Shadal on Ibn Ezra and "The Canaanites Were Then In The Land"

The verse in Genesis 12:6 states that "The Canaanites were then in the land."

It would seem that there are two possible reasons for this declaration of when the Canaanites were in the land then.

1. Then, as opposed to now, when this text is being presented (which could only be after the Jewish people conquered the land from the Canaanites). This sounds problematic, as will be discussed.

2. The Canaanites had taken over the land from someone else just now, and that had only just occurred when Abraham was passing through the land. (Rashi says this)

In fact, Ibn Ezra submits both these two possibilities:

והכנעני אז בארץ” – יתכן שארץ כנען תפשה כנען מיד אחר. ואם איננו כן יש לו סוד. והמשכיל ידום:

“The Canaanites were then in the land” – possibly that the Land of Canaan had been seized by Canaan from the hands of another.  But if this is not so, it has a secret, and the enlightened will be silent.

The problem with the "secret" is that it really sounds like Ibn Ezra agrees certain verses are post-Mosaic. He references this later, in Deuteronomy 1:2 among other verses:

ואם תבין סוד (השרים) [צ"ל: השנים] עשר, גם ויכתוב משה (דברים לא, כב), והכנעני אז בארץ (ברא’ יב, ו), בהר ד’ יראה (שם כב, יד), והנה ערשו ערש ברזל, (דברים ג, יא) תכיר האמת.

If you understand the secret of the twelve—as well as “and Moses wrote” (Deut. 31:9), “and the Canaanites were then in the land” (Gen. 12:6), “on the mountain God will appear”  (Gen. 22:14), “here is his iron bed” (Deut. 3:11) –  you will recognize the truth.

Much has been spoken about the secret of the twelve. Spinoza popularized the notion that Ibn Ezra believed the latter, and that this was so about the whole of the Torah.

We can understand why the Ibn Ezra would have wanted to keep this consideration - that there could be post-Mosaic verses - a secret.

Shadal has unending admiration for Rashi, and endless criticism for Ibn Ezra (although he does cite him when he agrees with him).

We know that Shadal was very aware of Spinoza's interpretation of Ibn Ezra's "secrets", as he writes in his commentary to Deuteronomy 1:1:

Now that Spinoza's books have already been disseminated in the world… I am forced to state that Spinoza wrote a complete lie… when he said that Ibn Ezra had hintingly written that it was not Moses who wrote the Book of the Torah. It is true that Ibn Ezra alluded, via the hidden wisdom, that there exist in the Torah a few additional verses from after Moses's time, but nowhere in all his words and all his allusions is there any room to regard him as not believing that Moses wrote his book… Spinoza, aside from having made some errors in his studies, also unquestionably spoke duplicitously, and in several places misled his readers, with cunning and guile.

He explains there that Ibn Ezra simply allowed for the possibility, but always gave alternatives because he didn't really accept it fully.

So it is natural that when Shadal is looking at a verse, he will avoid the interpretation that points toward post-Mosaic authorship. How does he interpret our verse under discussion? He writes on Genesis 12:6 (translation Dan Klein):

Because God was about to say, "To your descendants will I give this land," He first let Israel know that even in Abraham's time, that land was in the hands of Canaan, so that they should not think that perhaps in those days it was possessed by some other evil and sinful people, and that God dispossessed that people and gave its land to the Canaanites. If the Israelites believed this, they would have been reluctant to take the land from them, thinking that God had given it to Canaan as an inheritance. Therefore He let them know early on that when He promised the inheritance of the land to Abraham, it was already in the hands of the Canaanites.

In this way, Shadal solves not only the implication of the verse (that instead of them taking it over, or being taken over later, it means they had always been there), but also its purpose here, which seems to me to be the bigger problem. Meaning, Ibn Ezra suggests it means they had taken over the land, but then what is its purpose here in this context? Thus, we have a third option:

3. Not that they weren't in the land before, but that they were always in the land and that God hadn't granted it to them.

Obviously, Scripture does want to inform the Israelites of proper beliefs before entering the land. But that they would be afraid to take over Israel because God may have given it to the Canaanites? This is indeed a strange belief to hold.

I saw an interesting approach in R. Meyuchas ben Eliyahu, 12th century, who says it simply means that the Canaanites were very strong then in the land, implying that by the time Moses was writing the Torah, either they were no longer very strong, or they were just as strong then, but not whether they were there or not. This would be approach number 4:

4. Not that there is any statement about their placement, but how mighty of an army they represented. They used to be mighty, now (at the time of the Torah being presented to the Israelites) not so much.

5. Only the Canaanites were in the land, not all the other nations that would later come.

In 2015, a 5-volume set of Shadal was published by Yonatan Bassi that incorporates manuscripts from students, and early copies before the first publication of Shadal's work. From it, we can see different strata of the development of Shadal's commentary, how his students added and took away for the final copy, and what Shadal perhaps was willing to teach students but not what he was willing to include for a wider audience.

There are a great many difference noted there, for many verses of the Torah. Indeed here, there is a completely different (and much longer commentary) to this verse. The following is a loose translation:

This is one of the verses which the Ibn Ezra thought was not written by Moses, and was instead inserted into the Torah generations later. This is because "az", then, could mean "then and not now", which would indicate the time it is written was when Canaanites were no longer in the land, and thus that would have to be after Moses' death. And if "az" means "then and not before," then you would have to say that the Canaanites took it from another peoples, and this is Rashi's explanation.

(The bolded part was added by one of his students) One can quibble: Even though the Israelites knew that the Canaanites were in the land of Israel, they had to know that even 500 years prior, they were there. But why would Moshe need to tell them this? I say it's because the intent is to tell you that only the Canaanites were in the land at that point, and it wasn't too constricted for Abraham and Lot and their cattle. After some time, the Prizzites also came there and made it more constricted.

Therefore, this verse is only setting up an introduction for what it would write later, (Genesis 13:7) "And the Canaanites and Prizzites were then in the land. 

6. They were there then, but they are there now too

I think this is what Neofiti had in mind. The Targum writes:

 וכנעניא עד כען הוון שריין בארעא 

And the Canaanites til now were living in the land. 

On the other hand, it could be translated:

And the Canaanites until that time were living in the land

Which is to say, they were not anymore once Abraham came in. That can only mean that when Abraham came, he was considered the real owner, and they were not "living in the land" anymore. That would be an interesting take, but I'm not certain it can be backed up.