Five early nations are mentioned in our Parsha. Four of these resided in the Transjordan, ordered from south to north: the Horites, the Emim, the Zamzummim and the Rephaim. Another nation, the Avvim, resided in the Cisjordan. The Horites resided in Seir until the descendants of Esau wiped them out and settled in their place (2:13, 23). The Emim were the early residents of the land of Moab (2:11); the Zamzummim were the early residents of the land of the Ammonites, until the Ammonites wiped them out and settled in their place (2:21-22); and the last surviving member of the Rephaim, who had settled in Bashan, was King Og of Bashan (3:11, 13). The Avvim settled in “villages in the vicinity of Gaza” until the Caphtorim, who came from Crete, wiped them out and settled in their place (2:24).
The clear Biblical parallel to the text in our Parsha is Genesis 14, which relates that when Chedarlaomer and the kings allied with him entered the land from the north, they “defeated the Rephaim at Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim at Ham, the Emim at Shaveh-kiriathaim and the Horites in their hill country of Seir as far as El-paran, which is by the wilderness” (14:5). This list provides us, first of all, with an exceedingly early dating for the presence of these nations in the Transjordan – more than 450 years before Moses’ conquest of this land. It seems that the Zuzim of Genesis are identical to the Zamzummim of Deuteronomy. The order of these nations from north to south in Genesis fits precisely with the account in Deuteronomy. We know nothing about the language or culture of these nations, but it should be noted that several ancient inscriptions were found in the Transjordan, written in pictographs that have not yet been deciphered. It may be that the place name Ham, the meaning of which is unknown, is a word in the language of the Zuzim.
Between the three cities mentioned here, two have certain identifications. Ashtaroth has been identified with Tell Ashtara, about eleven miles southeast of Ramat Magshimim in the southern Golan Heights. Ham has been identified with Tell Ham, about four miles southwest of Irbid in the northern Gilead. Kiriathaim appears several times in the Tanakh and in the Mesha Stele among the Reubenite cities in northern Moab, and it has several suggested identifications. The meaning of the name Shaveh-kiriathaim is uncertain.
The Horites appear as well in Parshat Vayishlach (Genesis 36), where it says that Esau settled peacefully in Mount Seir, and that Timna daughter of Seir the Horite was the concubine of Esau’s son Eliphaz and the mother of Amalek through that union (36:12, 22). This does not contradict our Parsha’s statement that “the descendants of Esau dispossessed them, wiping them out and settling in their place.” Throughout history, it is not uncommon that during a process of population overhaul there may be incidents of both integration and intermarriage on one side and battle and dispossession on the other (similar to Israel in the land of Canaan during the time of the Judges, as well to the Spanish in South America in the sixteenth century CE).
The Avvim appear in Joshua 13 among the “territory that remains,” of which the people of Israel did not take possession: “All the districts of the Philistines... and those of the Avvim on the south” (13:3-4); in other words, there were Avvim in southern Philistia. In our discussion on Parshas Toldos, we addressed the observation that the early Philistines described in the Torah were practically different from the later Philistines from the periods of the Judges and of Samuel (their residence was farther south, among other things). We also noted that several groups of nations that arrived from the west and settled in the southwestern part of the land over the course of several centuries became known as “Philistines.” Thus, it seems that the term “Avvim” is an epithet that was used to refer specifically to the Philistines who existed during the time of the patriarchs, while the new population that came from Crete, dispossessed the early Philistines and settled in their place are the “Philistines” from the time of the Exodus and the conquest of the land of Canaan. We must therefore conclude that the Avvim were not dispossessed completely, and that some of them remained in the southern part of the region during the time of Joshua.
