On Genesis, Part 16: The Curse of Canaan

In our last presentation of this commentary on Genesis we had discussed the first three of the sons of Ham, which are Cush, Mizraim and Phut. Now we shall discuss the youngest, or at least, the last one mentioned, which is Canaan. As we had explained when we presented Genesis chapter 9 and Thy Father’s Nakedness, since Canaan was cursed as a result of Ham’s having seen “the nakedness of his father”, as we read the account in Genesis chapter 9, then that phrase must have been a euphemism for another act, and therefore the birth of Canaan must have been the result of what is seen in the law in Leviticus chapter 20 where it says in part that “11 … the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness.” Having done that, we had also presented passages from Leviticus chapter 18 which further explain that the nakedness of a man’s wife is also the man’s nakedness.

But we cannot imagine that Canaan was cursed merely because Ham saw his own father naked, as we had also explained, with examples from Scripture, how in ancient times men had regularly seen one another naked even throughout the course of a typical workday, at least in certain vocations or activities. So that alone would not justify the curse of Canaan, but Noah certainly would have been justified to curse Canaan if Ham had violated his wife, which was also Ham’s own mother, and if Canaan was the result of such a union. Subsequent events in Scripture also justify Noah’s curse of Canaan, as Yahweh had upheld his words so that they became prophetic of the fate of Canaan. When Yahweh upholds a man’s words, it is because the words are just and the man had uttered them righteously. This we read of the young prophet Samuel, in 1 Samuel chapter 3: “19 And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.”

This leads us to reiterate another issue, which is the alleged curse of Ham. Many commentators and theologians have claimed that Canaan’s curse was actually Ham’s curse, which is certainly not true. If Ham was cursed so that all of his sons would be servants, then Egypt would never have been a great empire, and would never have had slaves of the sons of Shem, such as the Israelites had been. But in turn, Egypt was never enslaved until Yahweh had explained in Isaiah chapter 43 that He gave Egypt up for the sake of Israel. Neither would Cush have been an empire, which had at one time ruled over the Assyrians and, evidently, others of the sons of both Shem and Japheth, and while many of the people of Cush were eventually amalgamated into later empires, the people of Cush were never systematically enslaved but Yahweh had announced in Isaiah that He had also given up Cush. Some of the same commentators and theologians further believe that the sons of Ham were black because Ham was cursed, but that is not true. By itself, the passage in Genesis chapter 10 describing the empire of Nimrod refutes those claims, as do the ancient historical narrative and archaeological sources.

While some of Ham’s descendants were later overrun with Nubians, eventually even countries which had originally belonged to descendants of Shem and Japheth had also suffered being overrun with Nubians, especially those who were in league with the Arabs, who had both black slaves and black mercenaries and soldiers in their companies, in the Islamic conquests of the medieval period. So punishment in that manner was certainly not limited to Ham, since Persia and Syria, the northern coast of formerly White Africa, most of Spain and Portugal, parts of Southern Italy, Greece, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and even the Caucasus Mountains, parts of southern Russia and the Balkans were all overrun with Arabs and the later by Islamic Turks. Nations surrounding the Balkans were vassal states to the Turks for significant lengths of time, even if they were not completely overrun. The Islamic conquests introduced both Canaanite and sub-Saharan African blood into many of those areas, so that in the end, Aram, Asshur, Lud, Elam and others had really fared no better than Cush, Mizraim and Phut. Just as Yahweh had told the children of Israel in Isaiah chapter 43 that “I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee”, He had also told them in both Jeremiah chapters 30 and 46 that “though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee…” As Paul of Tarsus had written in Romans chapter 4, it was ultimately intended that Abraham “should be the heir of the world”.

There are always questions concerning the fates of many of these Genesis 10 nations, as most of them are no longer recognizable in this modern world. While Abraham had special promises from Yahweh God, which Jacob had inherited, the other Adamic nations had a different relationship with Yahweh, even if they were also His children. Thus we read in the words of Paul of Tarsus, in Acts chapter 17, speaking of Yahweh, that: “26 … He made from one every nation of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth, appointing the times ordained and the boundaries of their settlements, 27 to seek God. If surely then they would seek after Him then they would find Him, and indeed He being not far from each one of us.” The one in that passage is a reference to Adam, whose seed had survived through Noah, and therefore Paul was only speaking of the nations which came from Noah, which we see here in this chapter of Genesis. Having said these things, Paul had also alluded to Deuteronomy chapter 32 where we read: “8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” That division of the nations is described here in Genesis chapters 10 and 11, and all of these nations are the original White nations of antiquity.

So in the promises to Japheth, that he would dwell in the tents of Shem, and even in the subsequent history of Ham, as there were promises that the children of Israel in their dispersions would take captive those who had taken them captive, Yahweh may have had mercy upon some Japhethites and even upon some Hamites, for them to be taken along with Israel. But none of the modern and independent White nations can be positively identified with any particular tribe of the ancient nations of either Japheth or Ham. If there survives a remnant of Ionians in Greece, or of Meshech or Tubal in Russia, for examples, then that is wonderful, but it cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.

The modern White nations may indeed contain elements of these other Adamic tribes, but tribal identity is passed down through the paternal line. When the sons of Noah were divided into their nations, there were no Celts, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians or Poles, nor any other nation in northern Europe. There are some archaeological discoveries of people in some of those lands in more ancient times, but prior inhabitants are not necessarily ancestors, and the more ancient races left nothing of substance which lent itself to the founding of European culture. Rather, the European nations which had not come from the Japhethites had come later, and chiefly from the seed of Abraham. While Ionians, Lydians and Tartessians, for example, had survived well into historical times, by the time of Christ the world had been dominated by descendants of the children of Israel, in the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians, Romans, and Dorian and Danaan Greeks, in the Near East by Parthians and Scythians, and in Northern Europe by the Sakae and Galatae, the Germanic tribes which came from the Israelites of the Assyrian deportations, as well as some tribes identified as Proto-Celts, of which the earliest of them were mainly Phoenicians. While it is beyond the scope of this Genesis commentary to prove all of this, it is rather necessary to mention it in order to explain the fate of the other Adamic nations listed here.

So now we shall focus on Canaan, as his descendants have a significant role in subsequent history, but certainly not a positive role.

15 And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth,

Only these two sons of Canaan are mentioned personally, and all of the names of Canaanites which follow are only of tribes, or regions, rather than of specific men, so the nature of how those tribes, or regional populations, which are nine in number, are related to Canaan is not provided explicitly. It is plausible that Canaan had only two sons, and that all the other Canaanite tribes mentioned in the subsequent verses had come from these, but there are other factors involved which we shall discuss further on.

Sidon: The name צידון or צידן, Sidon (# 6722), which is often also spelled Zidon, means catching or hunting, as it is related to the word ציד, or sid, which means hunter, or, as a verb, describes the act of hunting (#’s 6718 and 6719). Evidently, Sidon had given his name to the city on the coast of Palestine which is well attested in Scripture. Ancient Sidon is approximately 20 miles north of the site of ancient Tyre, and on the coast at approximately the same latitude as Damascus, which is just over 50 miles to the east. A Lebanese Arab city which has retained the name occupies the site today. The ancient city Sidon is often called a Phoenician city, as it lies on the coast which the Greeks had later called Phoenicia. But that does not mean that its Canaanite inhabitants were the same as the settlers of Europe whom the Greeks had also called Phoenicians. The Greek poet, Homer had written of events which date to the early 12th century BC, but he did not put them into writing until the late 7th century BC, as many as five hundred years after the fact. Around seven hundred years before the Greek writers first mention Phoenicians, the Canaanites of Tyre and Sidon and the rest of the coast were supplanted by the children of Israel, who had then inhabited those cities.

So in the earliest European literature, Sidon is mentioned several times in both the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. But Homer never mentioned Tyre, a fact which Strabo had also noted [1], and apparently there was good reason for that. According to Flavius Josephus, who had access to the ancient chronicles of Tyre which are now lost, in Book 8 of his Antiquities of the Judaeans: “Now that year on which the temple began to be built was already the eleventh year of the reign of Hiram; but from the building of Tyre to the building of the temple, there had passed two hundred and forty years.” [2] While Tyre is mentioned in Scripture as early as Joshua chapter 19, where it was a part of the inheritance of the tribe of Asher, it was evidently not yet a notable port, until it was built up in the middle of the Judges period 240 years before Solomon had built the temple, and that would be no earlier than the time of the Trojan War, so it is evident that Tyre was not yet a famous port in the period of which Homer was writing. Many years later, Strabo would explain that all of the Phoenician colonies of Europe would come from Tyre, and not from Sidon. Strabo had attested that “Now although the poets have referred more repeatedly to Sidon than to Tyre (Homer does not even mention Tyre), yet the colonies sent into Libya [i.e. Carthage] and Iberia, as far even as outside the Pillars, hymn rather the praises of Tyre”. [3]

In Judges chapter 19 Sidon was described as having been in the territory of the tribe of Asher (19:28) as well as Tyre (19:29). Earlier, in Judges chapters 1 and 3 it is explained that the various tribes of the children of Israel who had been occupying the land of Canaan had failed to exterminate or drive out all of the Canaanites from many of the places which they had been allotted, including Sidon. But Tyre was not mentioned in that context, so it was very likely not populated with Canaanites. Then, as it is also explained in Judges chapter 3, the Canaanites remaining had been placed in bondage, under tribute to the Israelites. Subsequent chapters throughout the Book of Judges describe the process of the defeat of the Sidonians and other Canaanites and the survivors having been made tributaries to Israel. That situation persisted throughout the kingdom period, and we read in 2 Chronicles chapter 8 that “7 As for all the people that were left of the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which were not of Israel, 8 But of their children, who were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel consumed not, them did Solomon make to pay tribute until this day.” The bondage of these Canaanites to Israel was a partial fulfillment of the curse which Noah had placed on Canaan.

The fact that the Sidonians had been under a state of tribute to Israel for at least most of the time in which the children of Israel had occupied the land of Canaan precludes the possibility that they were the dominant Phoenicians of the same period known as the so-called Golden Age of Phoenicia, and as Strabo had attested, it was the Tyrians who had founded the Phoenician colonies. [4] Then Herodotus, who referred to the Judaeans as the “Syrians of Palestine” throughout his histories, had attested that both they and the Tyrians were circumcised. [5] Citing that very passage of Herodotus, Flavius Josephus attested that Herodotus was speaking of Israelites, where he had written that “there are no inhabitants of Palestine that are circumcised excepting the Judaeans [meaning Israelites]; and therefore it must be his knowledge of them that enabled him to speak so much concerning them” [6]. The Golden Age of Phoenicia ended with the deportations of Israel, although the island city of Tyre persisted until the time of Alexander, and the earliest surviving Greek poets first began to write wrote around that same time as the captivity and deportations of Israel and Judah. The Phoenicians were indeed Israel, but in the writings of those Greek poets and historians and in the period of the New Testament, Phoenicia was merely a geographical distinction.

From the time of David it is evident that the children of Israel had occupied all the coast of Palestine from the land of the Philistines as far north as Hamath, in northern Syria. In 2 Chronicles chapter 7 we read: “8 Also at the same time Solomon kept the feast seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt.” Earlier, in the time of David, where we read that he had a census conducted, in 2 Samuel chapter 24, both Tyre and Sidon were among the places where the Israelites were counted [7]. In the time of Elijah, the prophet visited the Israelite woman of “Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon”, and dwelt there for a time. [8]

Even later, in the time of Jeroboam II, a king of Israel in the early 8th century BC, when the Assyrians were beginning to conquer Syria, we read in part that: “25 He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.” [9] So there should be no doubt that during the time of the Golden Age of Phoenicia, when they had been establishing themselves along the coasts of Europe and Africa, the children of Israel had occupied the coasts of Phoenicia, while the Sidonians and other Canaanites were merely under tribute. Sidon continued under tribute to various empires throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods, until it was conquered by Arabs. That Canaanites remained among the local populations throughout that period is clear even in the New Testament, in the account of the Canaanite woman mentioned in Matthew chapter 15, whom Mark had identified from a Roman geographical perspective as a Syrophenician, as it is in the King James Version in Mark chapter 7.

[1 Strabo, Geography, 16.2.22; Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Judaeans, 8.62; 3 Strabo, Geography, ibid.; 4 Herodotus, The Histories, 2.159 (cf. 2 Kings 23:29, 2 Chronicles 35:20), 3.5, 7.89; 5 ibid., 2.104; 6 Josephus, Against Apion, 1.171; 7 2 Samuel 24:6-7; 8 1 Kings 17:9; 9 2 Kings 14:25.]

Heth: Canaan’s second son, Heth, is the eponymous ancestor of the ancient Hittites. The Hebrew word חת or heth (# 2845) means terror or to be afraid (# 2844), but according to Strong’s it is derived from a root word meaning to be prostrate or break down (# 2865). The name of one of David’s mighty men, Uriah the Hittite, should have been translated according to the meaning of the term, Uriah the Terror, since he was a fierce warrior, and he was actually an Israelite and not of the descendants of Heth. The Hittites may also be identified with the ancient Hittite empire, however it is arguable as to what degree that empire was actually Hittite.

The earliest known inscription of what is identified as the Hittite language is said to be the Anitta Text, or the Proclamation of Anittas. One prevalent theory in relation to this text as it represents the earliest known appearance of the Hittite language, is that in order to write in their own language, the Hittites had borrowed and adapted the cuneiform writing system and other devices from the Assyrians in the early 2nd millenium BC. But the resulting Hittite language as it is known to archaeologists is not classified as a Semitic or as a Hamitic or “Afro-Asiatic” language by modern linguists, as they now usually classify ancient Ethiopian and Egyptian. [10]

The Proclamation of Anittas, dated to the 18th century BC, “deals with events leading up to the founding of the Hittite state and is the earliest genuinely historical text found at Boğazköy.” [10] Boğazköy is the site of an ancient Hittite capital, Hattusa, the city of the Hatti in central Anatolia. But in their own documents, the Hittites of the time of Anittas, when the empire began, considered their city of origin to be Neša, even though the Hittites had conquered that city as well as Hattusa, the capital city of the Hattians. Pithana, the father of Anittas, is said to have conquered Neša before him. Pithana was said to be from another nearby city, Kussara. [11] The site of ancient Neša is modern Kültepe in central Turkey, which is said by archaeologists to have been continually inhabited since about 3000 BC, and to have been populated with Hattians, Hittites, Hurrians and an Assyrian merchant colony. [12] The Hattians, who seem to have been Hittites, are distinguished from Hittites by archaeologists and also apparently in early Hittite documents, although the Hattians were incorporated into the Hittite empire. But the original language of Hatti is not the Hittite language of the empire, and it is not classified as either Semitic nor Indo-European. The language of the Hittite empire is classified as Indo-European, and in Hittite inscriptions it is called Nešili, the language of Neša. [13]

[10 Hittite Online, The University of Texas at Austin Linguistics Research Center, https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/hitol/10, accessed May 25th, 2023; 11 ibid.; 12 Wikipedia, Kültepe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCltepe accessed May 25th, 2023; 13 Wikipedia, Hattians, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattians, accessed May 25th, 2023.]

However these political distinctions of the 2nd millennium BC are rather late compared to the time of the sons of Noah, but they are also within reach of Moses, who was educated in the house of a pharaoh and who wrote in the 15th century BC. However Moses only mentions Hittites as one of the tribes of Canaan, and makes no reference to the Hittite empire which already existed to the north and west. The Egyptians were well aware of the Hittites, however, and had been making treaties with them. In a treaty from the time of Ramses II, which is the early 13th century BC, we read in part: “Now from the beginning of the limits of eternity, as for the situation of the great ruler of Egypt with the Great Prince of Hatti, the god did not permit hostility to occur between them, through a regulation. But in the time of Muwatallis, the Great Prince of Hatti, my brother he fought with [Ramses Meri-Amon], the great ruler of Egypt. But hereafter, from this day, behold Hattusilis, the Great Prince of Hatti, [is under] a regulation for making permanent the situation which the Re and Seth made for the land of Egypt with the land of Hatti, in order not to permit hostility to occur between them forever.” The hostility mentioned here centered on the famous Battle of Kadesh which was fought between Egyptians and Hittites in northern Syria. [14]

The Hittite city of Carchemish, which was on the Euphrates River just north of what is now the Syrian border, seems to be identified where we read in Joshua chapter 1 that “3 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.” Yet even Carchemish is said to have been inhabited by Hurrians in addition to Hittites. [15]

In the Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament we read in part that: “Almost all Hittite texts which we possess come from ruins near the Turkish village Bogazkoy in the center of Anatolia. The ruins represent what is left of Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite empire which flourished between 1800 and 1200 B.C. The texts are written — according to a custom which the Hittites adopted from the inhabitants of Mesopotamia — on clay tablets in cuneiform. They once belonged to "archives" or "libraries" buried under the debris when Hattusa was destroyed about 1225 B.C. This means that all of them are older than this date. A more exact date can be assigned to those which were composed by, or in the name of, specific kings.” This is followed by a list of nine Hittite kings who ruled for about 200 years until 1225 BC. [16] The Hittites in Carchemish and Palestine are mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as late as those of Sargon II, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC. [17]

[14 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 199; 15 Wikipedia, Carchemish, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carchemish, accessed May 25th, 2023; 16 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, p. xxiii; 17 ibid., pp. 285-287, 626.]

The fall of the Hittite empire is generally described to have been due to the so-called “Sea Peoples”, a name assigned to a loose confederation of tribes as they are perceived on the surviving inscriptions of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled at the end of the 13th century BC, and other records. The source of these “Sea Peoples”, who made raids against the Hittites as well as the Egyptians and others, is often debated. However the earliest Greek writers describe the Phoenicians as having had supremacy of the seas throughout that entire period, and we would identify the “Sea Peoples” with them, but include also the Philistines. As early as the Song of Deborah recorded in Judges chapter 5, we read the prophetess lament, in part: “17… and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches.” The word for breaches in that passage refers to ports in which ships could find harbor. So Asher had occupied the port cities of the territory which fell to that tribe, including Tyre and Sidon. Another factor which led to the fall of the Hittites of Anatolia and Syria are earthquake storms which are believed to have occurred towards the end of the 13th century BC, and to have lasted for several decades, in which Hattusa seems to have been destroyed, as well as other cities in Anatolia and the regions of the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean seas. [18]

While we cannot know if there is any relationship to the account of Noah, various Hittites are described as being accursed in Akkadian inscriptions. Perhaps the epithet only reflects their actual nature. From the annals of the 8th century BC Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III we read: “Ia’ubidi from Hamath, a commoner, without claim to the throne, a cursed Hittite, schemed to become king of Hamath…” [19] In other inscriptions from the same king there are references to “Hittites always planning treachery”, “Hittites always planning evil deeds” and “accursed Hittites” who “conceived the idea of not delivering the tribute and started a rebellion against their ruler”. [20] While rebellions were common in that period, it seems that only Hittites were consistently considered accursed.

[18 Earthquake Storms, by Amos Nur and Eric Cline, Archaeology Odyssey magazine, Vol. 4 No. 5, September/October, 2001, see also https://www.baslibrary.org/archaeology-odyssey/4/5/12, accessed May 26th, 2023; 19 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 285; 20 ibid., pp. 286-287.]

In Scripture, during the Kingdom period the Hittites are mentioned only as late as the time of Solomon, where they were described as having been under tribute to Israel, although the context there likely means to include only the Hittites of the Levant. [21] After the fall of Assyria and the destruction of Nineveh, the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho attempted to take Carchemish for Egypt, an event during which Josiah king of Judah was killed, which is mentioned both in Scripture and by the Greek historian Herodotus [22, 23]. The Hittites are mentioned again in Ezekiel in a warning to the people of Jerusalem, which seems to indicate that some of the people of Judah had already mingled with Hittites. [24]

[21 2 Chronicles 1:17, 8:7; 22 2 Chronicles 35:20-24; 23 The Histories, 2.159; 24 Ezekiel 16:3, 45.]

Now, moving on to discuss the other tribes which are said to have been Canaanites, even if no patriarch is mentioned explicitly:

16 And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, 17 And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, 18 And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad.

Where it says “and afterward” perhaps it means that after these families had become prominent among the Canaanites, they had branched out into other places, especially since at least some of these names belong to cities rather than to particular tribes, while others do belong to tribes. Some of these tribes appear frequently and are well known from Scripture, so our discussions of some of them shall be relatively brief.

The Jebusites were the Canaanites who inhabited Jerusalem, which is attested at least as early as the Judges period, where ancient Jebus is identified as Jerusalem, the name given to the city by Israel. [25] But Jebus was not taken from the Jebusites by Israel until the time when David was made king. [26] The word jebus (# 2982) is defined in Strong’s Concordance to mean trodden.

[25 Judges 19:10; 26 2 Samuel 5:6-9.]

After the Hittites, the Amorites were much more prominent in history than the Jebusites or most of these other tribes of Canaan. Strong’s defines the name as having been derived from the Hebrew word אמר or amar, which means to say (#’s 567, 559) but which has a wide range of secondary meanings. The Assyrians called the lands west of Mesopotamia the land of Amurru, their word for the Amorites. They had established a presence and ruled over diverse places at various times in antiquity, competing with the Cushites, Assyrians and others. For some time they ruled Babylon, and in the introduction to the Code of Hammurabi as it is published in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, we read in part that “Hammurabi (also spelled Hammurapi) was the sixth of eleven kings in the Old Babylonian (Amorite) Dynasty. He ruled for 43 years, from 1728 to 1686 according to the most recent calculations. The date-formula for his second year, ‘The year he enacted the law of the land,’ indicates that he promulgated his famous lawcode at the very beginning of his reign, but the copy which we have could not have been written so early because the Prologue refers to events much later than this.” [27]

There is speculation often repeated that this Hammurabi was the king of Shinar mentioned in Genesis chapter 14 by the name Amraphel, However as we hope to demonstrate later in this commentary, Hammurabi was about 100 years too late for that association. In the popular and commonly accepted list of Old Babylonian kings Hammurabi is dated to begin his rule circa 1792 BC. [28] If, as Paul of Tarsus had explained, it was 430 years from the call of Abraham to the giving of the law at Sinai, then the events in which Abraham had participated in that chapter of Genesis could not have been long after 1880 BC. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon makes the association with Amraphel, but places the reign of Hammurabi circa 2100 BC, which is far too early for the time of Abraham. [29] As we have stated earlier, often the name used for a foreign king is not what that king would call himself, and sometimes it is a word or phrase descriptive of the king from a peculiar, critical or often even hostile point of view. However neither Strong’s nor Brown-Driver-Briggs attempted to assign a meaning to the name Amraphel, and Gesenius speculated that it is derived from Hebrew words which mean word or speech (#’s 562 and 565 אמר amar and אמרה amarah). It is also possible that the initial letters of Amraphel indicate his having been an Amorite, and that the remaining letters have some relevant meaning.

As we hope to discuss in reference to the dating of the Amorite kings of Babylon, the popular dating seems to conflict with certain statements here in Genesis relating to the life of Abraham. But by the same dating for the rule of Amraphel, around 1595 BC the Amorite kings of Babylon came to an end, and Shinar was overrun and Babylon destroyed by the Hittites. By 1570 BC the Kassites, or Chaldaeans as they are better known in history, and who were evidently allied to the Hittites in that event, had come to rule in Babylon. We have already associated the Kassites with Cush and the empire of Nimrod, so it is apparent that they had really only managed to assert control once again. [30]

[27 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 163; 28 List of kings of Babylon, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Babylon, accessed May 26th, 2023; 29 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 2021, p. 57; 30 Babylonia: A Very Short Introduction, by Trevor Bryce, Oxford University Press, September, 2016, from the abstract found at https://academic.oup.com/book/898/chapter-abstract/135484730?redirectedFrom=fulltext, accessed May 26^th, 2023.]

In Assyrian inscriptions, the land of Amurru was generally a land which stretched across northern Syria from the Euphrrates River to a portion of the coast of the Mediterranean Sea north of Sidon. It was also evidently equated with the land of the Hittites, as it is in an Akkadian inscription dating from the time of Esarhaddon in the early 7th century BC and titled The Substitute King, whom the inscription addresses, where we read in part: “This eclipse, which (the moon) brought about in (the month of) Tebet, concerned the land of Amurru. The king of the land of Amurru will die, his land will diminish, (or) in another interpretation, will disappear. Surely the scholars can tell the king my lord something about the land of Amurru: the land of Amurru means the land of the Hittites and the land of the Sutaeans, (or) in another interpretation, the land of Chaldaea. Someone or other of the kings of the land of the Hittites, or of the land of Chaldaea, (reverse) or of the land of the Arabs, must bear (the consequences of) this sign. For the king my lord (there is to be) contentment: the king my lord will achieve his desire. The rites and prayers of the king my lord are acceptable to the gods. Either the king of Cush, or the king of [Tyre], or Mugallu must meet the appointed death; or, the king my lord will cap[ture him], the king my lord will diminish his land, the women of his harem will enter the service of the king [my lor]d. The king my lord should be gratified.” [31] In this inscription, Hittites are associated with Amorites, as they are here in Genesis chapter 10, but the origins of the Sutaeans are obscure and they may have been a division of the Aramaeans [32]. Also, the Cush mentioned in the inscription must be the Cush of Arabia and Mesopotamia, or a remnant thereof, who had shortly thereafter come to prominence as the historical Chaldaeans of the Neo-Babylonian empire.

[31 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 626; 32 The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion, by Edward Lipiński, Peeters Publishers, 2000, pp. 38-39, 411.]

The next in line of these Canaanite tribes are the Girgashites, another tribe whose name Strong’s original Concordance had declined to define. The Girgashites are only mentioned several times in Scripture, always in relation to the land of Canaan, but only as late as the time of Joshua. [33]

[33 Joshua 3:10, 24:11.]

Following these are the Hivites. Strong’s defines this name (# 2340) only as “villager” and says that it is “perhaps from 2333” which is the Hebrew word חוה or chavah, the name which Adam had given to Eve which means life-giving or living-place. While we are certainly not compelled to agree with that association, perhaps it is better to understand that the entry for Hivite should not exist at all. While the word Hivite appears in about two dozen verses of Scripture, there are no historical Hivites outside of Scripture. But there is a prominent group related to the Hittites and other Canaanites which are known as the Hurrians, and which can be identified with the Horites of Scripture, whereas the historical Horites are otherwise unidentifiable until the name first appears in Genesis chapter 14, where it is associated with Mount Seir. Later, in Genesis chapter 36, it is evident that Esau and his descendants had dwelt at Mount Seir, and became amalgamated with some of the Horites there.

In Genesis 36:2 we read that Esau took a daughter of “Zibeon the Hivite” to wife. But then from verse 20 we read: “These are the sons of Seir the Horite, who inhabited the land; Lotan, and Shobal, and Zibeon, and Anah, 21 And Dishon, and Ezer, and Dishan: these are the dukes of the Horites, the children of Seir in the land of Edom.” Further, from verse 29 of that same chapter, we read “29 These are the dukes that came of the Horites; duke Lotan, duke Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, 30 Duke Dishon, duke Ezer, duke Dishan: these are the dukes that came of Hori, among their dukes in the land of Seir.” So it is evident that “Zibeon the Hivite” was actually a Horite, or Hurrian.

The word Hivite, properly Chivite, is three letters, חוי or CH-V-Y, while the word Horite, or Chorite, is חרי or CH-R-Y. There is confusion between the letters ו or vav and ר or resh elsewhere in Scripture, just as there is also sometimes confusion between the ד or daleth and the ר or resh. In Genesis chapter 36 that confusion is fully evident. This confusion is also apparent when comparing the Masoretic Text to the Greek of the Septuagint in Genesis 34:2, where Hivite was interpreted as Horite, and also in Joshua 9:7. In each of those passages, the Hebrew word which appears as Hivite in the King James Version was transliterated as Χορραῑος in Greek, which is the way in which Chorite or Horite would be spelled in that language.

The Horites, which modern anthropologists and archaeologists call Hurrians are well documented in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and other Near Eastern inscriptions. Some Horites evidently dwelt at Mount Hor, which was also called Mount Seir, to which Esau had joined himself, as it was described in Genesis chapter 36. But the Horites also made up a significant portion of the Mittani Kingdom in northern Syria.

In an ancient inscription which dates to the 14th century BC a treaty is recorded between the Hittite king Suppiluliumas and Kurtiwaza, the son of a dead Mitanni king who had to flea his country. The message also indicates that Kurtiwaza’s wife was very likely a Hittite princess. There we read in part: “A duplicate of this tablet has been deposited before the Sun-goddess of Arinna, because the Sun-goddess of Arinna regulates kingship and queenship. In the Mitanni land (a duplicate) has been deposited before Tessub, the lord of the \urinnu [a treasury or shrine] of Kahat. At regular intervals shall they read it in the presence of the king of the Mitanni land and in the presence of the sons of the Hurri country.” Then, in the closing lines of the treaty, we read: “If (on the other hand) you, Kurtiwaza, the prince, and (you), the Hurrians, fulfill this treaty and (this) oath, may these gods protect you, Kurtiwaza, together with your wife, the daughter of the Hatti land, her children and her children's children, and also (you), the Hurrians, together with your wives, your children, and your children's children and together with your country. May the Mitanni country return to the place which it occupied before, may it thrive and expand. May you, Kurtiwaza, your sons and your sons' sons (descended) from the daughter of the Great King of the Hatti land, and (you), the Hurrians, exercise kingship forever. May the throne of your father persist, may the Mitanni country persist.” [34]

The beginnings of the Mittani kingdom, which, like the Hittite empire, was a State rather than a nation, which is properly a tribal entity, are obscure, as are the nature of its ethnic components, however from the inscriptions of the Hittites there should be no doubt that the Horites, or Hurrians, were a significant portion of its population, and that Kurtiwaza and his father also seemed to be Hurrians, but who had also intermarried with the Hittites. What follows is from a book titled Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space:

During the 15th century BC and the first half of the 14th century BC Mittani was a powerful kingdom; the state ruled over a large area, from the Upper Khabur to the Middle Euphrates, from Eastern Anatolia to North-Western Syria. Unfortunately we have only very few Mittanian sources concerning the political organization of this kingdom and its relations to subordinate states and polities. We have even less information about the early history of Mittani, that is about the events that brought about its formation.

This intriguing topic may be of some interest in this workshop, which deals specifically with the transition from the Amorite to the Mittani period. Mittani is mentioned for the first time in an Egyptian source, the Thebes grave inscription of the state official Amenemhet; he recalls having participated in a military expedition on Syrian territory and in this context the country of Mtn is mentioned. Even though Amenemhet served under three pharaohs (Ahmose I, Amenhopet I, Thutmose I), it is generally thought that this Syrian expedition coincides with the one led by Thutmose I (1493–1483 BC).

There is still substantial disagreement regarding the time and the historical context in which the state of Mittani was formed. Two hypotheses have been put forth and continue to be upheld by scholars, although with varying motivations and reasoning:

1. Mittani was already a powerful kingdom at the end of the 17th century or in the first half of the 16th century BC, thus its beginnings date to well before the time of Thutmose I, dating instead to the time of the Hittite sovereigns Hattusili I and Mursili I.

2. Mittani emerged from a political vacuum in Syria, which had been created first through the destruction of the kingdom of Yamhad by the Hittites and then through the inability of Hatti to maintain control of the region during the period following Mursili’s I death. The inscription of Amenemhet would therefore be one of the earliest pieces of evidence that the Mittanian state had become a political entity of some importance.

Clearly, the problem is even more complex because of our inability to establish an absolute chronology for the period in question, both for Hittite history as well as for the history of the entire ancient Near East. [35]

[34 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 206; 35 Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space, Part 1, Chapter 3, The Mittani State: The Formation of the Kingdom of Mittani, by Stefano de Martino, De Gruyter 2014, p. 61]

That explanation of the possible origins of the Mittani Kingdom, which was also actually an empire, hopefully exhibits some of the challenges inherent in piecing ancient history together from inscriptions discovered and deciphered by archaeologists. The admission concerning chronology is also candid, as we would challenge many aspects of popular modern chronologies of the ancient Near East, however modern academics do not take the Scriptures seriously, as if they know more than men who lived three or four thousand years ago. But it is clear, that Hurrians were the predominant population of the Mittani Kingdom which was once to the north of Israel, but around that same time, they had also occupied a portion of what had later become Edom in the south, as well as having been found throughout Canaan.

Of the Arkites the Sinites and the Zemarites, nothing is know specifically about any of these groups, since their names appear nowhere else in Scripture but here in Genesis chapter 10, and in the copy of this same genealogy provided in 1 Chronicles chapter 1. Perhaps the Sinites lent their name to Sinai, as the two words in Hebrew are very close, however that is only conjecture. Perhaps it is more likely that they were called Sinites here simply because they were Canaanites who lived in Sinai, and that seems to be more agreeable. There is a place called Zemaraim in the land of Benjamin which is mentioned in Joshua chapter 18, and that is also the name of a mountina in Ephraim mentioned in 2 Chronicles chapter 13, but neither of them are necessarily the home of these Zemarites.

However Arvadites and Hamathites are identifiable, as Arvad is the historic name of an island which lies a mile-and-a-half off the coast of the northern Levant, although it is only less than a half mile long and not as wide, and the Arvadites should be associated with the Canaanites of that area, between the Sidonians and the Amorites. Likewise, the Hamathites may be associated with Hamath, the city in northern Syria which in David’s time had become the northernmost extent of the territory which he had gained for Israel. The original Strong’s Concordance also makes that association (#’s 2577, 2574). Ancient Hamath would have been in the shadow, at the crossroads, of all three of the more dominant Canaanite tribes at diverse times, the Hittites, the Amorites and the Horites.

Now, finally, we may conclude the Genesis chapter 10 passage on the sons of Ham and Canaan:

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. 20 These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.

This may have been the original border of the Canaanites, as they were first distributed after the events which are described in Genesis chapter 11. Those events did not take place, as we hope to illustrate, for over 500 years after the flood of Noah, or perhaps not much later than 2700 BC, which is only an estimate. Much of this land was destroyed in the days of Abraham, of which we read later, in Deuteronomy chapter 29: “23 And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath.” While Lasha is only mentioned here, elsewhere in Genesis, in chapter 14, the cities of the plain destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah are Admah, Zeboiim and Bela, or Zoar. The Lasha mentioned here seems to be Laish, the town in far northwest Canaan which a portion of the children of Dan had later taken for themselves. In that manner, all four corners of the borders of Canaan would be defined.

So the land which was later divided among the tribes of Israel was roughly contained to this same land, and just as the Canaanites had overflowed these borders, so did Israel begin to do so almost as immediately as they had divided it. But the consequences of the curse of Canaan are made evident in Genesis chapter 15, where the same land is described to Abraham and we read: “18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: 19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” As far as the Canaanites had overflowed the borders of Canaan, the Israelites had followed after the divided the land of Canaan among themselves.

While we do not know who Canaan had married, evidently his descendants had mingled at a very early time with the Kenites, which are the descendants of Cain, the Rephaim, which are a portion of the Nephilim, the so-called giants of Genesis chapter 6 which are actually the fallen ones, or fallen angels, and several other groups or tribes which are not listed in the genealogy of the sons of Noah. They are the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites and the Perizzites. Recent lexicons attempt to define some of these names as smiths, in reference to the Kenites, or easterners or villagers or as people dwelling on clayey soil, but those attempts are absurd. If some of these names are clearly names describing particular tribes, then they are all names describing particular tribes, since anyone may be a smith or a villager or live on clay soil, and anyone may choose to be a smith.

Here it is fully evident that at an early time, the descendants of Canaan mingled with the Kenites and Nephilim, and subsequent Scripture corroborates that fact. One example is Og of Bashan, a king of the Amorites who was himself one of the Rephaim, but whose land was called “the land of giants”. [36] It may be imagined that Kenites and Nephilim had similar influence throughout all the lands of Canaan. If Canaan was destined to be inferior to all of his brethren, a fate to which the curse of Noah had him doomed, that may very well explain why he resorted to these tribes, which were apparently all related to the Nephilim, since they did not descend from Noah. As for the later Canaanite empires, they were all short-lived. The Hittite Empire, which was isolated and rather unchallenged in the rough and typically colder mountains of central Anatolia, had lasted less than five hundred years. The Amorites ruled Babylon for only three hundred years. The Mittani Kingdom seems to have lasted less than two hundred years. Once they had each passed, the peoples whom they represented had never become great again, even if they now exist under other identities, and they serve as a scourge to Christendom.

[36 Deuteronomy 3:13.]

The academic historians credit earthquakes and the Sea Peoples with the fall of the old Bronze Age societies of the Near East, and the decline of these Canaanite powers in and around the 14th century BC, and Egypt also began its own decline around that same time. What they should credit is Yahweh, the God of Israel, who was making a safe space for His people as they conquered the land of Canaan and the surrounding area, from the River of Egypt and north to Hamath and the River Euphrates.

The fact that the Canaanites had mingled with tribes of the Kenites and Rephaim also reveals their nature and the inherent reasons for all of their perversions which are described in the land of Canaan, and further justifies Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had commanded the children of Israel to exterminate them all to the last man, woman and child. When the children of Israel failed in that mission, Noah’s prophecy that Canaan would be a servant race was fulfilled, but that also ignited a long chain of events which resulted in the woke society of today, and the modern rebirth of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah.

This we shall discuss in greater detail when we come to Genesis chapters 14 and 15 in this commentary, Yahweh willing.