m the Arabian in the time of Nehemiah seems to have represented
the Amalekite chieftain of an earlier epoch. The Bedawin still haunt the
plains and unfrequented paths of Palestine, waylaying the traveller and
robbing the peasant of his flocks.

The peasantry or fellahin are the Perizzites of the Hebrew Scriptures.
"Perizzite," in fact, means "villager," and the word is a descriptive
title rather than the name of a people or a race. It denotes the
agricultural population, whatever their origin may have been. Another
word of similar signification is Hivite. If any distinction is to be
drawn between them, it is that the term Perizzite was specially applied
to the fellahin of southern Canaan, while the term Hivite was restricted
to the inhabitants of the north. In two passages, it is true, "Hivite"
seems to be used with an ethnic meaning. Esau is said in one of them to
have married the granddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite," while in the
other we read of "the Hivite" who dwelt under Mount Hermon. But a
comparison of the first passage with the later verses of the same
chapter shows that "Hivite" must be corrected into "Horite," and in the
second passage it is probable that "Hittite" instead of "Hivite" should
be read.

Amorite and Hittite, Canaanite and Philistine, were all alike emigrants
from other lands. The Hittites had come from the mountains of Asia
Minor, the Amorites had probably wandered from the northern coast of
Africa, the Canaanites traced their ancestry to the Persian Gulf, the
Philistines had sailed from the harbours of the Greek seas. Canaan had
been inhabited, however, before any of them had found their way to it,
and this prehistoric population of the country was known to the Hebrews
by the name of Rephaim. In the English translation of the Bible the word
is usually rendered "giants;" it seems, however, to have been a proper
name, which survived in the name of one of the cities of Bashan.
Doubtless it often included other elements besides that to which it was
properly applied. At times it was extended to the Amorites, whose
occupation of Palestine went back to a remote past, just as in the
Babylonian inscriptions the name of Amorite itself was extended to the
aboriginal population. Among the Philistines this older population was
called Avvim, the people of "the ruins."

Such then were the races who lived in Canaan, and with whom the invading
Israelites had to contend. There was firstly the primitive populat