Chapter 50. The Northern Campaign
The northern campaign began when King Jabin of Hazor received reports of Israel’s shocking rampage throughout the central and southern regions of Canaan. Jabin sent urgent messages to the Rephaim-infested and Canaanite hybrid nations of the north to gather and to march south: to destroy the Israelite nation from the face of the earth.
The Northern alliance tallied six of the mighty seven nations. The Northern alliance was not included in the war of giantsof Genesis 14 but they too were a powerful Rephaim-dominated alliance. Jabin of Hazor was the pendragon of the Northern alliance. The alliance boasted king Jobab of Madon, the unnamed and unnumbered kings of the northern mountains, and the cities of Shimron, Achshaph, Chinneroth, and Dor.
Jobab’s name means desert and derives from a word meaning “howler,” as in in to “cry shrilly.” Jobab of Madon was seemingly connected patronymically by his name or title with Jobab, the Horim duke of Seir in Edom. One further speculates whether Jobab’s name reflected a Horim, Hivvim, or Hurrian presence in the northern campaign or just a kingly presence; Horim, Hivvim, and Hurrian kings had a presence in Syria up to the time of King David, and Avith and Rehoboth were royal cities of the Horim/Hivvim Dukes in Syria. Moreover, Hivite hybrids and/or perhaps Hivvim were included among the six mighty nations of the alliance.
King Jabin’s name means one whom a god observes and derives from a word meaning intelligent and one who discerns. Jabin was classified as a Canaanitish king akin to the description of the central and southern Rephaim kings. Jabin’s name is generally concluded to be a dynastic title in the tradition of Agag and perhaps Jobab. Jabin was the patronymic name/title for another “Jabin of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite” and a “king of Canaan” in the book of Judges. Jabin was a Rephaim perhaps of the Kenim variety.
