“Then the five kings of the Amorites—the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon—joined forces. They moved up with all their troops and took up positions against Gibeon and attacked it.”-Joshua 10:5
There’s something I want to explain to you about the 5-nation coalition that ganged up to wage war against the Gibeonites.
Notice how they’re referred to as “the five kings of the Amorites” (in the Complete Jewish Bible, they’re called the “Emori”).
And in other places, they’re referred to as “the five Amorite kings”.
But here’s the thing.
This can be misleading because not all of the five nations these kings hailed from were necessarily of Amorite origin.
Originally, the Amorites started out as a tiny little tribe among many in the Mesopotamian region.
However, as fate would have it, they grew to be the dominant culture to such an extent that they ended up dominating over the other tribes and cultures in the region.
This could be similar to how white or European American culture became the dominant culture and swallowed up all the other minority cultures in the United States.
During Joshua’s time, to call someone an Amorite wouldn’t be too much different than calling someone a “European” or an “Asian”.
Here’s another excellent example that should really hit home for you.
In the New Testament, besides Hebrew, what’s the other dominant culture?
It’s the Greek culture, right?
In fact, it was so dominant that the King James version of the Bible refers to gentiles as “Greeks” in the New Testament.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek,
neither slave nor free,
nor is there male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
And also consider the word “Christ”.
That’s just the Greek word for “Messiah”.
The truth is…
…even though Greek culture is quite prevalent throughout the New Testament, the actual number of native born Greeks was very, very tiny.
It’s just that Greek philosophy and their systems of government etcetera became so influential, they spread far and wide throughout the region.
Kinda of like how the English language also spread far and wide to become the global language in our modern era.
English is my native language but I have zero ethnic ties to the United Kingdom where English originated.
And consider that most Israelis speak English but the opposite is NOT true.
The number of gentiles who are fluent in Hebrew are quite few I would say.
Anyways, getting back to my point, just understand that gentiles in the New Testament, even though they were called “Greeks” were not actually ethnically Greek.
It’s just that they had absorbed a Greek culture.
Heck, during this time, even folks living in the Roman Empire were sometimes referred to as “Greeks”.
I betcha you didn’t know that.
Again, the truth is most of the Roman citizens didn’t originally come from Greece nor did they feel any loyalty towards Greece.
So to wrap up, my point is…
…the term “Amorites” during Joshua’s day is equivalent to how the term “Greeks” is used in the New Testament.
These are terms referring to a common culture more than blood lines or ethnicity.
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