Giants_in_the_Bible

GIANTS IN THE BIBLE
PROF. M. M. NINAN
known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash,
the Babylonian god of justice. Unlike earlier Sumerian law codes, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu,
which had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, the Law of Hammurabi was one of the first
law codes to place greater emphasis on the physical punishment of the perpetrator. It proscribed
specific penalties for each crime and is among the first codes to establish the presumption of
innocence. Although its penalties are extremely harsh by modern standards, they were intended to
limit what a wronged person was permitted to do in retribution. The Code of Hammurabi and the Law
of Moses in the Torah contain numerous similarities, but these are probably due to shared background
and oral tradition, and is unlikely that Hammurabi's laws exerted any direct impact on the later Mosaic
ones.
Regarding the Amorites, they appear quite a number of times in the Scriptures. One of the first
Amorites we meet by name is found as early as Genesis 13.
Mamre is a very interesting character in the Bible. In Genesis 14:13, we learn that he has two other
brothers, Eshcol and Aner. These three were Abram's allies in the land of the Canaanites. According
to J.B. Jackson's, "A Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names" their names mean:
Mamre, Eshcol and Aner were three early descendants of Canaan's son Amorreus, from whom
came all of the Amorites derived. The Amorite king, Og, was described as the last "of the remnant of
the Rephaim" (Deuteronomy 3:11). The terms Amorite and Canaanite seem to be used more or less
interchangeably, Canaan being more general and Amorite a specific component among the
Canaanites who inhabited the land.
The Biblical Amorites seem to have originally occupied the region stretching from the heights west of
the Dead Sea (Gen. 14:7) to Hebron (13:8; Deut. 3:8; 4:46–48), embracing "all Gilead and all Bashan"
(Deut. 3:10), with the Jordan valley on the east of the river (4:49), the land of the "two kings of the
Amorites".
Sihon and Og (Deut. 31:4; Joshua 2:10; 9:10). Both Sihon and Og were independent kings. The
Amorites seem to have been linked to the Jerusalem region, and the Jebusites may have been a
subgroup of them (Ezek. 16:3). The southern slopes of the mountains of Judea are called the "mount
of the Amorites" (Deut. 1:7, 19, 20).
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