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HIVITES

(Heb. ḥiwwî)

According to the Table of Nations (Gen. 10:17) and its corresponding genealogy (1 Chr. 1:15), a people descended via the Canaanites from Ham, the second son of Noah. Hivites were indigenous inhabitants of the Promised Land before the Israelite settlement. Their name appears usually in the stereotypical lists of nations decreed for dispossession by the Israelites (e.g., Deut. 7:1).

The Hivites dwelled in the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains and in the Beqaʿ Valley between them (Judg. 3:3), including the southern end of that region, the land or valley of Mizpah/Mizpeh at the foot of Mt. Hermon (Josh. 11:3, 8). Although eastern Phoenicia constituted the heartland for the Hivites, they were found farther south as well. The Gibeonites were Hivites (Josh. 9:7; 11:19; LXX “Horites”), as were Hamor, the local prince at Shechem, and his sons (Gen. 34:2).

Hivite probably originally meant “tent-dweller” from the Hebrew term for “tent-camp.” It has been suggested, from the extrabiblically attested Amurru located to the north of Palestine, that the term Hivite may have designated Bedouin. If the Hivites did exist early on as nomads, they must have become sedentary by the reign of David (2 Sam. 24:7) — unless, of course, “cities” can signify “camps” there as in Num. 13:19.

Bibliography. E. C. Hostetter, Nations Mightier and More Numerous: The Biblical View of Palestine’s Pre-Israelite Peoples. BIBALDS 3 (North Richland Hills, Tex., 1995), 72-76.

Edwin C. Hostetter

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HIVITES

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)