The Canaanites were already in the land by the time Abraham got there. I want you to see that God brought His called-out one Abraham from Babylon (a type of the world) and later Abraham's descendants - Israel - from Egypt (a type of sin) to this same land that He was eventually going to give to all His called-out ones as their inheritance - the land of Eden. Do you see how everything eventually comes full circle?
This understanding adds to the evidence that Eden was located in the land of inheritance, but in Abraham's day and for centuries following that land was called Canaan because these descendants of Ham had migrated there from Ararat and from Mesopotamia, and they named it after their ancestor, Canaan.
Now from Genesis 12 on, except for brief prophetic trips into other geographic areas, the entire Bible history focuses on this land, and most specifically on a particular area of this land - Jerusalem - and thus there is no way the Bible can be used to support Mesopotamia as being the starting point and focus of man's history. Rather, the Bible shows God beginning His entire program in one specific location, unfolding the progress of one family - the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - from their physical beginnings through their spiritual conversion.
The story includes the Savior who was born to one of those families - the family of Judah. He is crucified, but is resurrected, and departs to heaven from where? From the Mount of Olives, as it says in Acts 1:9-12. And when He returns to earth, where are His feet going to touch down? Zechariah 14:4 establishes that His feet will touch down on the same Mount of Olives, and from there He will begin His Kingdom, centering on the same location where the entire many millennia-long program began.
So from beginning to end, this one specific location is the center of God's continuing development of the entire creation. We are going to continue to add more and more, because it really becomes impressive.
In Genesis 2:10-13, it speaks about the names of the rivers that flowed out from the river that flowed out of Eden. There is one specific one - the Gihon. Researchers tend to believe that this Gihon is the well-known Nile River because of the mention of Ethiopia. That may be possible, but also remember that the Flood vastly changed some geographical configurations. However, this place-name turns up in an interesting way.
It is no wonder, brethren, that Genesis 13:2 says that Abraham was very rich. In addition, Lot was not all that far away, and there is a possibility that Lot and some of his people were also part of that group. There is also a possibility that there were others besides Abraham and Lot's group who may have been worshipping the Most High God. You will recall in Genesis 12:6 it tells us that when Abraham came into the land, the Canaanites were already there.
The Canaanites were descendants of Ham, Noah's son, and thus it is entirely possible that descendants of Shem, who did worship the Most High God, also settled there rather than in Babylon following the Flood. Remember that these people very likely knew where Eden was located, and this knowledge might have drawn them into that area; thus Abraham, who was called by God from the area of Babylon, was then sent to the land that became the Promised Land to be those people's human leader, and thus the presence of Melchizedek and Abraham's familiarity with Him. There is a lot there for just a couple of lines, but that possibility is strong because of Melchizedek's presence there.
Now recall that Abraham had left the land of Ur and that was in Babylonia, so God had actually called him out of Babylon, just like He has called us out of spiritual Babylon. So He called them out of Babylonia and they traveled to a place called Haran and after Abram's father died, God tells him to leave Haran and he is to go where God is going to give to his seed. So where does he go? He goes to Shechem.
Now Shechem was actually located in a narrow sheltered valley between Mount Ebal (also known as the mount of cursing) and Mount Gerizim (also known as the mount of blessing) and at their base they are about 500 yards apart. It was there that Abraham received the first divine promise and he built an altar of stones to the Lord. Now let us move forward a little bit to Joshua 3.
