Chushan Rishathaim
Chushan Rishathaim [1]
("the Ethiopian of double wickedness".) (A Cushite or Hamitic element was prominent in the oldest Babylonian race as their vocabulary proves.) The Mesopotamian king who oppressed Israel eight years in the generation succeeding Joshua ( Judges 3:8). About 1402 B.C. he was king of the Syrian country about Haran, the region between the Euphrates and the Khabour, held by the Nairi, divided into petty tribes, as Assyria had not at this time extended her dominion to the Euphrates. Cuneiform inscriptions two centuries later confirm this; in 1270 B.C. the Assyrian empire rose. Othniel delivered Israel from him. Chushan Rishathaim, a chieftain, probably had established a temporary dominion over the petty tribes of Mesopotamia, which ceased long before Assyria marched there.
