Biblical Hittites

The Hittites, also spelled Hethites, are a people mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. They are listed in Book of Genesis as second of the eleven Canaanite nations. Under the names בני-חת (bny-ḥt "children of Heth") and חתי (ḥty "native of Heth") they are mentioned several times as living in or near Canaan since the time of Abraham (estimated to be between 2000 BC and 1500 BC) to the time of Ezra after the return from the Babylonian exile (around 450 BC). Their ancestor Heth (Hebrew: חֵת, Modern H̱et, Tiberian Ḥēṯ,ḥt in the consonant-only Hebrew script) is said in Genesis to be a son of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah.

In the late 19th century, the biblical Hittites were identified with a newly discovered Indo-European-speaking empire of Anatolia, a major regional power through most of the 2nd millennium BC, who therefore came to be known as the Hittites. This nomenclature is used today as a matter of convention, regardless of debates about possible identities between the Anatolian Hittite Empire and the biblical Hittites.

According to Genesis, in Abraham's days, the Hittite Ephron sold him the cave in Hebron. Later, Esau married wives from the Hittites. In the Book of Joshua 1:4, when the Lord tells Joshua "From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your border", this "land of the Hittites" on Canaan's border is seen to stretch between Lebanon and the Euphrates, and from there toward the setting Sun (i.e., to the west).

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