Bible Word of the Day
Amorites (People of Ancient Palestine)
Meaning
The Amorites were one of the many Canaanite tribes that occupied part of Canaan and the Transjordan, which today we know as Palestine and Jordan. According to the Table of Nations from the book of Genesis chapter ten. They were descendants of Canaan who was one of the sons of Ham. Ham was one of the sons of Noah. The Bible tells us in the fifth chapter of Genesis that Noah was five hundred years old, when he begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And that Ham was the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan. These are the people groups which populated Africa and the adjoining parts of Asia Minor.
The Amorites were pretty numerous in the third millennia BC and populated many of the Mesopotamian cities. They even had control over Babylon from 2000-1595 BC. Many of the Babylonian kings had Amorite names. One of the most famous of which was Hammurabi. The Amorites were driven out of Canaan during the Exodus. However, during the Bible times the Amorites had assimilated into the other Canaanite cultures of the region. And because of this when we see them mentioned in the Bible they can also represent the general Canaanite culture.
“On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates. The Land of the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.'” (Book of Genesis 15:18-21)
“So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.” (Book of Exodus 3:8)