HORITE
(Hoʹrite).
A people inhabiting the mountains of Seir in patriarchal times. They are called in the Bible “the sons of Seir the Horite.” (Gen. 36:20, 21, 29, 30) The Edomites “proceeded to dispossess them and to annihilate them from before them and to dwell in their place.”—Deut. 2:12, 22.
At Genesis 36:2, in the Masoretic text, the grandfather of one of Esau’s wives is called “Zibeon the Hivite.” At verses 20 and 24, however, he is shown to be a descendant of Seir the Horite. There are two ways of resolving this apparent discrepancy. One is, that Horite may mean merely “cave dweller,” from Hebrew hohr, “cave” or “hole.” This would make Zibeon a Hivite. Or, the copyist could have confused the Hebrew letters rehsh (====) and waw (====), which are very similar in appearance. This would explain why “Hivite” appears instead of “Horite” at Genesis 36:2. The latter explanation seems more likely, in that the Horites, living in Seir originally, seem to be distinct from the Hivites, whom the Bible locates mainly in the Lebanon Mountains, with one group, the Gibeonites, holding cities near Jerusalem.—2 Sam. 24:7; Josh. 9:17.
At Joshua 9:7 the Septuagint Version calls the Gibeonites “Chorrean” (Horites) instead of “Hivites,” but this seems to be an error, in view of the fact that the Gibeonites were considered as belonging to one of the seven Canaanite nations devoted to destruction (the Horites were not). The Masoretic text has “Hivites.”—Josh. 9:22-27; Deut. 7:1, 2.
HURRIANS
Many modern scholars now believe that the Horites are actually a people whom they call “Hurrians.” This conclusion is based primarily on linguistic similarities, particularly similarities in proper names, in ancient tablets discovered in recent times over a wide area reaching from modern Turkey into Syria and Palestine. So they hold that the “Hurrians” came to be called Horites. But note E. A. Speiser’s comments in The World History of the Jewish People. He first advances this argument:
“Moreover, the Biblical Jebusites, too, proved to be Hurrians in disguise. They were of foreign stock (Jud. 19:12), a description borne out by the Jebusite personal name Awarnah (II Sam. 24:16, Kethib). A 14th century ruler of Jerusalem, or Jebus, bore a name containing the attested Hurrian element Hepa. Thus Jebusites and Hivites alike—two of the featured pre-Israelite nations—were merely subdivisions of the wide-spread Hurrian group. . . .” But then he adds:
“The above conclusion, however, must now be modified in one significant respect. The required change detracts nothing from the position of the local Hurrians in early Biblical times; but It does affect the automatic identification of Hurrians with Horites. . . . there is no archaeological evidence whatever for a Hurrian settlement in Edom or Transjordan. It follows therefore, that the Biblical term Hōrî—much in the same manner as Cush—must have been used at one time in two distinct and unrelated meanings.”—P. 159.
Therefore, though the scholars wish to use a name not found in the Bible to apply to a widespread people who, they say, include the Horites, Hivites and Jebusites, they admit that, for example, there is no evidence of Hurrian population in Edom or Transjordan. The Bible, then, in calling the pre-Edomite inhabitants of Seir “Horites” evidently restricts the name to that group in Seir.
From the foregoing we may conclude that it is unsafe to draw conclusions based on supposed derivations of proper names, especially when the Bible’s reliable history makes distinctions such as it does between the Hivites and the Jebusites. It lists them as separate nations, though, of course, they had common origin in their forefather Canaan.—Gen. 10:15-17; see HIVITES.