Kenite
Encyclopedia
Kenites or Cinites according to the Hebrew Bible
, were a nomadic clan in the ancient Levant
, sent under Jethro
a priest in the land of Midian
. They played an important role in the history of ancient Israel
. The Kenites were coppersmiths and metalworkers. Moses
' father-in-law, Jethro, was a shepherd and a priest in the land of Midian
. Judges
1:16 identifies that Moses had a father-in-law who was a Kenite, but it is not clear from the passage if this refers to the same Jethro who was the priest of Midian. Certain groups of Kenites settled among the Israelite population, including the descendants of Moses' brother-in-law. though the Kenites descended from Rechab, maintained a distinct, nomadic lifestyle for some time.
Moses apparently identified Jethro's concept of God, El Shaddai
, with Yahweh, the Israelites' God. According to the Kenite hypothesis, Yahweh
was originally the tribal god of Jethro, borrowed and adapted by the Hebrews
.
) derives from the Hebrew
Kainim.
The name "Kenite or "Kainite" Strong's #7014, #7017 (use Older Strong's Concordance) may be derived from the name of someone named Cain, or vice versa (see Cain and Abel
).
Alternatively, the name may be derived from the name of Kenan
(Cainan
), the son of Enos
(and thus the grandson of Seth
and the great-grandson of Adam
), but this only appears in the newer Strong's Concordance not in the original.
mentions the Kenites as living in or around Canaan
as early as the time of Abraham
. At the Exodus Jethro and his clan inhabited the vicinity of Mount Sinai
and Horeb
. Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was a Kenite resident in the land of Midian. says that his descendants "went up from the City of Palms [ie Jericho] with the men of Judah to live among the people of the Desert of Judah in the Negev near Arad."
However, in Jethro is said to have been a "priest in the land of Midian
" and a resident of Midian . This has led many scholars to believe that the terms are intended (at least in parts of the Bible) to be used interchangeably, or that the Kenites formed a part of the Midianite tribal grouping. The Kenites journeyed with the Israelites to Canaan ; and their encampment, apart from the latter's, was noticed by Balaam
.
At a later period, some of the Kenites separated from their brethren in the south, and went to live in northern Canaan where they lived in the time of King Saul
. The kindness which they had shown to Israel in the wilderness was gratefully remembered. "Ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt," said Saul to them ; and so not only were they spared by him, but David allowed them to share in the spoil that he took from the Amalekites.
Other well-known Kenites were Heber
, the husband of Jael
, and Rechab
, the ancestor of the Rechabites.
settled on the southern border of Judah, originally more advanced in arts than the Hebrews, and from whom the latter learned much. They supposedly migrated from southern Asia. In the time of David the Kenites were finally settled among the tribe of Judah
. Their eponymous ancestor may have been Cain (Kain), to whose descendants the Jahwist
in Genesis iv. attributes the invention of the art of working bronze
and iron
, the use of instruments of music
, etc. Sayce has implied that the Kenites were a tribe of smiths
—a view to which Jahwist
's statements would lend support.
Jethro
, priest
of Midian, and father-in-law of Moses, it is written in the Hebrew scriptures, to have been a Kenite, but merely live in the land of Cannan and the Midianites. This may indicate that the Kenites originally formed part of the Midianite tribe or tribes, but the truth may also be obscured by the translation and traditions. The Bible may even describe an initiation of Moses and Aaron
by Jethro into the worship of YHWH. Several modern scholars believe, in consequence of this statement, that Yhwh was the deity of Jethro, and that from Jethro through the agency of Moses his worship passed to the Israelites. This view, first proposed by F. W. Ghillany, afterward independently by Cornelis Petrus Tiele
, and more fully by Stade
, has been more completely worked out by Karl Budde
; and is accepted by H. Guthe
, Gerrit Wildeboer, H. P. Smith, and G. A. Barton.
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, were a nomadic clan in the ancient Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
, sent under Jethro
Jethro
In the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, Jethro |Shu-ayb]]) is Moses' father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. He is also revered as a prophet in his own right in the Druze religion, and considered an ancestor of the Druze.-In Exodus:...
a priest in the land of Midian
Midian
Midian , Madyan , or Madiam is a geographical place and a people mentioned in the Bible and in the Qur'an. It is believed to be in northwest Saudi Arabia on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and the northern Red Sea...
. They played an important role in the history of ancient Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. The Kenites were coppersmiths and metalworkers. Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
' father-in-law, Jethro, was a shepherd and a priest in the land of Midian
Midian
Midian , Madyan , or Madiam is a geographical place and a people mentioned in the Bible and in the Qur'an. It is believed to be in northwest Saudi Arabia on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and the northern Red Sea...
. Judges
Book of Judges
The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its title describes its contents: it contains the history of Biblical judges, divinely inspired prophets whose direct knowledge of Yahweh allows them to act as decision-makers for the Israelites, as...
1:16 identifies that Moses had a father-in-law who was a Kenite, but it is not clear from the passage if this refers to the same Jethro who was the priest of Midian. Certain groups of Kenites settled among the Israelite population, including the descendants of Moses' brother-in-law. though the Kenites descended from Rechab, maintained a distinct, nomadic lifestyle for some time.
Moses apparently identified Jethro's concept of God, El Shaddai
El Shaddai
El Shaddai [shah-'dah-yy] is one of the Judaic names of God, with its etymology coming from the influence of the Ugaritic religion on modern Judaism. El Shaddai is conventionally translated as God Almighty...
, with Yahweh, the Israelites' God. According to the Kenite hypothesis, Yahweh
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
was originally the tribal god of Jethro, borrowed and adapted by the Hebrews
Hebrews
Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...
.
Name
"Kenite" or "Kainite" Strong's #7014, #7017 (use Older Strong's ConcordanceStrong's Concordance
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, generally known as Strong's Concordance, is a concordance of the King James Bible that was constructed under the direction of Dr. James Strong and first published in 1890. Dr. Strong was Professor of exegetical theology at Drew Theological Seminary at...
) derives from the Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
Kainim.
The name "Kenite or "Kainite" Strong's #7014, #7017 (use Older Strong's Concordance) may be derived from the name of someone named Cain, or vice versa (see Cain and Abel
Cain and Abel
In the Hebrew Bible, Cain and Abel are two sons of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an mentions the story, calling them the two sons of Adam only....
).
Alternatively, the name may be derived from the name of Kenan
Kenan
Kenan , , or Cainan, was a Biblical patriarch first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible Book of Genesis as living before the Great Flood.- Family :...
(Cainan
Cainan
Cainan can refer to either:*A variant of the name Kenan in the generations of Adam, the lists of antediluvian patriarchs given in the Torah;*Cainan, the son of the Arpachshad mentioned in most manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke 3:36...
), the son of Enos
Enos (biblical figure)
Enos or Enosh , in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, is the first son of Seth who figures in the Generations of Adam, and consequently referred to within the genealogies of Chronicles, and of Genealogy of Jesus according to .-In the Hebrew Bible:According to Genesis, Seth was 105 years old...
(and thus the grandson of Seth
Seth
Seth , in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is the third listed son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, who are the only other of their children mentioned by name...
and the great-grandson of Adam
Adam
Adam is a figure in the Book of Genesis. According to the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, he is the first human. In the Genesis creation narratives, he was created by Yahweh-Elohim , and the first woman, Eve was formed from his rib...
), but this only appears in the newer Strong's Concordance not in the original.
In the Bible
The BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
mentions the Kenites as living in or around Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
as early as the time of Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
. At the Exodus Jethro and his clan inhabited the vicinity of Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...
and Horeb
Mount Horeb
Mount Horeb, Hebrew: , Greek in the Septuagint: , Latin in the Vulgate: , is the mountain at which the book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible states that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. It is described in two places as the Mountain of God or perhaps Mountain of the gods...
. Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was a Kenite resident in the land of Midian. says that his descendants "went up from the City of Palms [ie Jericho] with the men of Judah to live among the people of the Desert of Judah in the Negev near Arad."
However, in Jethro is said to have been a "priest in the land of Midian
Midian
Midian , Madyan , or Madiam is a geographical place and a people mentioned in the Bible and in the Qur'an. It is believed to be in northwest Saudi Arabia on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and the northern Red Sea...
" and a resident of Midian . This has led many scholars to believe that the terms are intended (at least in parts of the Bible) to be used interchangeably, or that the Kenites formed a part of the Midianite tribal grouping. The Kenites journeyed with the Israelites to Canaan ; and their encampment, apart from the latter's, was noticed by Balaam
Balaam
Balaam is a diviner in the Torah, his story occurring towards the end of the Book of Numbers. The etymology of his name is uncertain, and discussed below. Every ancient reference to Balaam considers him a non-Israelite, a prophet, and the son of Beor, though Beor is not so clearly identified...
.
At a later period, some of the Kenites separated from their brethren in the south, and went to live in northern Canaan where they lived in the time of King Saul
Saul the King
According to the Bible, Saul was the first king of the united Kingdom of Israel. He was anointed by the prophet Samuel and reigned from Gibeah. He commited suicide to avoid arrest in the battle against the Philistines at Mount Gilboa, during which three of his sons were also killed...
. The kindness which they had shown to Israel in the wilderness was gratefully remembered. "Ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt," said Saul to them ; and so not only were they spared by him, but David allowed them to share in the spoil that he took from the Amalekites.
Other well-known Kenites were Heber
Heber the Kenite
Heber the Kenite is a man in the Book of Judges in the Tanakh and the Holy Bible. He is a descendant of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. Heber had separated himself and his wife Jael from the other Kenites; he pitched their tent in the plain of Zaanaim, which is near Kedesh.According to Judges...
, the husband of Jael
Jaël
Jaël, , is a singer-songwriter from the band Lunik. She also co-wrote and sang with Delerium on the song After All on their album Chimera, and the song Lost and Found on their album Nuages du Monde. She is both internationally famous in the Trance music community as well as domestically famous from...
, and Rechab
Rechab
Rechab is the name of three men in the Bible:*One of the two "captains of bands" whom Saul's son Ish-bosheth took into his service, and who conspired to kill him....
, the ancestor of the Rechabites.
Critical view
According to the critical interpretation of the Biblical data, the Kenites were a clanClan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
settled on the southern border of Judah, originally more advanced in arts than the Hebrews, and from whom the latter learned much. They supposedly migrated from southern Asia. In the time of David the Kenites were finally settled among the tribe of Judah
Tribe of Judah
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Judah was one of the Tribes of Israel.Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes after about 1200 BCE, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes....
. Their eponymous ancestor may have been Cain (Kain), to whose descendants the Jahwist
Jahwist
The Jahwist, also referred to as the Jehovist, Yahwist, or simply as J, is one of the sources of the Torah. It gets its name from the fact that it characteristically uses the term Yahweh for God in the book of Genesis...
in Genesis iv. attributes the invention of the art of working bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
and iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
, the use of instruments of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, etc. Sayce has implied that the Kenites were a tribe of smiths
Smith (metalwork)
A metalsmith, often shortened to smith, is a person involved in making metal objects. In contemporary use a metalsmith is a person who uses metal as a material, uses traditional metalsmithing techniques , whose work thematically relates to the practice or history of the practice, or who engages in...
—a view to which Jahwist
Jahwist
The Jahwist, also referred to as the Jehovist, Yahwist, or simply as J, is one of the sources of the Torah. It gets its name from the fact that it characteristically uses the term Yahweh for God in the book of Genesis...
's statements would lend support.
Jethro
Jethro
In the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, Jethro |Shu-ayb]]) is Moses' father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. He is also revered as a prophet in his own right in the Druze religion, and considered an ancestor of the Druze.-In Exodus:...
, priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
of Midian, and father-in-law of Moses, it is written in the Hebrew scriptures, to have been a Kenite, but merely live in the land of Cannan and the Midianites. This may indicate that the Kenites originally formed part of the Midianite tribe or tribes, but the truth may also be obscured by the translation and traditions. The Bible may even describe an initiation of Moses and Aaron
Aaron
In the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, Aaron : Ααρών ), who is often called "'Aaron the Priest"' and once Aaron the Levite , was the older brother of Moses, and a prophet of God. He represented the priestly functions of his tribe, becoming the first High Priest of the Israelites...
by Jethro into the worship of YHWH. Several modern scholars believe, in consequence of this statement, that Yhwh was the deity of Jethro, and that from Jethro through the agency of Moses his worship passed to the Israelites. This view, first proposed by F. W. Ghillany, afterward independently by Cornelis Petrus Tiele
Cornelis Petrus Tiele
Cornelis Petrus Tiele, was a Dutch theologian and scholar.-Life:He was born at Leiden. He was educated at Amsterdam, first studying at the Athenaeum Illustre, as the communal high school of the capital was then named, and afterwards at the seminary of the Remonstrant Brotherhood.He was destined...
, and more fully by Stade
Stade
Stade is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany and part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region . It is the seat of the district named after it...
, has been more completely worked out by Karl Budde
Karl Budde
Karl Ferdinand Reinhard Budde was a German theologian, born at Bensberg. He was inspector of the Evangelisches Theologisches Stift at Bonn from 1878 to 1885, professor at Bonn in 1879, at Strassburg in 1889, and in 1900 was made professor of Old Testament exegesis and the Hebrew language at...
; and is accepted by H. Guthe
Hermann Guthe
Hermann Guthe was a German Semitic scholar. He was educated at Göttingen, Erlangen, and at Leipzig University, where in 1884 he became professor of Old Testament exegesis...
, Gerrit Wildeboer, H. P. Smith, and G. A. Barton.
Resources
- Hirsch, Emil G., Bernhard Pick and George A. Barton. "Kenites." Jewish EncyclopediaJewish EncyclopediaThe Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...
. Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906; which cites to the following bibliography: - Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, i. 126 et seq., Berlin, 1889;
- Moore, "Judges", in International Critical Commentary, pp. 51–55, New York, 1895;
- Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, pp. 17–38, New York;
- Barton, Semitic Origins, pp. 271–278, ib. 1902.
External links
- "Kenite". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2009.
- Kenites on jewishencyclopedia.com
- Rechabites on jewishencyclopedia.com