632 THE H0RITE3. 



name. From it came the Caphtorim, whom the Scriptures, "withouu 

 the slightest ambiguity, derive from Egypt.^^ The Caphtorim invaded 

 Palestine before the Israelites entered the land, yet, strange to say, 

 we read of no settlements of this people, nor are they spoken of as a 

 nation at the time of Israel's occupation. 



The genealogy of the sons of Shobal says nothing of the Caph- 

 torim ; but it mentions that Achnmai, jand perhaps Lahad, were the 

 heads of the families of the Zorathites, whom we have found to be 

 the same as the Zareathites. The root of this name is Zirah, the 

 hornet ; on this point there is and can be no doubt. An Egyptian 

 traveller in Palestine speaks of a town called Zorah, a place of 

 hornets, concerning which he says that the inhabitants were hornets 

 by name and by nature.'""^ The Zirah or hornet (Exodus xxiii. 28, 

 Deut. vii. 20, Joshua xxiv. 12,) whom God by the lips of Moses 

 promised to send before his people to drive out the Hivite, the 

 Canaanite, and the Hittite, was no valiant insect even in countless 

 swarms, but a race of men of high lineage and great martial jDrowess, 

 the descendants of Shobal the Horite, and the CajDhtorim, who took 

 their name from Shobal's great grandson, Achumai. It would be 

 strange indeed if any insect pest, according to the ordinary laws of 

 nature and the Divine working, should force great nations out of 

 cities walled up to heaven. Neither did the Israelites find in 

 Palestine a deserted land, but one full of towns, well peopled, and 

 great armies, weakened doubtless, but not destroyed, by the hornet 

 invasion. In Dor and Endor, and many neighbouring places, these 

 Zorathites (for they are the Dorians, and Palestine their Pelopon- 

 nesus — the home of their fathers which they returned to conquer — • 

 as Mazocchi shrewdly guesses),^^ long maintained their independence, 

 and in time passed on to other lands, to be numbered among the most 

 warlike of the peoples of the earth. We may now see a reason for the 

 mention of apparently minute particulars regarding this branch of the 

 human family in the Book of Chronicles. I may add that the hornet 

 appears on the crest of the Egyptian kings of tha Horite family. 



YI. — Heminiscences of the Horites, and confirmation op 



ALL THE PRECEDING PROPOSITIONS, ARE FOUND IN THE EARLY 



35 Gen. X. 14 ; Deut. ii. 23 ; Jerem. xlvii. 4 ; Amos ix. 7. 



S6 Cliabas, Voyage d'un Egyptian, quoted by Lenormant and Chevalier, ii. 160. This place 

 must have been Dora. 

 «' Antkoa's Classical Dictioaary ; Art. Paestum. 



