region

Canaan

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History

Canaan is the name the Bible gives to the land west of the Jordan before Israel: "the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza". Numbers draws its bounds from the brook of Egypt and the wilderness of Zin in the south to the entrance of Hamath in the north, with the Jordan as the eastern limit. Outside the Bible the name appears perhaps as early as an eighteenth-century BC letter from Mari, then at Alalakh, in the Amarna letters of the fourteenth century, when Canaan was an Egyptian province, and on the stele of Merneptah about 1208 BC. Its meaning is uncertain; a link with purple dye has been proposed.

Genesis counts Canaan among the sons of Ham, cursed by Noah, and lists his descendants from Sidon and Heth to the Jebusites and Amorites. Abram "went forth to go into the land of Canaan", and God promised it to his seed as "an everlasting possession". Jacob's sons went down from it to Egypt, and Moses was sent to bring Israel up "unto a land flowing with milk and honey" held by seven nations "greater and mightier than thou". The spies found cities walled and very great, and the Canaanites "by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan". Joshua took the land, yet Judges admits that at Beth-shean, Megiddo and elsewhere "the Canaanites would dwell in that land", and that Israel put them to tribute "and did not utterly drive them out".

Archaeology shows Canaan in the Late Bronze Age as a land of city-states under Egypt, Hazor, Megiddo and Lachish among them, whose kings write to the pharaoh in the Amarna letters. The tablets of Ugarit, found from 1929, reveal the Canaanite gods, El, Baal, Asherah and Anat, against whom the prophets fought. Many of these cities were destroyed or declined around 1200 BC, and hundreds of small villages then appeared in the hill country. How Israel came to be there is debated: by conquest, by peaceful infiltration, by an uprising within Canaan, or as a people that grew out of the Canaanites themselves.

The Phoenicians long remained Canaanites in speech and name, and Augustine says that the Punic-speaking peasants near Hippo still called themselves Chanani. Isaiah foresees cities of Egypt speaking "the language of Canaan", and in Matthew "a woman of Canaan" from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon wins healing for her daughter; Paul at Antioch recalls the "seven nations in the land of Chanaan". The land of Canaan is today Israel, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, with the edges of Syria and Jordan.

Scripture: Gen 9:25; Gen 10:15–19; Gen 12:5–7; Gen 17:8; Exod 3:8; Num 13:27–29; Num 34:2–12; Deut 7:1; Josh 11:23; Judg 1:27–28; Judg 4:2; Isa 19:18; Matt 15:22; Acts 13:19

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (101)

Gen 10:19

And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.

Gen 11:31

And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

Gen 12:5

And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.

Gen 12:10

And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.

Gen 13:12

Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.

Gen 16:3

And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

Gen 17:8

And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

Gen 23:2

And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.

Gen 23:19

And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan.

Gen 28:1

And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.

Gen 28:6

When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;

Gen 28:8

And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father;

Gen 31:18

And he carried away all his cattle, and all his goods which he had gotten, the cattle of his getting, which he had gotten in Padan-aram, for to go to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan.

Gen 33:18

And Jacob came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan-aram; and pitched his tent before the city.

Gen 35:6

So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Beth-el, he and all the people that were with him.

Gen 36:2

Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite;

Gen 36:5

And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these are the sons of Esau, which were born unto him in the land of Canaan.

Gen 36:6

And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan; and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob.

Gen 37:1

And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.

Gen 42:5

And the sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came: for the famine was in the land of Canaan.

Gen 42:7

And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.

Gen 42:13

And they said, Thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not.

Gen 42:29

And they came unto Jacob their father unto the land of Canaan, and told him all that befell unto them; saying,

Gen 42:32

We be twelve brethren, sons of our father; one is not, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan.

Gen 43:1

And the famine was sore in the land.

Gen 44:8

Behold, the money, which we found in our sacks’ mouths, we brought again unto thee out of the land of Canaan: how then should we steal out of thy lord’s house silver or gold?

Gen 45:17

And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan;

Gen 45:25

And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their father,

Gen 46:6

And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him:

Gen 46:12

And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zerah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul.

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King James Version