IV. Canaan (.Jospi)1uis Xavdavor) was the yoimgest of the sons of Ham, and tliere is less obscurity concern- ing his descendants. " Canaan, the fourth son of Ham," says .losci.luis (.1 nt. i, G, 2), " inhabited the country now called .ludifa (t>)v vvv KuXovfttviiv 'lovcaiav. In the time of.Ioseidms, it must be recollected, this included the entire conntry which we loosely call the Noli/ Lund), and railed it after his own name, Canaan." This coun- try is more distinctly described than anv other in Holy Scripture, and in the record of Ham's ftimilv in Gen. x, its Iwiuiidary is sketched (see ver. 19), excluding the dis- trict east of the .Jordan. The name Canaan, however, is sometimes use.l in a more llniifi'd sense than is indi- cated liere and elsewhere. Tluis, in Numb. xiii,29,"the Cauaauites" are said to "dwell by the sea and by the coast of the .Jordan" ( i. e. obviously in the lowlands, both maritime and inland), in oi.position to tlie Ilittitos and others who occupy the higidan.ls. Tlii.s limitation prob- ably miiicalcs the settlements u{ Canaan oH/y_as a sep- arate trilM'.apart from those of Ins sons— aftenvards to be enumerated (compare, for a similar limitation of a more extensive name, Cajsar, />« Bell. Call, i, 1, where Gallia has both a specific and a generic sense ; comp. also the
specific as well as generic meaning oi Angle or Engle in the Saxon Chronicle [Gibson, p. 13; Thorpe, i, 21] "of Angle comon . . . East Engla, Middel Angla"). On the much-vexed questions of the curse of Noah (who was the object of it, and what was the extent) we can here only touch. See Noah. What we have already discovered, however, of the power, energy, and widely- spread dominion of the sons of Ham, whom we have hitherto mentioned, offers some guidance to the solution of at least the latter question. The remarkable enter- prise of the Cushite hero, Nimrod ; his establishment of imperial power, as an advance on patriarchal govern- ment ; the strength of the Egji^t of Mizraim, and its long domination over the house of Israel ; and the evi- dence which now and then appears that even Phut (who is the most obscure in his fortunes of all the Hamitic race) maintained a relation to the descendants of Shem which was far from servile or subject — all clearly tend to limit the application of Noah's maledictory prophecy to the precise terms in which it was indited : " Ciu-sed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he [not Cush, not Mizraim, not Phut ; but he^ be to his brethren" (Gen. ix, 25) ; " that is," says Aben-Ezra, " to Cush, Mizraim, and Phut, his father's sons" — with remarkable inatten- tion to the context : " Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Ja- phet . . . and Canaan shall he his servant" (ver. 2G, 27), If we, then, confine the imprecation to Canaan, we can without ditticidty trace its accomplishment in the sub- jugation of the tribes which issued from him, to the chil- dren of Israel from the time of Joshua to that of David. Here woidd be verified Canaan's servile relation to Shem; and when imperial Rome finally wrested " the sceptre from Judah," and (" dwelling in the tents of Shem") oc- cupied the East and whatever remnants of Canaan were left in it, would not this accomplish that further pre- diction that Japhet, too, should be lord of Canaan, and that (as it woidd seem to be tacitly implied) mediately, through his occupancy of " the tents of Shem V"
1. Sidon (Josephus Yiciov S' v<p' 'EXXijvwv koi vvv tcaXuTat, Ant. i, 6, 2) founded the ancient metropolis of Phoenicia, the renowaied city called after his own name, and the mother-city of the still more celebrated Tyre : on the commercial enterprise of these cities, which reach- ed even to the south of Britain, see Sidon ; Tyre.
2. Ileth (Josephus XfrraTof) was the father of the well-luiown Hittites, who lived in the south of Palestine around Hebron and Beersheba; in the former of which places the family sepulchre of Abraham was purchased of them (Gen. xxiii, 3). Esau married " two daughters of Heth," who gave great sorrow to their husband's mother (^Gen. xxvii,46).
3. The Jebusite (Josephus 'ItfiovaaXoQ) had his chief residence in and around Jerusalem, which bore the name of the patriarch of the tribe, the son of Canaan, Jebus. The Jebusites lost their stronghold only in the time of David.
4. The Amorite (Josephus 'A/ioppaTog') seems to have been the largest and most powerful of the tribes of Ca- naan. (The name "-Amorites" frequently denotes the inhabitants of the entire countr}'.) This tribe occupied portions of territory on both sides of the Jordan, but its strongest hold was in "the hill comitry" of Judah, as it was afterwards called.
5. The Girf/asite (Josephus TtpyiaaToQ) cannot be for certain identified. (Origen conjcctiu-ed that the Gir- gasites might be the Gergesenes of Matt, viii, 18.)
G. The llivite (Josephus Elialoc'i) liVed partly in the neighborhood of Shechem, and partly at the foot'of Her- mon and Lebanon.
7. The A rkite (Josephus adds for once a locality— 'AoQVKaloQ c't [fVx<''l "ApKr)v ri'/v iv nli Ai/3aVv, Ant. !',*!' -). 1"'^'* i" tl'e Phoenician city of Arc'e, north of TriiK.lis. Under the emperors of Rome it bore the name of Cicsarea (Libani). It was long celebrated in the time of the Crusades. Its ruins are still extant at Tdl Arka (Burckhardt, Syria, p. 162).