The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

There was one tribe, however, to whose history the theory of development is to some extent applicable. This was the tribe of Judah. The tribe was only partly of Israelitish descent. Its most important family, that of Caleb and Othniel, belonged to the Edomite tribe of Kenaz; while another Edomite tribe, that of Jerahmeel, occupied the southern part of the Jewish territory (1 Chron. ii. 25-33, 42). Even ‘the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez’ were Kenites from Midian (1 Chron. ii. 55).[^[271]] Down to the time of the kings the Israelitish members of the tribe of Judah mixed freely with their neighbours; David himself was descended from Ruth the Moabitess, and Bath-sheba, the mother of his successor, had been the wife of a Hittite. As has been already noticed, the prisoners whose figures surmount the names of Shishak’s conquests in Judah have the features of the Amorite and not of the Jew. In the Song of Deborah the tribe of Judah, like those of Dan and Simeon, is unknown. It is Ephraim and Benjamin who form the Israelitish vanguard against the Amalekites of the southern desert. And the deliverers of southern Israel from its two first oppressors were Othniel the Kenizzite and Ehud the Benjamite.

The tribe of Judah as a compact and definite whole first makes its appearance at a later period, and, unlike the other tribes of Israel, represents a geographical rather than an ethnographical unity.[^[272]] Jews were commingled in it with Edomites, as well as with other tribes—Dan, Simeon, and Levi. Its cities were only partly Israelitish; even the future capital, Jerusalem, retained its Jebusite population, and the temple was built on land that had been bought from a Gentile owner.

Nevertheless, the fact that both tribe and territory bore to the last the name of Judah indicates that in this mixture of nationalities the Hebrew element remained the stronger and more predominant. It is true that Hebron, the first centre and capital of Judah, had been conquered, not by a Jew, but by the Kenizzite Caleb, and that his brother Othniel was the first ‘Judge’; but it is also true that the settlement of the country was in the main due to an amalgamation of Hebrew and Edomite elements. Gedor, Socho, Zanoah, Keilah, and Eshtemoa traced their second foundation to a Kenizzite father and a Jewish mother (1 Chron. iii. 18, 19), and Hebron itself soon ceased to be distinctively Kenizzite and became Jewish.

Caleb the Kenizzite had been one of the spies sent out from Kadesh-barnea when the Israelites made their first, and unsuccessful, attempt to invade Canaan. He consequently belonged to the generation which had escaped from the bondage of Egypt, of which he and Joshua were said to have been the only survivors at the time of the passage of the Jordan. Hebron had been the chief point and goal of exploration on the part of the spies, and it was from its neighbourhood that the grapes were brought which testified to the fertility of the land. It was natural, therefore, that Hebron should again be the object of Caleb’s aim, and that while the Ephraimitish general was establishing himself in the north Caleb should lead his followers to its assault. The destruction of Lachish had opened the way; and the steep path which led up the limestone hills from Lachish to Hebron was left undefended.

Modern writers have seen in the name of Caleb a mere tribal designation denoting the ‘Calebites’ or ‘Dog-men.’ But the cuneiform inscriptions show us that Caleb or ‘Dog’ was the name of an individual, and they also explain how it came to be so. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, as well as in later Assyrian letters, the word Kalbu or ‘Dog’ is used in the sense of ‘officer’ or ‘messenger’; the king’s officer was his ‘faithful dog,’ and the term was an honourable one.[^[273]] It conveyed none of those ideas of contempt or abuse with which it was afterwards associated in the Semitic mind, and which may have had their origin in Arabia. It is possible that Caleb had been an ‘officer’ of the Pharaoh before he became a Hebrew spy.

The capture of Hebron is said to have taken place five years after the passage of the Jordan (Josh. xiv. 10). At any rate, it was before the death of Joshua (notwithstanding Judg. i. 1, 10). It was after that event, however, that the further conquests of the Kenizzites were made.

Somewhere near Hebron, but higher in ‘the mountains,’ was the Canaanitish city of Debir. Debir signified the ‘Sanctuary’; and it was here, as in Babylonia and Assyria, that a great library of books was stored in one of the chambers of the temple. Like the Babylonian cities, moreover, Debir had more than one name. It was also called Kirjath-Sannah, ‘the city of Instruction,’ from the schools which gathered round its library,[^[274]] and in the Old Testament it is further known as Kirjath-Sepher or ‘Booktown.’ In The Travels of the Mohar, however, a satirical account of a tourist’s adventures in Palestine, which was written by an Egyptian in the reign of Ramses II., it is termed Beth-Sopher, ‘the house of the scribe,’ and is coupled with Kirjath-Anab. It is plain, therefore, that the Massoretic punctuation Sepher ‘book’ is erroneous, and must be corrected to Sopher or ‘scribe.’ Whether Kirjath, ‘city,’ should also be corrected into Beth, ‘house’ or ‘temple,’ is more doubtful. Beth would be the more appropriate term in the case of a town which possessed a sanctuary, and it may be that the word Kirjath has been derived from the neighbouring town of [Kirjath-] Anab, which is called simply Anab in Josh. xv. 50. But it is also possible that the Egyptian writer has made a mistake, and has interchanged the words ‘city’ and ‘house,’ the true names of the two cities having been Kirjath-Sopher and Beth-Anab.[^[275]]

However this may be, Caleb promised his daughter Achsah as a reward to the conqueror of Debir. The prize was won by his ‘younger brother’ Othniel, and the Canaanitish city was so completely destroyed that its very site is still unknown. Its library perished in the ruins, though the clay tablets with which it was doubtless filled must still be lying beneath the soil, awaiting the discoverer who shall with their aid reconstruct the ancient history of southern Canaan. Hebron was more fortunate. The city was spared after its capture, and became the chief seat of the Kenizzites, and subsequently, when the Kenizzites were merged in Judah, the capital of Judah itself.

The Hebrew tribe of Judah was slow in following the example of its Edomite comrades. The ‘children of Judah,’ it is said, had at first been content to live with the Midianitish Kenites in the neighbourhood of Jericho, and when the Kenites returned to the desert of Kadesh-barnea to settle there along with them (Judg. i. 16). But there were other Jews who remained behind in Canaan, and there carved out a patrimony for themselves. Judah and Simeon, we are told, ‘went up’ together into the country which had been allotted to them, and eventually succeeded in occupying the greater part of it. The expression is a curious one, and seems to imply that the invaders started from the desert of Kadesh-barnea, though Lachish and its neighbourhood may be meant. At all events, Adoni-bezek, ‘the lord of Bezek,’ was defeated and captured, and his thumbs and great toes cut off, like those of the seventy vassal princes who had ‘picked up their meat’ under his own table. It is added that he was brought to Jerusalem, where he died.

That he was brought there by the Hebrews is not certain. However, the compiler of the book of Judges seems to have thought so, as he goes on to say, ‘And the children of Judah fought[^[276]] against Jerusalem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire.’ It is difficult to reconcile this with the very definite statement in the book of Joshua (xv. 63), ‘As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day’; or with the equally explicit statement in the first chapter of Judges itself (verse 21), ‘The children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.’[^[277]] The latter passage belongs to the period when Judah had not yet become a corporate whole, and when, therefore, as in the Song of Deborah, Benjamin was still regarded as forming the southern boundary of the tribes of Israel; but the first passage takes us down to the time when Benjamin had been supplanted by Judah, and Israel was being prepared to receive a king. It was during the earlier period that the Levite of Mount Ephraim, when returning from Beth-lehem, would not lodge in ‘Jebus’ because it was a ‘city of the Jebusites’ (Judg. xix. 10, 11); the later period extended to the time when Jerusalem was taken by David, and when the Jewish king, so far from massacring its inhabitants and setting it on fire, allowed the Jebusites in it to retain their property (2 Sam. xxiv. 18-24), and made it the capital of his empire. Doubtless Jerusalem might have been captured by the ‘children of Judah,’ and nevertheless have continued to exist. We may gather from the Tel el-Amarna tablets that such an occurrence actually took place at the close of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and one of the cities of southern Canaan taken by Ramses II. was Shalama or Salem. But if so, there could have been no massacre of the population and burning of the town; the passages of the Old Testament which describe the Jebusites as living uninterruptedly in their city are too clear and definite to admit of such a supposition. On the contrary, the Jebusites lived in peace and harmony along with both Jews and Benjamites; and were it not for the words of the Levite (Judg. xix. 11), that Jerusalem was still ‘the city of a stranger,’ we could well believe that the fate which overtook it in the time of David had been anticipated in an earlier century. But neither Benjamin nor Judah could ‘drive out the Jebusites that inhabited’ the great fortress-city of Southern Palestine.