Amorite

Overview

• One of the peoples of Canaan whom Israel was to dispossess; the name is also used broadly in Scripture for the inhabitants of the land as a whole.

Summary

The Amorites are listed among the descendants of Canaan, son of Ham (Genesis 10.16), and appear throughout the conquest narratives as a chief people of the land. When God first promises the land to Abraham, He explains the long delay before the conquest in a striking phrase: the return of Abraham's descendants must wait "for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Genesis 15.16) — God will not dispossess them until their wickedness is full, a sign of His patience and justice.[^1] In the wilderness Israel defeated the Amorite kings Sihon of Heshbon and Og of Bashan east of the Jordan (Numbers 21.21-35); Og is remembered as the last of the Rephaim, a giant whose great iron bed was still shown as a marvel (Deuteronomy 3.11), a detail the Orthodox reading connects to the corrupted, "giant" bloodlines the conquest was meant to cleanse from the land.[^2] "Amorite" is at times a general term for all the land's peoples (Joshua 24.15).

Sources

[^1]: Genesis 15.16 — the conquest deferred until "the iniquity of the Amorites is complete"; Amorite descent from Canaan (Genesis 10.16). [^2]: The defeat of Sihon and Og (Numbers 21.21-35); Og as the last of the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3.11); cf. Fr. Stephen De Young on the Canaanite peoples and the herem in his Genesis commentary.