chittim Summary and Overview

or Kittim, a plural form (Gen. 10:4), the name of a branch of the descendants of Javan, the "son" of Japheth. Balaam foretold (Num. 24:24) "that ships shall come from the coast of Chittim, and afflict Eber." Daniel prophesied (11:30) that the ships of Chittim would come against the king of the north. It probably denotes Cyprus, whose ancient capital was called Kition by the Greeks. The references elsewhere made to Chittim (Isa. 23:1, 12; Jer. 2:10; Ezek. 27:6) are to be explained on the ground that while the name originally designated the Phoenicians only, it came latterly to be used of all the islands and various settlements on the sea-coasts which they had occupied, and then of the people who succeeded them when the Phoenician power decayed. Hence it designates generally the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean and the races that inhabit them.

CHIT'TIM , or KIT'TIM. Num 24:24; Isa 23:1, Jud 4:12; Jer 2:10; Eze 27:6; Dan 11:30. In these passages the "isles," "ships," "products," and "people" of Chittim are mentioned or alluded to; hence the name has generally been supposed to mean the island of Cyprus, though Kitto thinks it a general term applied to islands and coasts west of Palestine. See Cyprus.

A race sprung from Javan, i.e. of Ionian or Greek origin (Genesis 10:4; 1 Chronicles 1:7). Balaam foretold that a fleet from Chittim should "afflict Asshur" (Numbers 24:24). There Tyre's fleets resorted (Isaiah 23:2; Isaiah 23:12). The name Chittim is applied by the Hebrew to Cyprus, of which the cities, including Citium, its capital, were mostly Phoenician. Thence the Tyrians procured the boxwood which they inlaid with ivory (Ezekiel 27:6). (Hebrew, instead of "the company of the Ashurites," "they have made thy (rowing) benches of ivory inlaid in the daughter of cedars," i.e. the best boxwood, which came from Cypress and Macedonia. "Chittim" was applied subsequently to the other islands of the AEgean, and to the maritime mainlands of Greece and Italy. The Assyrians in an inscription 710 B.C. designate Cyprus as "the land of Yavnan," as the Scripture traces it to Javan. The Ionian stream of migration proceeding from Asia to Greece would leave some of the race in Cyprus or Chittim on its way, as it did in Magnesia under Sipylus. When Cyprus first comes before us in history it is predominantly a Greek island (G. Rawlinson). The Phoenicians also colonized it. Chittim = Hittim, the Hittites, a Canaanite race. The "ships of Chittim" in Daniel 11:30 are the Macedonian-Greek or even Italian vessels, in which the Roman ambassador Popilius Laenas arrived to check Antiochus Epiphanes. As Kedar expresses generally the East, so Chittim the West (Jeremiah 2:10)