4 1 4 Through the Bible with Les Feldick Abraham, Lot, and Melchizedek: Genesis 12-14

Genesis 12:4 "So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him (remember that Lot was his nephew): and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran." Haran was in Syria, a few miles northeast of present day Damascus. So Abram, Sarai, Lot and all their flocks came down into Canaan, presently known as the Promised Land, or the Land of Israel. Genesis 12:5,6 "And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brothers son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land." The Canaanite was the offspring of Ham, the second son of Noah, and Canaan was the son of Ham. The curse was placed on that particular individual. So the Canaanites are going to be a wicked, ungodly people from the very time that Abraham comes into their midst, until finally they are more or less destroyed when Joshua and the children of Israel come in some 400 years later. Remember, however, that the Canaanite is in the Promised Land, and Abram is going to have to move in as a nomad.