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THE History of Palestine, and of the Hebrew people, may be most conveniently commenced with the call of Abraham, which, according to Hales, took place in the year of the world 3258, after the deluge 1062 years, and 2153 years before the birth of Christ. (')

The ages which had passed since the deluge, concurring with the still long duration of human life, had again replenished with people the regions around the original seats of the human race. That great event, the confusion of tongues, which occurred 600 years after the deluge, must have greatly accelerated, and even compelled, more energetic movements than had previously taken place.

The descendants of Shem appear to have extended themselves gradually over the regions east and north-east of the river Tigris; the children of Japhet spread themselves into Asia Minor, whence it was their ultimate destination to be impelled into Europe, and to fill the length and

breadth of that continent. The posterity of Ham remained in chief possession of Mesopotamia; they also formed settlements at the head of the Persian Gulf, in Arabia, and in Canaan; they established empires in Assyria and Egypt; and, as their numbers multiplied, they advanced into Ethiopia, and other remoter parts of the African peninsula.

The history of Japhet's race is a blank in the early accounts of the Scriptures; and that of Shem's is little more. The sacred historian confines his notice to one family of Shem's descendants; and the intercourse of that family with the races of Ham, is the circumstance which evolves far more information concerning their early history and condition than we possess concerning any of the other descendants of Noah. From all that history tells, they appear to have been the first authors of the arts of civilisation and social life. But remembering the other races of which authentic history takes no occasion to speak, this need not be positively affirmed. That, however, very important advancements had, even in this remote age, been made by the posterity of Ham, appears very plainly in the early intercourse of the Hebrew patriarchs with Egypt.

A division of the posterity of Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, left the Arabian shores of the Red Sea, and settled in the country whose history we have undertaken to write; and they gave to it the name of their father, from whom also they are, collectively, called Canaanites. (*) They manifestly were not very numerous at the time this history opens. They did not by any means fill the country, but lived dispersed, in detached and independent clans, and, contented with the use of such lands around their towns as they needed for their own subsistence, they beheld without jealousy powerful emirs, even of the race of Shem, establish themselves in the plains and feed their cattle in the vacant pastures. The time for territorial contests had not yet come; and probably the settled Canaanites regarded the presence of the Bedouin sheikhs as an advantage, relieving them from the need of attention to pastoral affairs, by affording a ready market where they might obtain milk, butter, cheese, meat and skins, in exchange for their surplus corn and other vegetable produce; and they appear to have been quite sensible of the advantages of an open traffic with the pastoral chiefs.

It might be easy enough to work out a plausible and ingenious account of the social condition of the Canaanites at the time when Abraham came among them. But as this must be purely conjectural, or founded on circumstances which did not occur till four or five centuries later, during which it cannot be doubted that great changes took place in their civil and political state, we shall avoid such a course, and confine ourselves to the slight notices which may be gleaned from the history of Abraham, with the very few more which the histories of his son and grandson offer.

Their language was the same as that of Abraham and the other patriarchs, who at all times speak to them without the medium of an interpreter. This was also true ages after, whenever any communication took place between the descendants of Abraham and the Canaanites or the Phoenicians.

They were divided into a number of small independent communities. Every town with a small surrounding district, and probably some dependent villages, appears to have been a sovereign state, acknowledging the control of no superior, but being in alliance with its neighbours for common objects. The vale of Siddim alone, the area of which does not exceed that of one of our smallest counties, is known to have contained five of such states. It appears to have been the plan, as the population increased, to establish new cities and new states on ground not previously appropriated; in which case the tendency to consolidate numerous small states into a few large ones would not, in ordinary circumstances, arise till the country was fully peopled. We may well be astonished at the prodigious number of small states which the Hebrews found in Palestine on their return from Egypt; but we do not, with some, infer that they were equally numerous in the time of Abraham. On the contrary, it rather seems to us that, in the long interval, the towns and states went on increasing with the population. That towns and states were as numerous in choice localities, such as the fertile vale of Siddim, in the time of Abraham as in that of Joshua, we can well understand; but not so in the country at large. It seems also that the states, though fewer, were not larger at the former date than at the latter, the extent of ground which they divided being proportion

ably smaller. At both periods the states of the Canaanites suggest a comparison to our own boroughs, consisting of a town, with dependencies of fields, and perhaps villages.

And the comparison perhaps holds further; for the meleks or kings of those tiny kingdoms do not appear to have been more than chief magistrates, or patriarchal chiefs, with very limited powers. The mayors of our boroughs have probably greater civil power than they had. Indeed, it has more than once occurred to us to doubt whether these meleks had any independent civil power, and whether they were not regarded merely as the military commanders of the people in time of war, and at all times the agent of their public transactions with other states. The real power, civil and political, of these small states seems to have remained in the body of the adult male population, and practically, it may seem, in the elder portion of it, from that deference which was paid to seniority in those early times. When Simon and Levi, the sons of Jacob, proposed on certain conditions an alliance with Hamor, the Canaanitish prince of Shechem, the latter was well pleased with the proposal, but would not conclude on what answer to give until he had consulted the citizens in the gate. The same tenor of conduct always appears when occasions arise. In some cases so little notice is taken of the melek, that it may almost be doubted whether particular states had any such functionary. A public transaction about a transfer of land with such "a mighty emir” Abraham was well calculated to require the presence of any prince which the Hittites of Hebron might have had, but no one appears in the account of that transaction. Abraham bows to "the children of Heth;" he addresses his proposals to them, and they reply to him. If the Hittites had a king, he was doubtless present; and if so, the manner in which he was overlooked, or in which he is included without distinction as one of "the children of Heth," strikingly illustrates the position of the melek in these small communities. The only other alternative seems to be that the Hittites of Hebron had no king in the time of Abraham.

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All the states in the vale of Siddim had kings, and all we know of them is that they were the military leaders in war. From the answer of the king of Sodom to Abraham, waiving all claim to the goods which the patriarch had recovered from the Mesopotamian spoilers, without any reference to the wishes of his people in this matter, we may infer that, as might be expected, the melek had higher powers in all warlike matters than were allowed to him in the affairs of peace. The only other act of a Canaanitish king which we meet with implies nothing in this respect. This was the act of Melchizedek, the king of Salem, who brought refreshments to Abraham and his party when he returned from the slaughter of the kings.

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The mention of this remarkable person leads us to observe that there is not in Scripture the least indication that the Canaanites were idolaters in the time of Abraham, or indeed at any time before the house of Israel went down into Egypt. The king of Salem is expressly declared to have been a priest of the Most High God; and whenever suitable occasion offers, appears that the Canaanites knew and reverenced the God of their fathers. It is true that they knew not this God as Abraham knew him; and it is more than likely that, with some exceptions, such as that of Melchizedek, they had sunk into that state of indifference, and of ignorance concerning God's character and attributes, which was but a too suitable preparation for that actual idolatry into which they ultimately fell. But that there was any positive idolatry in the time of Abraham, or before the patriarchs left the land, we see no reason to conclude. If we look at the remarkable case of the destruction of Sodom and the cities of the plain, we cannot fail to observe that idolatry is nowhere alluded to as one of the crimes for which the inhabitants were punished. They were punished because they were "sinners before the Lord exceedingly," and because there were not among them any righteous or just men. What the character of their sins was we know. The repugnance of Isaac and Rebekah to the marriage of their sons with Canaanitish women, has often been alleged as a proof that they were by that time become idolaters, even by many who allow that they were not such in the time of Abraham. But the cited case proves nothing whatever, and could only have been adduced from that ignorance of the manners of the East which is now in a course of removal. The ideas of the patriarchal emirs required that their sons should marry into their own families, and this would have been frustrated by marriage with Canaanites. If this argument for the

idolatry of the Canaanites be applicable to the time of Isaac's latter days, it must be equally applicable to the time of Abraham, for he was as anxious as Isaac could be that his son should obtain a wife from the house of his fathers in Padan-aram. But this argument is used by those who confess that the Canaanites were not idolaters in the days of Abraham.

We have little information concerning the social condition, arts, and occupations of the Canaanites at this early date. That "the Canaanites by the sea," that is, the Phoenicians, had already taken to the sea, and carried on some traffic with the neighbouring coasts, is very likely, but more than we can affirm. But we know that the people of Canaan lived in walled towns, in the gates of which public business was transacted. They cultivated the ground; they grew corn; and, as they had wine, they must have cultivated the vine; which they probably did upon the sides of the hills, terraced for the purpose, according to that fashion of vine culture which has always prevailed in that country. Some find in the Perizzites a body of Canaanitish pastors, moving about with their flocks and herds, without any fixed dwelling. But as all this is founded upon a doubtful etymology, we shall lay no stress upon it. Doubtless the Canaanites had cattle, and paid some attention to pasturage; but the presence, in their unappropriated lands, of pastoral chiefs like Abraham, who, by making it their sole pursuit, enjoyed peculiar advantages in the rearing of cattle, and could offer the produce of their flocks and herds on very easy terms to the settled inhabitants, was likely to prevent the latter from being much engaged in pastoral undertakings. Of their military character at this early period we know little, and that little is not much to their advantage. They were beaten in every one of the warlike transactions of this age which the Scriptures relate, or to which any allusion is made. Doubtless every adult male knew the use of arms, and was liable to be called upon to use them when any public occasion required.

They had arrived to the use of silver as a medium of exchange, and that the silver was weighed in affairs of purchase and sale involves the use of the scale and balanced beam. In what form they exhibited the silver used for money we know not with any certainty; they

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certainly had no coined money; for even the Egyptians, who were far before the Canaanites in all the arts of civilisation, continued long after this to use circular bars, or rings, of silver for money; and, most likely, the silver money of the Canaanites bore the same form.

The description of the burying-ground which Abraham bought for 400 shekels of silver of Ephron the Hittite, may perhaps inform us concerning the sepulchres in which the Canaanites liked to bury their dead. It was a cave in a spot of ground well planted with trees.

Seeing that there will hereafter be frequent occasion to mention by name the several tribes

of Canaanites inhabiting the land, and that some of them are historically connected with the early history of the Hebrews, it will conduce to the clearness of the ensuing narrative, if, in this place, these tribes be enumerated, and their several seats pointed out.

While the whole of the nation, collectively, bore the name of Canaanites, as descended from Canaan, there are occasions in which the Scriptures apply the name in a special manner to a part of the whole. Thus in Gen. xiii. 8, we read, "the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites;" and so in other places, except that the Girgashites are sometimes also named. We know that there were many tribes not included in this list of names, and the question is, to which or to what portion of those unnamed, the name of Canaanites is here given. The question is thought a perplexed one, and there appear some serious objections to all the explanations which we have seen. We therefore satisfy ourselves with the notion, that this is merely a method of summary statement to avoid the frequent repetition of a long list of names: that, first, "the Canaanites" are put for all those clans not intended to be particularly enumerated; and then follow the names of those tribes which were best known to the Hebrews and of the most importance to them. This view is confirmed by our observing that the tribes not named, and which we, therefore, suppose to be included under the name of Canaanites, are precisely those most remote from the early Hebrews, and with whom they had the least to do. That they are in other texts described as situated "at the sea," corresponds with the same intimation. In a general sense it will, under this explanation, be found to embrace, primarily, those several branches of the posterity of Canaan which settled on the northern coast, and were, collectively, known in general history as the Phoenicians. The matter appears to have been thus understood by the Seventy, for they render "y of Josh. v. 1, by of Bariλets τng Þoiviens,

or "kings of the Canaanites (which were by the sea)," by "kings of the Phoenicians :" and many ages after, the names were interchangeable; for the woman whom one Evangelist (Matt. xv. 22) calls a woman of Canaan," is called by another (Mark vii. 26), a SyroPhoenician woman."

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Whether the families of Canaan, in migrating to the country to which they gave his name, were headed by his sons, from whom they took their own distinguishing names, or removed after their deaths, does not by any means appear. The question does not seem of much importance, except as it might help to fix the time of the first occupation of the country; and we allude to it merely that no forms of expression which we may incidentally use, should be considered to involve the expression of any opinion on the subject. There is, however, sufficient evidence that the Canaanites had been a good while settled in the land, and we are repeatedly assured in Scripture that the Hittite city of Hebron was founded seven years before Zoan in Egypt.

The Hebrew patriarchs, during their sojourn in Canaan, never approached the borders of the Phoenicians, and, consequently, they are not mentioned in the history, unless under the name of Canaanites. Indeed, we should not have been assured that the Phoenician tribes were descended from Canaan, were it not for the genealogy in Gen. x., which gives us a list of his sons, and assures us that all their families settled in Canaan. In this list the name of Sidon occurs first, as that of Canaan's first-born son. He was the father of the Sidonians, the chief of the Phoenician tribes; and the great, commercial, and very ancient city of Sidon, the mother of the still greater Tyre, was called after him. The list includes other names which cannot but be considered as those of families which, along with the Sidonians, history comprehends under the Phoenician name. Such are the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, and the Zemarites, whose territories seem to have extended along the coast, northward from the town and territory of Sidon.

The ancient Phoenician city of Arca probably took its name from the Arkites, and, therefore, will serve to indicate their situation. Arca stood nearly midway between Tripoli and Tortosa, and about five miles from the sea, among the lower ranges of Lebanon, fronting the sea-board plain. Here, in a situation commanding a beautiful view over the plain, the sea, and the mountains, Burckhardt found ruins, which he supposes to be those of Arca, consisting of large and extensive mounds, traces of ancient dwellings, blocks of hewn stone, remains of walls,

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