Why do the lists of the nations of Canaan differ?

Difficult Passages · Numbers in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles

Why do the lists of the nations of Canaan differ?

The lists name the nations as each occasion needs; where the number is given, it is seven, and all seven are named.

The Passages

Exodus 23:23

23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.

1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

The Difficulty

Moses speaks of “seven nations greater and mightier than thou,” and names them: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Deuteronomy 7:1). But Exodus names six, without the Girgashites (Exodus 23:23; 34:11), and the land promised to Abraham is given as that of ten peoples, without the Hivites (Genesis 15:19–21).

The Answer

No list claims to be complete except where it gives the number, and there all seven are named: “seven nations” (Deuteronomy 7:1), named again in Joshua 3:10 and 24:11. Elsewhere the LORD names the chief of them as the occasion needs. Gill, after Aben Ezra, says that in Exodus He named “the most and chiefest” and didn’t trouble to name the least; or that the Girgashites were swallowed up by a stronger nation such as the Amorites; or, as some think, that they had left the land before Israel came.

Genesis 15 is the promise to Abraham, four hundred years before the conquest, given in the names the land’s peoples bore then. It has ten, and three of them, the Kenites, Kenizzites, and Kadmonites, aren’t in the later lists either. The peoples of a land change in four hundred years; each list is true of its own time.

Sources

John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (1763), p. 421, on Exodus 23:23

six nations are only mentioned, though there were seven; the Gergasites are omitted, tho’ added in the Septuagint version; and this omission of them might be, either because they were swallowed up by one or other of the other nations, particularly the Amorites, who were the most powerful; or rather, having mentioned the most and chiefest, the Lord was not careful, as Aben Ezra observes, to take notice of the least

Checked against: Internet Archive scan of the first edition, 2026-10-28
John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (1763), p. 486, on Exodus 34:11

six nations are only mentioned, though there were seven, the Gergasites being omitted, because either they left the land before, as some think, or because they at once submitted

Checked against: Internet Archive scan of the first edition, 2026-10-28