The Girgashites were a group of people descended from Ham and his son Canaan (Genesis 10:16; 1 Chronicles 1:14). Being dwellers in the land of Canaan before the Israelites took possession of it, the Girgashites are listed among the groups of people that the Lord promised to drive out (Deuteronomy 7:1–2; Joshua 3:10). God had promised Abram’s descendants the land of Canaan: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites’” (Genesis 15:18–21).