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Updated: June 1, 2025
A fair city it must have been, built of white stone, the capitals of some of the columns carved to resemble a ram's horn, perhaps to remind the people of the horns of the altar in the Tabernacle. But the walls of the Jewish Lachish have none of the massive strength of the ancient Amorite city.
In the north they were known as Hivites, at Hebron they were called Anakim, at Jerusalem they were Jebusites. The Amorite kings of Bashan are described as Rephaim, a word which the Authorised Version translates "giants." It was only on the northern frontier of Palestine and in the kingdom of Sihon that the name of "Amorite" alone was used.
Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle.
The Amorite, it is clear, must be classed with the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Libyans of the Egyptian monuments, whose modern descendants are the Kabyles and other Berber tribes of Northern Africa. The latter are not only European in type, they claim special affinities to the blond, "golden-haired" Kelt. And their tall stature agrees well with what the Old Testament has to tell us about the Amorites.
They assembled to sing the first in Egypt, on the night when they were freed from captivity; their second was the song of triumph by the Red Sea; their third, when the well sprang up in the wilderness; Moses sang the fourth before his death; the fifth was Joshua's song after his victory over the five Amorite Kings; Deborah and Barak sang the sixth when they conquered Sisera; the seventh was David's psalm of thanksgiving to God for his deliverance out of the hand of all his enemies; the eighth was Solomon's song at the dedication of the Temple; the ninth Jehoshaphat sang as, trusting in God, he went to battle against the Moabites and the Ammonites.
Nevertheless, the political activity of the Amorite chief seemed to many Syrian, and especially to Phœnician princes as on the whole for the good of the land, and, therefore, to be supported. His appearance put the longed-for end to a far less endurable condition of things. Two communications from Akizzi, the headman of the city of Katna, near Damascus, exhibit the difference clearly.
The Jebusites, however, were merely the local tribe which in the early days of the Israelitish occupation of Canaan were in possession of Jerusalem, and they were probably either Hittite or Amorite in race. At any rate there is no trace of them in the cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna.
Amorite tribes and kingdoms were to be found in all parts of Palestine. Southward, as we have seen, Kadesh-barnea was in "the mountain of the Amorites," while Chedor-laomer found them on the western shores of the Dead Sea. But we learn from the Egyptian inscriptions, and more especially from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that the chief seat of Amorite power lay immediately to the north of Palestine.
This would be an additional reason for the tithes given to him by Abram. Long after the defeat of Chedor-laomer and his allies, if we are to accept the traditional belief, Abraham was again destined to visit Jerusalem. But he had ceased to be "Abram the Hebrew," the confederate of the Amorite chieftains in the plain of Mamre, and had become Abraham the father of the promised seed.
Hebron has preserved its sacred character down to the present day; it long disputed with Jerusalem the claim of being the oldest and most hallowed shrine in Southern Palestine, and it was for many years the capital of Judah, Moreover, we know that "Hebron" was not the only name the city possessed. According to the Biblical narrative Hebron was at once Amorite, Hittite, and Canaanite.
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