a tall and handsome people. They are depicted with white skins, blue eyes, and reddish hair, all the characteristics, in fact, of the white race” (Sayce’s The Hittites). The original seat of the Hittite tribes was the mountain ranges of Taurus. They belonged to Asia Minor, and not to Syria.

•HIVITES one of the original tribes scattered over Palestine, from Hermon to Gibeon in the south. The name is interpreted as “midlanders” or “villagers” (Genesis 10:17; 1 Chronicles 1:15). They were probably a branch of the Hittites. At the time of Jacob’s return to Canaan, Hamor the Hivite was the “prince of the land” (Genesis 24:2-28).

They are next mentioned during the Conquest (Joshua 9:7; 11:19). They principally inhabited the northern confines of Western Palestine (Joshua

11:3; Judges 3:3). A remnant of them still existed in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 9:20).

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