Canaanites, The

a word used in two senses:

1. A tribe which inhabited a particular locality of the land west of the Jordan before the conquest; and
2. The people who inhabited generally the whole of that country.
3. In ( Genesis 10:18-20 ) the seats of the Canaanite tribe are given as on the seashore and in the Jordan valley; comp. ( Joshua 11:3 )
4. Applied as a general name to the non-Israelite inhabitants of the land, as we have already seen was the case with "Canaan." Instances of this are, ( Genesis 12:6 ; Numbers 21:3 ) The Canaanites were descendants of Canaan. Their language was very similar to the Hebrew. The Canaanites were probably given to commerce; and thus the name became probably in later times an occasional synonym for a merchant.