Lives of Scripture

The land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan promised to Abraham's descendants (Genesis 12:5-7; 15:18-21), named for Noah's grandson whose descendants settled it (Genesis 9:18; 10:15-19). Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived there as resident foreigners without owning it outright, apart from the burial cave at Machpelah. After the exodus, Joshua led Israel's conquest and settlement of Canaan, dividing it among the twelve tribes (Joshua 1-12; 13-21) — a land whose Canaanite population's idolatry and practices Israel was repeatedly warned not to adopt. "Canaan" as a name for the land largely gives way to "Israel" once the tribes are settled, though it remains the standard term for the pre-conquest and patriarchal-era territory throughout Genesis.

The Canaanites

The Canaanites descended from Canaan, a son of Ham, and Genesis 10:15-19 lists the peoples who came from him: Sidonians, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Hivites, and others. After Ham saw his father's nakedness, Noah's curse fell on Canaan by name, not on Ham (Genesis 9:20-27).

God promised Abraham the land but told him that his descendants would wait four generations, because the wickedness of the Amorites had not yet reached its full measure (Genesis 15:13-16). The law later names what Canaan's peoples had done, including burning their children to their gods (Leviticus 18:24-28; Deuteronomy 12:31), and commanded Israel to destroy them and make no treaties with them so that Israel would not learn their ways (Deuteronomy 7:1-5; 20:16-18).

Even so, Canaanites who turned to Israel's God were spared. Rahab hid the spies and lived in Israel from then on (Joshua 2; 6:25), and the Gibeonites were kept alive by their treaty (Joshua 9). The conquest was never finished. Many Canaanite towns remained (Judges 1:27-33), and Israel soon served Baal and the Ashtaroth (Judges 2:11-13), the pull toward Canaanite worship that runs through the rest of the Old Testament. Solomon put the remaining peoples to forced labor (1 Kings 9:20-21). Rahab appears in Jesus' genealogy (Matthew 1:5), and a Canaanite woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon pleaded with Jesus for her daughter until He praised her great faith and healed the girl (Matthew 15:21-28).