CANAAN, the fourth son of Ham. The irreverence of Ham towards his father Noah is recorded in Gen. ix. Upon that occasion the patriarch cursed him in a branch of his posterity: "Cursed," says he, "he Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." This curse being pronounced, not against Ham the immediate transgressor, but against his son, who does not appear, from the words of Moses, to have been in anywise concerned in the crime, hath occasioned several conjectures. Some have believed that Noah cursed Canaan, because he could not well have cursed Ham himself, whom God had not long before blessed. Others think Moses's chief intent in recording this prediction was to raise the spirits of the Israelites, then entering on a terrible war with the children of Canaan, by the assurance, that, in consequence of the curse, that people were destined by God to be subdued by them. For the opinion of those who imagine all Ham's race were here accursed, seems repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, which confines the malediction to Canaan and his posterity: and is also contrary to fact. Indeed the prophecy of Noah that "Canaan should be a servant of servants to his brethren," seems to have been wholly completed in him. It was completed with regard to Shem, not only in that a considerable part of the seven nations of the Canaanites were made slaves to the Israelites, when they took possession of their land, as part of the remainder of them were afterwards enslaved by Solomon; but also by the subsequent expeditions of the Assyrians and Persians, who were both descended from Shem; and under whom the Canaanites suffered subjection, as well as the Israelites; not to mention the conquest of part of Canaan by the Elamites, or Persians, under Chedorlaomer, prior to them all. With regard to Japheth, we find a completion of the prophecy, in the successive conquests of the Greeks and Romans in Palestine and Phœnicia, where the Canaanites were settled; but especially in the total subversion of the Carthaginian power by the Romans; besides some inva-
sions of the northern nations, as the posterity of Thogarma and Magog; wherein many of them, probably, were carried away captive.
The posterity of Canaan were very numerous. His eldest son was Sidon, who at least founded and peopled the city of Sidon, and was the father of the Sidonians and Phœnicians. Canaan had besides ten sons, who were the fathers of so many peoples, dwelling in Palestine, and in part of Syria; namely, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgasites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and Hamathites.