Amorites
"Sea Gate" of the Amorites, ca. 2000 BCE
Amorite refers to a Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates.
Their god is sometimes described as a 'shepherd', and as a son of the sky. He is sometimes called 'lord of the mountain'.
Alternately, he could have been the fertility-god 'Baal', possibly adopted by the Canaanites, a rival and enemy of the Hebrew God YHWH, and famously combatted by the Hebrew prophet Elijah.
In early Babylonian inscriptions, all western lands, including Syria and Canaan, were known as "the land of the Amorites", who twice conquered Babylonia (at the end of the 3rd, and the beginning of the 1st millennia.)
Amorites seem to have worshipped the moon-god Sin.
The Amorites worshipped the Sumerian gods.
Biblical Amorites
Amorites was used by the Israelites to refer to certain highland mountaineers, or hillmen (described in Gen. 14:7 as descendants of Canaan) who inhabited that land.
In the Bible, they are described as a powerful people of great stature "like the height of the cedars," who had occupied the land east and west of the Jordan river; their king, Og, being described as the last "of the remnant of the giants" (Deut. 3:11).
When the Amorites are spoken of as the people of the past, whereas the Canaanites are referred to as still surviving.
Historically, these Amorites seem to have been linked to the Jerusalem region, and the Jebusites may have been a subgroup of them.
The southern slopes of the mountains of Judea are called the "mount of the Amorites" (Deut. 1:7, 19, 20).
The discrepancy supposed to exist between Deut. 1:44 and Num. 14:45 is explained by the circumstance that the terms "Amorites" and "Amalekites" are used synonymously for the "Canaanites."
