Where are the Hittites?

Heth is, according to (Genesis 10:15), the second son of Canaan, who is son of Ham, son of Noah. Heth is the ancestor of the Hittites, second of the twelve Canaanite nations descended from his sons, who lived near Hebron. (Genesis 23:3,7) In (Genesis 10:15-16),

Heth is placed between Sidon and the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgasites, Hivites, Arkite, Sinite, Arvadite, Zemarite, Hamathite and other peoples, showing their descent through their children, called Children of Heth. (Genesis 23:3, 5, 7, 10, 16, 18, 20)

Heth means ‘That who (Jehovah/Yahweh/God) strengthened’. After the Flood, the Hittites originated from Noahs great-grandson Heth, through Ham and Canaan, and were sometimes referred-to as the sons of Heth (Genesis 23:3) or daughters of Heth. (Genesis 27:46): The sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth ... the sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan ... Canaan became the father of Sidon his first-born, and Heth. (Genesis 10:1,6,15)

The Hittites is an ancient Empire that encompassed the general area of Asia Minor and Canaan. Although to most not as popularly well-known as other ancient Empires (e.g. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Persia, Rome), at the peak of its power the Hittite Empire was challenged by the Egyptians and Assyrians for control of the land of Canaan or what is now known as the land of Israel.

The Hittites are mentioned prominently in early Bible History. After Sarah died, it was from the Hittites that Abraham bought the cave in Hebron, known today as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in which Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob/Israel and Leah are all buried: Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave of the field of Machpelah east of Mamre, that is, Hebron, in the land of Canaan.

The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as a possession for a burying place by the Hittites (the sons of Heth). (Genesis 23:19-20) Two of the wives of Esau were Hittite: When Esau was forty years old, he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. (Genesis 26:34-35)

Nob was a sacerdotal town, on a hill in ancient Israel, a place near Ramah where many Priests lived in the vicinity of Jerusalem. It may have been located close to Bahurim, near the Mount of Olives or possibly further north at Tell Shuafat, Jerusalem being at the border between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. “Then answered David and said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying, who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with you.” (1 Samuel 26:6)

In the Bible (1 Samuel 21: and 22:), David fled to the high Priest Ahimelechs shrine at Nob, where the Ark of the Covenant was located. Here he ate the Showbread which had been withdrawn from the sanctuary and received the Sword of Goliath, which was kept there.

Later Saul had Doeg the Edomite shepherd brought to him at Gibeah from Nob (1 Samuel 22:6, 11). Saul was angry with Ahimelech for helping David, and had Doeg put Ahimelech and the other Priests to death, before killing all the men, women, children and animals of the town. Saul also kills the gentile Gibeonites. (2 Sam 21)

The incident of adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite one of the speciallynbsp;regardednbsp;Thirty of Davids army, and Uriahs murder to cover it up, was one of the greatest personal failures of King David who succeeded Saul: Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in His sight? You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites. (2 Samuel 12:9)

According to the Hebrew Bible, Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, King of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. She is most known for the Bible story in which she was summoned by King David who had seen her bathing and lusted after her. She was the mother of Solomon, who succeeded David as King, making her the Queen mother. “Thou art thy mothers daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children: your mother was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite.” (Ezekiel 16:45)

Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam (2 Samuel 11:3), who is called Ammiel in (1 Chronicles 3:5). Her father is identified by some scholars with Eliam mentioned in (2 Samuel 23:34) as the son of Ahithophel, who is described allegedly as Gilonite.

The Hittites and Gilonites are descendants from Ham and were amid several Canaanite tribes that lived among Judah. Bathsheba is considered Israelite by some, although the real meaning of the Hebrew form of the name Bathsheba is not clear. But because she was married to Uriah the Hittite, some interpreters thought that she was a foreigner.

Bathsheba is one of the four women mentioned in Jesus genealogy in Matthew, though she is not named but referred to as “the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaohs daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. (1 Kings 10:29–11:1-2; 2 Chronicles 1:17)

According to all the racial indicators recognized by leading anthropologist at the turn of the century, the modern Jews have more in common with the ancient Hittites, than with the ancient Israelites.

In another early publication written about the same time, this statement is found in the article on the Hittites: The human type is always brachycephalic [round-headed], with brow receding sharply and long nose making almost one line with the sloping forehead. In the sculptures of the Comma gene and the Tyana districts, the nose has a long curving tip, of very Jewish appearance. (Enc. Brit. XIII (1910), 537)

It should be evidently now that the round-headed hook-nosed Jews of today have a definite racial connection with the ancient Hittites, remembering or course what Joseph Jacobs wrote: Some anthropologists are inclined to associate the racial origins of the Jews, not with the Semites, whose language they adopted, but with the Armenians and Hittites of Mesopotamia, whose broad skulls and cuffed noses they appear to have inherited. (Jew. Enc. X (1903), 264)

Moreover, a portrait of one of these Hittites taken from a sculptural relief found on the tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh clearly reveals what looks like a typical modern Jew (Jew. Enc. VI (1904), 427).

The resemblance is so startling it is uncanny! If in doubt just read ‘The Jewish Encyclopedia’, remembering of course that there is nothing anti-Semitic there...

Food for thought!