GENESIS 23:20
So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site.
- The Hittites play a prominent role at key places in the Hebrew Bible: Ephron the Hittite sells Abraham the family burial ground (Genesis 23); Esau married Hittite women, and Rebecca despised them (Genesis 26:34); frequently they are listed as one of the inhabitants of Canaan (e.g., Exodus 13:5; Numbers 13:29; Joshua 11:3); King David had Uriah the Hittite killed in order to acquire Uriah’s wife (2 Samuel 11); King Solomon had Hittites among his many wives (1 Kings 10:29–11:2; 2 Chronicles 1:17);...
The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian (modern-day Turkey) people who formed an empire between 1600-1180 BCE.
•The Hittites manufactured advanced iron goods, ruled over their kingdom through government officials with independent authority over various branches of government, and worshipped storm gods.
•The Hittites’ ongoing conflicts with Egypt produced the world’s first known peace treaty.
The Hittites were an ancient group of Indo-Europeans who moved into Asia Minor and formed an empire at Hattusa in Anatolia (modern Turkey) around 1600 BCE.
The Hittite Empire reached great heights during the mid-1300s BCE, when it spread across Asia Minor, into the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
Like many Indo-Europeans, the Hittites were able to travel long distances and migrate to other lands due to the domestication of horses. The spread of technologies like the wheel and wagon, which were also used in ancient Mesopotamia and other early civilizations in the region, also assisted pastoralists and and agrarian civilizations.
After about 1180 BCE, the empire ended and splintered into several independent Neo-Hittite—new Hittite—city-states, some of which survived until the eighth century BCE. The Hittites, also spelled Hethites, were a group of people mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Under the names בני-חת (bny-ḥt "children of Heth", who was the son of Canaan.
