2. "They of Ham" [or Chani] (Cn-'TS; Sept. 'Ek Tiov v'lwv Xcif-i ; Vnlg. de stirpe Chani) are mentioned in 1 Ciiron. iv, 40 — in one of those historical fragments for which the early chapters of these Chronicles are so val- uable, as illustrating the private enterprise and valor of certain sections of the Hebrew nation. On the present occasion a consideraole portion of the tribe of Simeon, consisting of thirteen princes and their clansmen, in the reign of Hezekiah, sought to extend their territories (which from the beginning seem to have been too narrow for their numbers) by migrating "to the entrance of Ge- dor, even unto the east side of the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks." Finding here a quiet, and, as it would seem, a seciu-e and defenceless population of Hamites (the meaning of 1 Chron. iv, 40 receives illustration from Judg. xviii, 7, 28), the Simeonites attacked them with a vigor that reminds us of the times of Joshua, and took permanent possession of the district, which was well adapted for pastoral puqioses. The Gedor here men- tioned cannot be the (ledor (q. v.) of Josh, xv, 58. There is strong groimd, however, for supposing that it may oe the Gederah (q. v.) of ver. SO ; or, if we follow the Sept. rendering, Tepapa, and read 1^5 for Tia, it would be the well-known Gerar. . This last wouhl, of coiu-se, if the name could be relied on, fit extremely well ; in its vicinity the patriarchs of old had sojourned and fed their flocks and herds (see Gen. xx, 1, 14, 15; xxvi, 1, 6, 14, and especially ver. 17-20). Bertheau (die £. der Chronik) on this passage, and Ewald (Gesch. des Volkes Israel [ed. 2], i, 322), accept the reading of the Sept., and jjlace the Simeonite conquest in the valley of Gerar (in Williams, Hob/ Cit;/ [2d ed.], i, 4G3-468, there is a note, contributed by the Eev, J. RoAvlands, on the Southern Border of Palestine, and containing an account of his supposed discovery of the ancient Gerar [called Khirhet el-Gerar, the ruins of Gerar] ; see also Van de Velde, Memoir, p. 314). In the determination of the ultimate question with which this article is concerned, it matters but little which of these two localities Ave ac- cept as the residence of those chiltlren of Ham v,hom
the Simeonites dispossessed. Both are within the pre- cincts of the land of the I'hilistines : the latter, jierhaps, may be regarded as on the border of the district which we assigned in the preceding article to the Cuduhim ; m either case " they of Ham," of whom we are writing, in 1 Chron. iv, 40, must be regarded as descended from Ham through his second son Mizraim. — Kitto, s. v.
3. Ham (Heb. id. Wn, with he, prob. meaning a 7m(l- titude; Fiirst [Lex. s. v.] compares the Lat. Turba and Copia as names of places ; the Sept. and Vulg. translate [a/io] aiiTo'ic, [cuni] eis), in Gen. xiv, 5, if a proper name at aU, was probably the piincipal town of a people whose name occurs but once in the O. T., "the Zuzims" (as rendered in the A. V.). If these were " the Zarnzmn- ■mims" of Deut. ii, 20 (as has been conjectured by Kashi, Calmet, I'atrick, etc., among the older writers, and Gc- senius, Rosenniiiller, Ewald [ Volkes Israel, i, 308], De- litzsch, Knobel, and Keil among the moderns), we have some clew to the site; for it appears from the entire passage in Deut. that the Zamzummim were the orig- inal occupants of the country of the Ammonites. Tuch and others have accordingly supposed that our Ilam, where the Zuzim were defeated by ChedorlGomer on his second invasion, was the primitive name of liiMatk Aji;how, afterwards Philadelphia (Jerome and Eusebius, Onomast. s. v. Amman), the capital of the Ammoiiiiish territory. It is still called [the ruins of] 'Amman, ac- cording to Robinson (Researches, iii, 168). There is some doubt, however, Avhethcr the word in Gen. xiv, 5 lie anything more than a pronoun. The Jlasoretic read- ing of the clause, indeed, is Crt2 n'^t""n~ri<|', the last word of which is pointed, d(12 (A. Y. " In Ham"), as if there were three battles, and one of them had been fought at a place so called ; and it perhaps makes for this reading that, accorcUng to Kennicott, seven Samar- itan ]\ISS. read Dn2 (with Ileth}, which can produce no oth( r meaning than in Ham, or Chum with the aspirate. Yet the other (that is, the p?-o/inmii/(ih reading must have been recognised in ancient f/itmir ISISS. even as early as the tune of the Sept. translators, who render the phrase " together ivitli them ;" as if there were but two conflicts, in the former of which the great Eastern invader "smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth-Karnaim, and the Zuzim [which the Sept. makes an appellative — tS-f)/ taxi'pd, " strong nations \ along with them," as their allies. Jerome's Qucest. I/ebr. Opera (ed. Bened., Yen. 1767, III, ii, 327) proves that the Hebrew MSS. extant in his day varied in their readings of this passage. This reading he seems to have preferred, BfIS, for in his own version [Vidgate] he renders the word like the Sept. Onkelos, however, regarded the reading evidently as a proper name, for he has translated it by XPTItia, '•in Ilenita,'' and so has the Pseudo-Jonathan's Targum; while the Jerusalem has "priS, "with them." Saadias, again, has the proper name, "in Ifama." Hillerus, whom Rosenniiiller quotes, identifies this Ham with the famous Ammonitish capital Rahhah (2 Sam. xi, 1 ; 1 Chron. xx, 1) ; " the two names," he says, "are synon- ymous— Rabbah meaning jmpidous, as in Lament, i, 1, where Jerusalem is C>~'^r3'^, ^the city [that ^\■as~^J'ull of people ,' while the more ancient name of the same city, cn, has the same signification as the collective word 'I'lTSn, that is, a multitude." — Kitto, s. v. See Gil-