Ezekiel 16:3

3. Land of Canaan Though Abraham came from Babylonia his religious training was in Palestine, as also the religious origin of the nation. It is an interesting fact that the name “Land of Canaan” is found in inscriptions back as far as Moses’s day, and earlier.

Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite Of course this is a description of religious conditions. It is by no means certain that Abraham came of Hittite and Amorite origin, but certainly the Hittite and Amorite impurities of religion influenced primitive Israel. The fact that Jerusalem was once a Hittite city does not bear on the argument here, except possibly by making the illustration more vivid. (Compare Matthew 23:33; John 8:44.) The close relations of the early Israelites with the Amorites and Hittites is seen from the fact that all Palestine, previous to the Exodus, was called in the Babylonian inscriptions the “land of the Amorites” and in Egyptian inscriptions in the time of Shalmaneser II, the “land of the Hittites.” (Compare Genesis 15:16; Amos 2:9; Joshua 1:4.) The writer believes that he has observed Amorite and Hittite characteristics even in the modern populations of Philistia.