Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Hus

Hus (Heb. ‚ÄõVTS; Sept., Ouz, Os), the name of three persons, and a land mentioned in the Old Testament.

I. Hus, son of Aram and grandson of Sem (Gen., x, 23, Vulgate, Us; 1 Par., i, 17, Vulgate, Hus).

II. Hus, eldest son of Nachor and a nephew of Abraham (Gen. xxii, 21).

III. Hus, son of Disan, sprung from Esau of the land of Edom (Gen. xxxvi, 28; I Par., i, 42).

IV. Hus (LAND OF) (Sept., Ausitis; Vulgate, Hus, Job, i, 1; Lam., iv, 21; Ausitis, Jer., xxv, 20) was the home of Job and a territory in which the descendants of one of the three above-named persons had likely settled. There is much difference of opinion as to the connection of the three persons named Hus with each other and with the land of that name. Three times is this land named in the Old Testament. The chief mention is in Job, i, 1. The holy man lived in the land of Hus. Job's estate was open to attack from the Chaldeans and Sabeans (Job, i, 15 and 17); and lay to the north of the latter and to the west of the former folk, near to the edge of the great desert. This site explains the havoc made by the wind (Job, i, 19). We are led to this view also by the names of the native countries of the friends of Job. Eliphaz the Themanite had an Edomite name and came from an Edomite land. In Gen., xxxvi, 11, Theman is a son of Eliphaz and a descendant of Esau the Edomite. Hence Job's estate was in a land occupied by Edomites. Job's second friend, Baldad the Suhite, was from Shuaki, a place that has been identified with Suhu of Tigleth-pileser II. He says Suliu lay one day's journey from Carchemish in the land of Hatti, i.e. one day's journey from the Euphrates on the way through the land of the Hittites. Hus would, then, seem to have been Uzza of Shalmanesar.

Uzza can readily have been Us. Delitzsch places the land of Uzza W. and N.W. of Haleb (Alep). His conjecture is due to the fact that Shalmanesar II received tribute from a certain "son of the land of Uzza", whom he made king over Patinu. Local tradition puts the land of Hus in the Hauran, a little south of Nawa. Here is a monastery that bears the name of the saintly Job, Deir ey-yub; hard by the monastery, are the supposed site of his affliction makam ey-yub (Job's station), the very trough in which he washed thereafter, and the well from which he drew water for his purification. Such details are the usual apanage to local traditions in the Orient. The Hauran is set down to be the land of Hus by St. Ephraem (Prol. in Job) and St. Jerome ("Onomasticon", ed. Larsow, 1862, p. 254). Josephus (Ant., I, vi, 4) sets down Trachonitis and Damascus; the Septuagint, in an epilogue at the end of its translation of Job, tells us he lived "in Ausitis on the confines of Edom and Arabia". Friedrich Delitzsch favors Tudmor (Palmyra) as the land of Us spoken of in Assyrian inscriptions. He denies that Uzza was Uz.

WALTER DRUM