Canaanites in Smiths Bible Dictionary

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. 1. In Ge 10:18-20 the seats of the Canaanite tribe are given as on the seashore and in the Jordan valley; comp. Jos 11:3 2. 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, Ge 12:6; Nu 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.