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According to the Hebrew Bible, the Kenites/Qenites ( or ; ) were a tribe in the ancient Levant.For a summary of the question about identity of the Kenites (and other names by which they may have been known under in the Bible), see They settled in the towns and cities in the northeastern Negev in an area known as the "Negev of the Kenites" near Arad, and played an important role in the history of ancient Israel. One of the most recognized Kenites is Jethro, Moses's father-in-law, who was a shepherd and a priest in the land of Midian (). Certain groups of Kenites settled among the Israelites population, including the descendants of Moses's brother-in-law, Butin, Romain. "Cinites." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 27 December 2018 although the Kenites descended from Rechabites maintained a distinct, nomadic lifestyle for some time.
Other well-known Kenites were Heber, husband of Jael, the Biblical heroine who killed General Sisera and Rechab, the ancestor of the .
According to the German Orientalism Wilhelm Gesenius, the name is derived from the name Cain, the same name as Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. However this may simply be the ancient Hebrew transliteration or phonetization of the Kenites' name in their own language.
Other scholars have linked the name to the term "smith". According to Archibald Henry Sayce, the name Kenite is identical to an Aramaic word meaning a smith, which in its turn is a cognate of Hebrew qayin "lance".
In Jeremiah 35:7-8 the Rechabites are described as tent-dwellers with an absolute prohibition against practicing agriculture; however, other Kenites are described elsewhere as city-dwellers (, ).
Hippolytus of Rome in his Chronicon of 234 appears to identify the Kinaidokolpitai of central Arabia with the biblical Kenites.H. Cuvigny and C. J. Robin, "Des Kinaidokolpites dans un ostracon grec du désert oriental (Égypte)", Topoi. Orient-Occident 6–2 (1996): 697–720, at 706–707.
In modern sources the Kenites are often depicted as technologically advanced nomadic blacksmiths who spread their culture and religion to Canaan. The suggestion that the Kenites were wandering smiths was first made by B. D. Stade in Beiträge zur Pentateuchkritik: dasKainszeichen in 1894 and has since become widespread.Kalimi, Isaac. "Three Assumptions About the Kenites"
bottom of page 1. This view of the Kenites originated in Germany in the mid-1800s, and it is not reflected in any ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or Arabic sources.
In 1988, Meindert Dijkstra argued that an ancient inscription in a metal mine in the Sinai Peninsula contained a reference to "a chief of the Kenites" ( rb bn qn).
In Jethro is said to have been a "priest in the land of Midian" and a resident of Midian (). This has led many scholars to believe that the terms "Kenite" and "Midianite" are intended (at least in parts of the Bible) to be used interchangeably, or that the Kenites formed a part of the Midianite tribal grouping.
The Kenites journeyed with the Israelites to Canaan (); and their encampment, apart from the latter's, was noticed by Balaam.
The Kenites were closely allied with Moses, and are not mentioned to have participated in the first invasion of Canaan (, ) that was conducted against Moses's orders.
During the second invasion of Canaan (), the Kenites would have seen the area around the town of Arad, the region of Canaan that the next generation of Kenites would later choose as their place to settle after the conquest.
When the Israelites and Kenites were camped at the foot of Mount Peor, Balak of Moab allied himself with the five Kings of Midian, but seeing that they did not have the strength to defeat the Israelites, the leaders of Moab and Midian gathered together and paid a large fee to Balaam to put a curse on the Israelite camp from the high place (a type of religious shrine) on Mount Peor (). Balaam was unable to curse Israel, but prophesied about the Kenites, saying that they would endure, but foretold that someday they would be led away captive as slaves to Assur, (), with the question of how long their future slavery would last being unanswered.
Later, King Eglon of Moab allied with the Kingdom of Ammon and nation of Amalek, in order to invade the territory of Israel. () After defeating the Israelites, Moab and Amalek took the City of Palms (believed to be the later city of Zoara or Tamar), from the Kenites.
During this period, Heber the Kenite and his wife Jael separated from their Kenite brethren in the south, and went to live in northern Canaan ().
After two decades of North Canaanite dominance in the region, the prophetess Deborah, who was now leading Israel, commissioned Barak the son of Abinoam as her commander to lead the Israelites against the Canaanites. () King Jabin's general Sisera learned that Barak was massing troops on Mount Tabor, situated between Sisera's base at Harosheth Haggoyim (believed to now be Ahwat) and the Canaanite capital at Hazor, and set out northward to meet him with 900 chariots. The weather became unfavorable to Sisera's army, the sky became clouded (), and the river that his chariots needed to cross was flooded. While Sisera attempted to ford his chariots through the torrential Kishon River at a river crossing close to the then-Canaanite city of Taanach (Now known as Ti'inik) near Tel Megiddo (), Barak's 10,000 men went down southwestward from Mount Tabor () to give battle on the plain and rivers. Sisera left his chariot behind and escaped the battle on foot, while Barak pursued the chariots that were fleeing back to the Canaanite base at Harosheth Haggoyim ()
, 1659]]As Sisera fled on foot near Kedesh-Naphtali, he was passing by the tent of Heber the Kenite, and Jael offered to shelter him. Accepting her offer, he asked her to stand in the doorway of the tent, and to deny his presence to anyone who was chasing him. However, once he was asleep, Jael hammered a tent peg into Sisera's head, and he died. (, )
From that point onwards, Israel grew stronger and continued to press Hazor harder, until King Jabin's defeat. ()
In Rehoboam fifth year the Negev, including the Negev of the Kenites, was briefly occupied by the Egyptians during Pharaoh Shishak's (Shoshenq I) campaign into southern Palestine mentioned in and . The fortifications of Arad and "Great" Arad are listed on Row VIII of the Bubastite Portal as falling to Shoshenq after Shaaraim and before Yeruham.
While the Kenite territory in the Negev had earlier been seen as a separate territory from the parts of the Negev held by Judah and the Simeonites, as the Israelites grew in power, the Negev would be mentioned in the later histories as a single region and integral part of the Kingdom of Judah.
In the northern Negev, the city of Tel Arad served as a key administrative and military stronghold for the Kingdom of Judah. It protected the route from the Judaean Mountains to the Arabah and on to Moab and Edom. It underwent numerous renovations and extensions.
J. Gunneweg analyzed pottery samples with the help of The Hebrew University and the University of Bonn in 1991. The Midianite pottery found in the Negev was linked to a kiln discovered at Qurayya, Saudi Arabia, through Neutron Activation Analysis.
Excavations at the site of Horvat Uza, and in a Arad ostraca from Tel Arad, seem to indicate the presence of Kenite groups in the Negev in monarchic Judah. Israeli historian Nadav Na'aman argues that the absence of anthropomorphic and other figurines at the site points to the Kenite settlers practicing aniconism.
The upper and lower areas of Tel Arad were excavated during 18 seasons by Ruth Amiran and Yohanan Aharoni between 1962 and 1984.Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiran, "Excavations at Tel Arad: Preliminary Report on the First Season, 1962", Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 131-147, 1964Aharoni, Y. "Excavations at Tel Arad: Preliminary Report on the Second Season, 1963." Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 17, no. 4, 1967, pp. 233–49 An additional 8 seasons were done on the Iron Age water system.Talis, Svetlana. "Tel 'Arad: Final Report." Hadashot Arkheologiyot: Excavations and Surveys in Israel, vol. 127, 2015
The German orientalist Walter Beltz alternatively proposed that the story of Cain and Abel was not originally about the murder of a brother, but a myth about the murder of a god's child. In his reading of Genesis 4:1, Eve conceived Cain by Adam, and her second son Abel by another man, this being Yahweh. Eve is thus compared to the Sacred Queen of antiquity, the Mother goddess. Consequently, Yahweh pays heed to Abel's offerings, but not to Cain's. After Cain kills Abel, Yahweh condemns Cain, the murderer of his son, to the cruelest punishment imaginable among humans: banishment.
Beltz believed this to be the foundational myth of the Kenites, a clan settled on the southern border of Judah that eventually resettled among the tribes of Judah. It seemed clear to him that the purpose of this myth was to explain the difference between the nomadic and sedentary populations of Judah, with those living from their livestock (pastoralists, not raising crops) under the special protection of Yahweh.
Ronald Hendel believes the Israelites linked the Kenites to Cain to give them a "shameful, violent ancestral origin".
In the 1899 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, Archibald Sayce suggested that the Kenites were a tribe of smiths.in Based on the biblical references, proposed etymological linkage of the name 'Kenite' to blacksmithing and other evidence, various scholars have associated the Kenites with coppersmithery and metalwork.YHWH: Origin of a desert God, Robert Miller II
During the rise and fall of Hazor
At this point, around 180 or 190 years after Joshua's invasion, the Canaanites in northern Canaan under King Jabin ruling from Tel Hazor re-asserted their dominance over Canaan (). The Israelite leader Shamgar appears to have been battling with the Philistines in south Canaan at the time, and was either caught off-guard, or unable to prevent the rising Canaanite military, economic, and political power. (Non-biblical sources depict the King of Hazor affirming loyalty to the Egyptian pharaoh, and joining the cities of Qatna and Mari to create a trade route that linked Egypt to EkallatumHorowitz, Wayne, and Nathan Wasserman. “An Old Babylonian Letter from Hazor with Mention of Mari and Ekallātum.” Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 50, no. 3/4, 2000, pp. 169–74)
In the early Israelite Monarchy
In the time of King Saul there were Kenites living in Amalekites territory. When King Saul of Israel went to war against Amalek, the kindness which the Kenites had shown to Israel in the wilderness was gratefully remembered. "Ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt," said Saul to them (); and so not only were they spared by King Saul, but later in the war King David also sent a share of the spoil that he took from the Amalekites to the civic elders of the cities of the Kenites. ()
Archeology
The Kenites have been proposed as a reason for the appearance of Midianite pottery imported into the Negev of the Kenites during the 1200s and 1100s BC.
/ref> Petrographic studies carried out on some of the Timna wares led to the conclusion that they originated in the Hejaz, most probably in the site of Qurayya in Saudi Arabia.B. Rothenberg & J. Glass, 'The Midianite Pottery', in J.F.A. Sawyer & D.J.A. Clines (eds.) Midian, Moab and Edom: The History and Archaeology of Late Bronze and Iron Age Jordan and North-West Arabia, JSOT Supl. 24, Sheffield: JSOT Press., 1983, 65-124; P.J. Parr, 'Pottery of the Late Second Millennium B.C. from North West Arabia and its Historical Implications', in D.T. Potts (ed.) Araby the Blest. Studies in Arabian Archaeology, The Carsten Niebhur Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies Pub. 7, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1988, 73-89; ibid. 'Qurayya', in Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5, 1992, 594-596; J.M. Tebes, 'Pottery Makers and Premodern Exchange in the Fringes of Egypt: An Approximation to the Distribution of Iron Age Midianite Pottery', Buried History 43 (2007), 11-26.
Critical scholarship
Kenite Hypothesis
According to the Kenite hypothesis proposed by the German writer Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany, Yahweh was historically a Midian deity, and the association of Moses's father-in-law with Midian reflects the historical adoption of the Midianite cult by the Hebrews."Some scholars, on the strength of Ex., xviii, go even so far as to assert that it was from Jethro that the Israelites received a great portion of their monotheistic theology." Catholic EncyclopediaJoseph Blenkinsopp, The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 33(2) 131-153 (2008). Moses apparently identified Jethro's concept of a god, Yahweh, with the Israelites' god El Shaddai.
The Kenite hypothesis supposes that the Hebrews adopted the cult of Yahweh from the Midianites via the Kenites. This view, first proposed by Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany in 1862, afterward independently by the Dutch scholar of religion Cornelis Tiele in 1872, and more fully by the German critical scholar Bernhard Stade, has been more completely worked out by the German theologian Karl Budde;Joseph Blenkinsopp, op. cit., pp. 132-133. it is accepted by the German Semitic scholar Hermann Guthe, Gerrit Wildeboer, H. P. Smith, and George Aaron Barton.George Aaron Barton (1859–1942), US Bible scholar and professor of Semitic languages. online Another theory is that a confederation of regional tribes were connected to monotheistic ritual at Sinai.Mondriaan, Marlene Elizabeth. "The rise of Yahwism: role of marginalised groups". Diss. University of Pretoria. 2010. p. 413. Retrieved 03 April 2024. Archive.org website.
Links to the mythology of Cain
Some biblical scholars postulated that the Kenites were descendants of the mythical Cain.Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. The German orientalist Wilhelm Gesenius asserted that the name is derived from the name Cain (קַיִן Qayin).
Kenites as metalworkers
According to the critical interpretation of the Biblical data, the Kenites were a clan settled on the southern border of Judah, originally characterized by a semi-nomadic lifestyle and involved in the copper industry in the Aravah region.
See also
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