Deuteronomy 2:23

And the Avims which dwelt in Hazerim, even unto Azzah, the Caphtorims, which came forth out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and dwelt in their stead.)

And the Avims - the aborigines of the district.

Which dwelt in Hazerim - i:e., in nomadic villages.

Even unto Azzah, х `Azaah (H5804), strong, powerful] - a fortified border town on the edge of the southern desert. The Avim, or Avites (Joshua 13:8), were a pastoral people, whose domain extended to the immediate neighbourhood of Gaza, and the capital of their kingdom was Gerar (Genesis 20:1; Genesis 26:1). But this ancient kingdom seems to have been overthrown, and is not mentioned in later history; and the new Philistines, as they are found in the times of the Judges and of David, subsist under a totally different political constitution.

The Caphtorims - (see Genesis 10:14). Their immigration into Philistia seems to have occurred before the Hebrew exodus; but their conquest of the Avim was not completed until a later period (see the note at Joshua 13:3). 'Probably there were different immigrations of the same tribe of Mizraites into Palestine, as there were different immigrations of Danes or Saxons into England, or as there have been, and are, from the old world into the new, America and Australia. The first immigration may have been that of the Casluhim (out of whom came Philistim) (Genesis 10:14); a second from the Caphtorim, a kindred people, since they are named in that passage next to the Casluhim, as descendants of Mizraim; a third was that of the Cherethim (1 Samuel 30:14). But all were united under the one name of Philistines-as Britons, Danes, Saxons, Normans, are united under the one name, English' (Pusey 'On Amos,' 9: 7).

The limits of the Ammonites were now compressed; but they still possessed the mountainous region beyond the Jabbok (Joshua 11:2). What a strange insight does this parenthesis of four verses give into the early history of Palestine! How many successive wars of conquest had swept over its early state-what changes of dynasty among the Canaanite tribes had taken place long prior to the transactions recorded in this history!