HEBRON.
5. The position of the Girgashites is uncertain, from the infrequent mention of them. But the slight indications point to the region west of the Sea of Galilee, where we locate them conjecturally. They may have been absorbed by the surrounding tribes.
6. South of Mount Carmel, and extending to what was afterward the border of Benjamin, we find the Hivites, having Shechem as their principal city in the time of Jacob. (Gen. 34:2.) Afterward, they occupied several towns immediately north of Jerusalem, four of which formed the "Gibeonite league," and made a treaty of peace with Joshua. (Josh. 9:3-15.) They were a quiet people, averse to war, and submitting readily to foreign domination.
7. The Perizzites, "villagers" are always named in connection with the Canaanites. From the allusions in Gen. 34:30, Josh. 17:15, and other places, we locate them between the Hivites and the western Canaanites, in the northern portion of the Shefelah, or foot-hills, where villages would more readily cluster than among the mountains. They remained in the land as late as the time of the restoration from Babylonian captivity. (Ezra 9:1.)
8. The Jebusites lived in the mountains around their city Jebus, afterward Jerusalem. They were of Canaanitish origin, a small but warlike tribe. Their king was slain by Joshua; but the city, though burned by the Israelites (Judges 1:8), was still held by its own people, and remained in their possession, a foreign fortress in the midst of the land, until finally taken by David, and made his capital. (2 Sam. 5.) South of the Jebusites were the southern branch of the Hittites, already referred to.
9. One more nation of the Canaanite stock remains, perhaps the most powerful of all, the Amorites, or "mountaineers." They occupied, originally, the wilderness between Hebron and the Dead Sea, having Hazezon-tamar (afterward En-gedi) as their capital; were smitten by Chedorlaomer, but aided Abraham in his pursuit and battle. (Gen. 14.) Afterward they pushed northward, crossed the Jordan, and possessed all the eastern table-land north of the Dead Sea, dispossessing the Ammonites of its southern portion, and the Rephaim of its northern. This great country was the "land of the Amorites" at the time of the conquest, ruled by two kings, Sihon and Og.
It is probable, that, during the patriarchal era, while Abraham and his family lived as wanderers in their Land of Promise, the lands east of the Jordan were occupied by their primeval inhabitants, the Rephaim in the north, the Zuzim between the Jabbok and the Arnon, and the Emim in the south.
III. THE NATIONS AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST.
What changes may have taken place among the tribes of Western Palestine during the four centuries while the Israelites were in Egypt, is not known; but, as the land became more thickly settled, the strifes of the Canaanite tribes and their roving traits would result in many alterations of boundary lines. But east of the Jordan the changes may be more distinctly marked.
1. The Amorites, already named, probably conquered the eastern table-land, north of the Jabbok, during the period of the sojourn (i. e., the stay of the Israelites in Egypt), and dispossessed its early inhabitants. Many of these, however, remained among the conquerors, and one of this race, Og, the King of Bashan, ruled over the northern Amorites when the Israelites entered the land, and was slain by them.