Canaan: Son of Ham, grandson of Noah

This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.?

The Man and Woman in Eden

When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.?

Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.?

A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches. The first branch, called the Pishon, flowed around the entire land of Havilah, where gold is found. The gold of that land is exceptionally pure; aromatic resin and onyx stone are also found there. The second branch, called the Gihon, flowed around the entire land of Cush. The third branch, called the Tigris, flowed east of the land of Asshur. The fourth branch is called the Euphrates.?

The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” -Genesis 2:4-17

Following the great flood (c. 2100 BC), which destroys all of humanity except the family of Noah, Genesis 10 presents a family tree in the form of a branched or segmented genealogy, tracing the descendants of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their descendants. Many of these names become future nations, tribes, lands and cities, known to us from elsewhere in the Bible and from extra-biblical sources: Accordingly, this chapter is referred to as the “Table of Nations.”

Nubia once stretched south from Aswan, Egypt, to modern-day Khartoum, Sudan and was home to several?empires, including the?Kingdom of Cush which flourished between c. 1069 BC and 350 BC.?

In the Book of Genesis, the mountains of Ararat is the term used to designate the region in which Noah's Ark comes to rest after the Great Flood (c. 2100 BC), which destroys all of humanity except the family of Noah.

From these eight people …. Noah, his sons and their wives …? the whole earth was populated.

Ham was the second son of?Noah and the founder of the Hamites. The Bible refers to?Egypt?as the "land of Ham." (Psalm 105:23)

The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The first three are traditionally seen as the ancestors of African peoples.

Canaan, founder of the Canaanites, was the youngest of Ham's sons. He was the younger brother of Cush, Mizraim, and Put.

His sons were Sidon, the eldest and founder of the Sidonians, Heth (Hittites), Jebus (Jebusites), Emor (Amorites), and Girgash (Girgashites), Hiv (Hivites), Ark (Arkites), Sin (Sinites), Arvad (Arvadites), Zemar (Zemarites), and Hamath (Hamathites).

The Canaanite clans scattered and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha.?

What is now called the Palermo Stone is a historical document carved from a large slab of black basalt which records the names of the rulers of Old Kingdom Egypt (also known as the Age of the Pyramids), the lengths of their reigns, their activities taxation, religious ceremonies, the levels of the Nile, building works, trade and military expeditions.

It’s highly valuable in the study of the Old Kingdom, probably the oldest historical text that has survived from Ancient Egypt, listing the kings of Egypt from the First Dynasty through to the early part of the Fifth Dynasty, noting significant events in each year of their reigns.

One of the principal challenges in locating the Land of Punt has been the absence of artifacts that could be definitively identified with an ancient Puntite civilization.

A main product that the ancient Egyptians traveled to Punt to obtain was ebony. Hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate that the Egyptians themselves chopped down the plant while in Punt, known to have grown wild in the territory. The Puntites apparently did not import ebony from elsewhere for later resale to the Egyptians.

Trade was occurring in the 5th century BC onwards, especially with Canaan, Lebanon, and Nubia.

Pharaoh Taharqa (Tirhakah) is mentioned in the Bible in Isaiah 37. He was the third in a line of Cushite kings whose power extended from their native Nubia to the whole of Egypt, which they ruled as the pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty.?

Both a pharaoh of Egypt and a king of Cush (r. 690 BC to 664 BC), he saved Jerusalem and the Hebrew society from destruction, a pivotal point in world and Hebrew history.

Taharqa's combined Egyptian-Cushite army defeated the Assyrians at the Battle of Eltekeh in what is now Israel, freeing much of the Levant from Assyrian control.

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About the Author: Lawrence Jean-Louis is the founder of eBrand Me, a digital marketing agency offering marketing & consultative services to CPAs and tax professionals. She aspires to start a money management firm by 2030.