CANAAN Canaan was the inheritance which the Israelites won for themselves by the sword.

Their ancestors had already settled in it in patriarchal days.

Abraham "the Hebrew" from Babylonia had bought in it a burying-place near Hebron; Jacob had purchased a field near Shechem, where he could water his flocks from his own spring.

It was the "Promised Land" to which the serfs of the Pharaoh in Goshen looked forward when they should again become free men and find a new home for themselves.
Canaan had ever been the refuge of the Asiatic population of Egypt, the goal at which they aimed when driven out of the land of the Nile.

The Hyksos conquerors from Asia had retreated to Jerusalem when the native Egyptians recovered their independence and had expelled them from their seats in the Delta.