And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim,
Smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim. The Rephaim were an aboriginal people, who, though not Canaanites by descent, possessed numerous and powerful settlements both in Canaan Proper (2 Samuel 5:18; 2 Samuel 21:18; 1 Chronicles 11:15; Isaiah 17:5) and in the Transjordanic provinces. Their origin is unknown; but they are supposed to have been closely connected with the Hyksos or shepherd race so renowned in the early history of Egypt, and they were distinguished by their tallness of stature, whence the word Rephaim is frequently rendered in our version giants, as the Septuagint has it in this passage [tous gigantas tous en Astarooth].
The whole region on the east of the Jordan was occupied by various branches of the Rapha tribe. From the absence of any distinctive epithet to Rephaim in this passage, it appears probable that these were the original root of the nation, and that their primeval seat was in what was afterward known as the kingdom of Bashan, the whole of which, with a trivial exception, is comprehended in the modern district of the Jaulan.
"Ashteroth Karnaim" - i:e., the two-horned Ashtaroth, was their metropolitan city, which was dedicated to their tutelary divinity (Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 21:2; Joshua 13:31). Ashtaroth, Ashtoreth, or Astarte, typifying the productive principle, was the great object of worship among the Phoenicians from whom it spread over all Canaan; and from the mental tendency of that people to connect the symbols of their religious worship with the stars, Astarte represented sometimes the moon, but more especially the planet Venus. The worship of this Syrian goddess was, though under a variety of forms, almost universal in patriarchal times, and her statue in the sanctuaries of all the Rephaite people was that of a cow-headed female, bearing on her head a globe between two horns, as is still seen on Phoenician coins and antique gems. It may be added that the Rephaim wore helmets surmounted by a metallic globe between horns, in honour of their national deity.
And the Zuzims in Ham. The Zuzim, a tribe of the Rephaim, whose name, according to Gesenius, might have some reference to the fertility of their country, were the soos of Manetho, the Shasu of the Egyptian monuments, and probably also were the people called Zamzummims (Deuteronomy 11:28) by the Ammonites, who afterward dispossessed them. [The Septuagint, instead of Zuzim, reads kai ethnee ischura hama autois, 'and the strong nations along with them.' The ancient Hebrew MSS. from which that version was executed must have read baahem (H871a), along with them,' 'among them,' instead of bªhaam, or bªchaam, the Cheth, as Kennicott says is the reading of seven Samaritan MSS., giving the sense of "in Ham."] The Septuagint, which takes the word as a pronoun, conveys the impression that only one battle was fought between the invaders and the Rephaim, who were reinforced by 'the mighty people among them;' whereas our version, following the Masoretic text, which, from the other clauses in the verse, seems likely to be most correct, makes two engagements-the first in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the second in Ham, which is considered by Tuch, Rosenm˜ller, etc., to be what was afterward called Rabbath-bene-Ammon, 'Rabbath of the children of Ammon,' now 'Amman on the Hadj road from Syria, (Robinson, 'Append.') The Zuzim were the leading tribe of the Rephaite nations, and their territory was between the Arnon and the Jabbok.
And the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim. "Emim" ('terrible'), from a root verb to terrify - i:e., by their gigantic stature-was the name given (Deuteronomy 2:11), by the Moabites, who afterward subdued them, to this third section of the Rephaim. "Shaveh Kiriathaim" - the plain of Kiriathaim, identified by Porter with the ruin Kureiyat, or Kureiyeh, so remarkable for its cyclopean style of architecture, apparently the work of the giant, Rephaim. [The Septuagint has: en Sauee tee polei.]
The engagement, however, did not take place in a city, but in a plain near it. The city Kiriathaim lay on the southern part of Jebel Attarus, the highest peak or ridge of the Abarim mountains, and the plain in question was probably along the eastern base of that mountain. The ruins called Kureiyat lie on the southwestern end of the ridge. Burckhardt ('Travels in Syr.') describes a level plateau, a few miles south of Kureiyat, which was probably the battlefield. The edifices which remain in this town, as well as throughout the whole region, are of such gigantic proportions, and in such primitive forms, as to induce a strong conviction that they are the work of the early Emims, or giants-strong enough to defy the destruction of man or the operation of common earthquakes; their roofs are formed of beams of stones in juxtaposition, twenty-five feet long, supported by square stone pillars, and the huge doors are slabs of a single stone each (Cyril Graham, 'Cambridge Essays,'
1858).