IN TALESTINE IN IIELATION TO THE BIBLE. 253 



That " Khahiri" or more properly " 'Alnri " (written with an initial 

 ayin), is not equivalent to Hahiri confederates, is clear enough, as 

 Conder remarks, from the fact that the northern Amorites and 

 Zidonians, who, as the tablets tell us, sided with the Hittites against 

 Egyptian suzerainty in the north, are nowhere called Habiri, nor, on 

 the other hand, are any of those northern confederates mentioned as 

 joining with the Khabiri in the south, where alone these are 

 mentioned as invaders. ^loreover, the King of Jerusalem calls the 

 Khabiri once "a race" and three times "a tribe " (Conder, T.^. 

 Tablets, pp. 140, 144, 147, 148). He says that they have "fought all 

 the lands that are at peace with him" (147), have seized all the 

 land of which the Pharaoh is suzerain (145), and that they have 

 destroyed all the rulers (142) ; he laments the recent withdrawal 

 of Egyptian troops, asks why the paha, or Egyptian residents, 

 "tremble before the chiefs of the Khabiri," and entreats his 

 suzerain to send a fleet with fresh troops (145, 147) ; he speaks of a 

 leader who bears an Israelite name, Ilimelec, as " cutting off all the 

 king's land," and he says that "the king's land is rebelling to the 

 chiefs of the Khabiri," instancing one city, Beth Baalatu, a name 

 curiously like one of the cities of the Gibeonites (Baalah), which 

 made peace with Joshua.* Finally this king writes on a tablet of 

 different clay, " And truly we are quitting the city of Jerusalem,"' 

 which reminds us that a king of that city, after Joshua's greatest 

 ])attle, was found hiding in the cave of Makkedah. Was not this 

 last letter, then, sent from this very retreat 1 The Bible represents 

 a King Japhia as having also fought against Israel at that time, and 

 the tablets include letters from Japhia, King of Gezer, wherein he 

 beseeches the Pharaoh to deliver his region " from the power of the 

 people of the desert lands." The Bible, it is true, styles Japhia 

 King of Lachish ; but it further tells how when Japhia had been 

 killed in the cave and the Israelites presently attacked the city of 

 Lachish, Horam, King of Gezer, came to its aid; v.'hich tends to 

 show that there was a special tie between the two cities, and that 

 Gezer had been a vassal town subject to Japhia also. One may 

 add that another letter of about the same date states that the 

 enemy had destroyed "thirty temples of the gods in a single 

 month," which is just what the Hebrews would have done, but what 



* Cp. Jos. ix, 17, XV, 9, 60 ; i Chr. xlii, 0, etc. 



