HITTITES, or CHILDREN OF HETH, a na tion descended ftom Heth LXX. Xer ; gent.
n. ,nn ; LXX. Xerraios ; nn nin; LXX. Xer, etryarepcs tACov Xer), son of Canaan. The meaning of Heth is supposed to be fear' or terror,' but it seems more probable that it has a signification like Sidon, fishing,' the Amorite, the mountaineer,' etc.
In the list of the descendants of Noah, Hetb occupies the second place among the children of Canaan. It is to be observed that the first and second names, Sidon and Heth, are not gentile nouns, and that all the names following are gentile nouns in the sing. Sidon is called the first-born of Canaan, though the name of the town is pro bably put for that of its founder, or eponym, the fisherman,' 'AXtet;s, of Philo of Byblus. It is therefore probable, as we find no city Heth, that this is the name of the ancestor of the nation, and the gentile noun, children of Heth, makes this almost certain. After the enumeration of the nations sprung from Canaan, it is added : And afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad' (Gen. x. 18). This passage will be illustrated by the evidence that there were IIittites and Amorites beyond Canaan, and also beyond the wider territory that must be allowed for the placing of the Hamathites, who, it may be added, perhaps had not mig,rated from Canaan at the date to which the list of Noah's descendants mainly refers (see ver. 19).
In the time of Abraham, the Hittites are men tioned among the inhabitants of the Promised Land (xv. zo). At Kirjath-arba, or IIebron, he purchased the cave of Machpelah of Ephron the Hittite, and it is evident that at this time the people of that city were Hittites (Gen. xxiii. 3-7, to, 18). The city was, however, founded by one Arba of the Anakim, whence its earlier name, and had inhabitants of that giant race as late as Joshua's time. It is also connected with Zoan in Egypt, where it is said to have been built seven years before that city (Num. xiii. 22). Zoan or A varis was built or rebuilt, and no doubt received its Hebrew or Semitic name, Zoan, the translation of its Egyptian name HA-AWAR, in the time of the first Shepherd-Icing of Egypt, who was of Pheeni clan or kindred race. It is also to be noted
that, in Abraham's time, the Amorites, connected with the giant race in the case of the Rephaim whom Chedorlaomer smote in AsItteroth Kar claim (Gen. xiv. 5), where the Rephaite Og after wards ruled, dwelt close to Hebron (ver. 13). The Hittites and Amorites we shall see to have been later settled together in the Orontes-valley. Thus at this period there was a settlement of the two nations in the south of Palestine, and the Hittites were mixed with the Rephaite Anakim. Among these Hittites Isaac lived in southernmost Palestine (xxvii. 46), and of their daughters Esau took one, if not two, to wife (xxvi. 34 ; xxxvi. 2, 3, 20, 24, 25).
In the enumeration of the six or seven nations of Canaan from the time of the Exodus downwards, the first names, in four forms, are the Canaanites, IIittites, and Amorites ; in two, which make no mention of the Canaanites, the Hittites, and Amor ites ; and in three, the former three names with the addition of another nation. In but two forms are these three nations further separated. It is also to be remarked that the Hittites and Amorites are men tioned together in a bare majority of the forms of the enumeration, but in a great majority of pas sages. The importance thus given to the Hittites is perhaps equally evident in the place of Heth in the list of the descendants of Noah, in the place of the tribe in the list in the promise to Abraham, where it is first of the known descendants of Canaan (xv. zo), and certainly in the term all the land of the Hittites,' as a designation of the Pro mised Land in its full extent, from Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and from Lebanon to the desert (Josh. i. 4). Th e close relation of the Hittites and Amorites seems to be indicated by the prophet Eze kiel, where he speaks of Jerusalem as daughter of an Amorite father and a Hittite mother (xvi. 3, 45).