THE HITTITES: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

There is a great deal of confusion regarding this ancient people, and the reasons behind this confusion are explained in the following quotations which review the history of this once powerful nation:

Millard: “The names given for these Hittites [mentioned in Genesis] are all Semitic, and it is likely that all were members of a local Canaanite tribe. The Hittites of Anatolia (modern day Turkey) were another people, forgotten until excavations at Boghazkoy were begun in 1906...Inscriptions show that the Hittites set up their kingdom about 1750 BCE [Before the Common Era = BC], and that from about 1380 to 1200 BCE they rivaled the Eqyptians and the Babylonians in international affairs. Their armies marched into Syria, where they faced Egyptian forces. After decades of war, the battle of Qadesh (ca. 1259 BCE), led to a treaty that established a line across northern Lebanon, the frontier between their zones of influence. This line provided the [Northern] limit for Israel's territory (Josh. 1:4; 2 Sam. 24.6).”

“After the Hittite empire had collapsed under attack from migrant tribes.., several princes held on to certain cities, and created local kingdoms...These 'neo-Hittite' states were finally overwhelmed by Assyria in the ninth and eighth century BCE. Before that time they supplied wives for Solomon (1 Kings 11.1), perhaps soldiers for David (Uriah the Hittite - 2 Sam. 11) and presented a threat to Israel's Aramean enemies (2 Kings 7.6).”

Satterwaite and Baker: “For the Canaanites, Amorites and Hittites, considerable extrabiblical evidence goes back many centuries before Israel's occupation of Canaan...Discussion of the Hittites is fraught with difficulty since at least four different ethnic groups of antiquity have this designation. The most important historically were the Hittites (Heth) who, during second millennium B.C, controlled much of modern-day Turkey.

The empire collapsed about 1200 B.C., though a number of smaller Neo-Hittite states continued for some time in the borderland between Anatolia and Syria. The relationship between these Indo-European peoples and the Hittites mentioned in the Pentateuch is a matter of debate...further reference to Hittites in the north of Israel should be identified with the Neo-Hittites, city-states that had belonged to the Anatolian Hittite Empire before its fall and continued to be identified by that name (Judg 1:26; 1 Kings 10:29; 11:1; 2 Kings 7:6; possibly Josh 1:4). They could be indicated as distinct from the Hittites of the Pentateuch, since the OT uses Hebrew plural forms of Hittite only for those groups in Syria and Anatolia...It seems best to assume at this stage that the pentateuchal Hittites were a completely separate group from those further north.”

As far as the language employed by the original Hittites, Hess states, “In addition to Egyptian, two other non-Semitic languages were used in the second millennium B.C. and had an impact on the Pentateuch. One is Hittite, an Indo-European language that was used by the Hittites who lived in modern-day central Turkey.”

There is an interesting by Andrew Curry in the May 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine in which the latest archaeological finds from the capital of the earliest Hittite Empire, mentioned in the first five books of the Bible, are discussed. He says, “Over the past century, more than 30,000 remnants of clay tablets have been recovered from Hattusa and other Hittite cities. More are found every year. That constant flow of brand-new information makes Hittitology one of the most dynamic, fast-moving fields of ancient history.”

A selection of some of the insights gained from Hittite studies which relate to the Old Testament will be given in a companion post titled “Hittites and the Bible.”