198 JASTROW — THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. [April 4, 



ment which relegates all enemies of Israel who hindered the advance 

 of the latter among the '^accursed" nations. It is needless for 

 our purposes to enter upon the vexed question whether the B'^ne 

 Heth, settled in southern Palestine, are to be identified with the 

 Hittites in the northeast, where Hamath formed one of the centres 

 of their settlements.^ The Hebrew writers, as is quite evident, 

 considered them identical, and although those in the south enter 

 into friendly relations with the early Hebrew invaders, as illustra- 

 ted by the traditions regarding Abraham's dealings with the B^ne 

 Heth,^ those in the north are included among the enemies with 

 whom no alliances of any kind are to be made. The term " Heth " 

 may indeed have been introduced by the one who added it to Sidon 

 to include the entire interior of Palestine, which a later glossator 

 not satisfied with so vague an expression amplified by the specifi- 

 cation of the nine subdivisions in verse i6-i8.^ However this 

 may be, the addition of Heth and the further specification of nine 

 subdivisions, whether originally intended as specifications of 

 Hittites or of Canaanites, are prompted and retained by the desire 

 to make it perfectly clear that the groups with which the Hebrews 

 were to make no entangling alliances of any kind, whether social 

 or political, belong to the '^ accursed " Hamites. 



This same motive is further illustrated in the indication of the 

 boundaries of the Canaantish settlements. Taking in the Phoeni- 

 cian coast to Gerar, or according to the variant to Gaza/ he car- 

 ries the eastern boundary to Sodom and Gomorrah. I venture to 

 suggest that this specification is not prompted by purely scholastic 

 interests, but from a desire to leave no doubt, on the one hand, as 

 to the inclusion of the hated Philistines, represented by Gerar and 

 Gaza, among the Hamites, and, on the other, to point out by the 



1 That the term " Hittites " was used to embrace large groups of peoples that 

 entered Syria and Palestine from the mountain districts of the north and north- 

 west is now generally recognized. The vagueness of the nomenclature complicates 

 the historical and ethnological problems, but it may be said that what evidence 

 is available does not militate against regarding the northern and southern Hit- 

 tites of Palestine and Syria as belonging to the same general group. 



2 Genesis, chap. 23. 



3 See above, p. 197. 



* Verse 19. It matters little whether we take Gerar or Gaza as the gloss, 

 though the former, about six miles farther south of Gaza, being less well known, 

 probably represents the original reading, to which a glossator added as a memo- 

 randum " (jaza," as a better known boundary of Philistine settlements. 



