The Hittites and the Old Testament

By Frederick Fyvie Bruce

Chapter 4

IV. THE HITTITE KINGDOMS OF SYRIA

The great Hittite Empire was at an end, but the Hittite name had not perished from the earth. Both north and south of the Taurus range which divides Asia Minor from Syria the old civilization survived in a number of states which were formerly part of the Hittite Empire. The fortunes of these states are to be traced chiefly in the records of the Assyrian kings, who in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. conquered one by one the Hittite states south of the Taurus. The Assyrians gave the name Hittites (Khatti) to the states south of the Taurus only, of which there were seven. In addition to these they enumerated twenty-four north of the Taurus, to which, however, they gave the name “the kingdoms of the land of Tabali”—Tabali being the equivalent of the Biblical Tubal (Gen. x. 2; 1 Chr. i. 5; Ezek. xxvii. 13; xxxviii. 2 f.) and of the classical writers’ Tibareni. But the difference in name was a geographical one; all alike were fragments of the old Hittite Empire and have left hieroglyphic inscriptions in an Indo-European language closely akin to the “Nesian” Hittite of the cuneiform texts and to Luwian.

The Assyrian power, which so increased in the later years of the Hittite Empire, underwent a temporary eclipse after the reign of Tiglath-pileser I (1114-1076 B.C.), and the Hittite states were therefore able to flourish without interference from that quarter.20 So much did they dominate the area between Lebanon and the Euphrates which Suppiluliumas in earlier days had added to his empire, that the whole area, and even regions farther south, came to be called by the Assyrians “the land of the Khatti”. Of these Hittite states Carchemish on the Euphrates was the most powerful. Hamath on the Orontes was another important Hittite kingdom; Toi, king of Hamath, who established friendly relations with David (2 Sam. viii. 9; 1 Chr. xviii. 9), was its ruler about 1000 B.C. It was the discovery and study of sculptured stones of this period at Hamath which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to the beginning of modern Hittitology.

But the revival of Assyrian aggression was the signal of the downfall of these kingdoms. Ashur-naşir-pal conquered Carchemish in 877 B.C. and exacted a heavy tribute; but it later gained its independence again. His son Shalmaneser III continued the attempt to crush the Hittite kings. In the battle of Karkar by the Orontes in 853 B.C. Irkhuleni king of Hamath appears among Shalmaneser’s opponents alongside Ahab of Israel and Ben-hadad (Dadda-idri) of Damascus.

The following century saw the disappearance of all the Hittite states, and their reorganization as Assyrian provinces. The greater part of the kingdom of Hamath was conquered by Tiglath-pileser III in 738, and the remainder fell to Sargon II in 720. Three years later Sargon overthrew the kingdom of Carchemish, the last Hittite state of any importance; and such small pockets of Hittite independence as survived were mopped up in the later years of Sargon’s reign. When his successor Sennacherib sent his intimidating letter to Hezekiah of Judah and referred him to the example of other kings conquered by the Assyrians, he included Hittite rulers in the list (2 Kings xix. 13; Isa. xxxvii. 13): “Where is the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad?”

20 Some people called Khatti raided Babylon and occupied it for a few days in the time of Nebuchadrezzar I (c.1130 B.C.).

 

To display the Greek & Hebrew words in this article you will need the BibleWorks Greek and Hebrew fonts for Windows

Original files can be downloaded from http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/

Book Navigation Title Page Table of Contents ► Chapter 1 ► Chapter 2 ► Chapter 3 ► Chapter 4 ► Chapter 5 ► Chapter 6 ► Chapter 7 ► Chapter 8

Holypig.com

Swartzentrover.com