called by Ebed-Tob, as well
as in the geographical lists of Thothmes III., while on the west it
reached to Keilah, Kabbah, and Mount Seir. No mention is made of Hebron
either in the Tel el-Amarna letters or in the Egyptian geographical
lists, which are earlier than the rise of the nineteenth dynasty. The
town must therefore have existed under some other name, or have been in
the hands of a power hostile to Egypt.

The name of Hebron has the same origin as that of the Khabiri, who
appear in Ebed-Tob's letters by the side of Labai, Babylonia, and
Naharaim as the assailants of Jerusalem and its territory. The word
means "Confederates," and occurs in the Assyrian texts; among other
passages in a hymn published by Dr. Bruennow, where we read, _istu pan
khabiri-ya iptarsanni_, "from the face of my associates he has cut me
off." The word, however, is not Assyrian, as in that case it would have
had a different form, but must have been borrowed from the Canaanitish
language of the West.

Who the Khabiri or "Confederates" were has been disputed. Some scholars
see in them Elamite marauders who followed the march of the Babylonian
armies to Syria. This opinion is founded on the fact that the Khabiri
are once mentioned as an Elamite tribe, and that in a Babylonian
document a "Khabirite" (_Khabira_) is referred to along with a "Kassite"
or Babylonian. Another view is that they are to be identified with
Heber, the grandson of Asher (Gen. xlvi. 17), since Malchiel is said to
be the brother of Heber, just as in the letters of Ebed-Tob Malchiel is
associated with the Khabiri. But all such identifications are based upon
the supposition that "Khabiri" is a proper name rather than a
descriptive title. Any band of "Confederates" could be called Khabiri
whether in Elam or in Palestine, and it does not follow that the two
bands were the same. In the "Confederates" of Southern Canaan we have to
look for a body of confederated tribes who made themselves formidable to
the governor of Jerusalem in the closing days of the Egyptian empire.

It would seem that Elimelech, who of course was a different person from
Malchiel, was their leader, and as Elimelech is a Canaanitish name, we
may conclude that the majority of his followers were also of Canaanitish
descent. The scene of their hostilities was to the south of Jerusalem.
Gath-Carmel, Zelah, and Lachish are the towns mentioned in connection
with their attempts to capture and destroy "the fortress