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Chapter Three - The Fraternal Alliance in the Southern Levant

from Part I - The Movement of Emancipation in the Southern Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2023

Nissim Amzallag
Nissim Amzallag
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
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Summary

Biblical indications suggest that the first Israelites participated in a broad movement of emancipation from Amorite hegemony in the Southern Levant. It included all the newly emerging nations in a “fraternal alliance” of solidarity and mutual non-invasion. The polemic around the Israelite conquest of the Amorite kingdom of Heshbon that originally belonged to the Moabites exemplifies this alliance and its duties. Further indications – as well as traces of YHWH’s presence in Midian, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and even Philistia – reveal that this god sponsored the whole alliance. YHWH was therefore the great deity promoting the movement of emancipation from Amorite hegemony. Consequently, despite Amorite affinities emanating from a few biblical sources, YHWH apparently belonged to the pre-Amorite indigenous horizon.

Keywords

emancipation from the Amorite authoritynon-Israelite worship of YHWHfraternal allianceconquest of Sihon’s kingdom
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Yahweh and the Origins of Ancient Israel
Insights from the Archaeological Record
 , pp. 96 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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