Canaan fathers Sidon (his firstborn) and the Hittites. Sidon is the ancestor of the Phoenicians — the great maritime trading people of the ancient world, whose cities of Tyre and Sidon will become significant in the prophetic literature and the ministry of Jesus. The Hittites were one of the great ancient Near Eastern empires, a major political power whose presence in Canaan is confirmed by archaeological evidence. Abraham will purchase the cave of Machpelah from a Hittite (Genesis 23), and the Hittites are among the peoples in Canaan that Israel will encounter. Ezekiel 16:3 uses the founding origin of Jerusalem — with Amorite and Hittite ancestry — as part of a metaphor for Israel's own mixed origins. Jesus ministered in the region of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15:21) and praised the faith of a Canaanite woman — a descendant of Canaan himself — as great faith. The table anticipates the healing of what the curse began.

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