ceased indeed to infest the land. Amalekite bands joined with the
Midianites in devastating the villages of central Israel in the days of
Gideon, and the Amalekite who brought to David the news of Saul's death
was one of those who had hovered on the skirts of the contending armies,
eager when the fight was over to murder the wounded and strip the slain.
In a later age the "Arabs" who, according to the inscriptions of
Sennacherib, formed the body-guard of Hezekiah were probably Bedâwin,
and Geshem the Arabian in the time of Nehemiah seems to have represented
the Amalekite chieftain of an earlier epoch. The Bedâwin still haunt the
plains and unfrequented paths of Palestine, waylaying the traveller and
robbing the peasant of his flocks.

The peasantry or fellahin are the Perizzites of the Hebrew Scriptures.
"Perizzite," in fact, means "villager," and the word is a descriptive
title rather than the name of a people or a race. It denotes the
agricultural population, whatever their origin may have been. Another
word of similar signification is Hivite. If any distinction is to be
drawn between them, it is that the term Perizzite was specially applied
to the fellahin of southern Canaan, while the term Hivite was restricted
to the inhabitants of the north. In two passages, it is true, "Hivite"
seems to be used with an ethnic meaning. Esau is said in one of them to
have married the granddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite," while in the
other we read of "the Hivite" who dwelt under Mount Hermon. But a
comparison of the first passage with the later verses of the same
chapter shows that "Hivite" must be corrected into "Horite," and in the
second passage it is probable that "Hittite" instead of "Hivite" should
be read.

Amorite and Hittite, Canaanite and Philistine, were all alike emigrants
from other lands. The Hittites had come from the mountains of Asia