the First Week of Advent
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Dictionaries
Hittites
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Hittites (hĭt'tîtes), The tribe or nation descended from Heth, the son of Canaan. Genesis 10:15; 1 Chronicles 1:13. They were inhabitants of Canaan in the time of Abraham. Genesis 15:20. They then occupied the southern part of the land, as Hebron, Genesis 23:3-18, extending towards Beersheba; since Esau married Hittite wives, and Isaac and Rebekah feared that Jacob might follow his example. Genesis 26:34; Genesis 27:46; Genesis 28:9. Hittites evidently, therefore, were in the neighborhood: they were subsequently in the mountainous region near the Amorites and Jebusites, Numbers 13:29; Joshua 11:3; and were perhaps some of the original inhabitants of Jerusalem, Ezekiel 16:3; Ezekiel 16:45, as well as in the neighborhood of Bethel. Judges 1:22-26. Indeed, they had spread so extensively, that Canaan, or at least the northern part of it, was called the "land of the Hittites." Joshua 1:4. Some suppose them to have been a commercial people. Genesis 23:16. In subsequent times we find two of David's warriors Hittites, Abimelech, 1 Samuel 26:6, and Uriah, 2 Samuel 11:3. Solomon rendered those that yet remained in Palestine tributary, 1 Kings 9:20; and they are mentioned after the captivity. Ezra 9:1. But there are some remarkable notices of Hittites, Judges 1:26; 1 Kings 10:29; 2 Kings 7:6; 2 Chronicles 1:17, which point to a people, a branch of the great family, or the descendants of those expelled from Palestine, who were settled independently beyond Lebanon, and it may be on the southeastern frontier towards Arabia. And Egyptian annals speak of a war with Hittites; and Egyptian pictures axe believed to represent Hittites. These representations may be taken not unfairly to figure the old Hittites of Canaan. We are learning much of the Hittites from recent explorations, but their inscriptions lately discovered have not been certainly deciphered nor their records indisputably determined.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Hittites'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/h/hittites.html. 1893.
