Arvadites

The Arvadites appear in the UPDV as one of the descendant-clans of Canaan, named in the Table of Nations and again in the Chronicler's parallel genealogy. They surface a second time in Ezekiel's oracle against Tyre, where the men of Arvad furnish the city with rowers and with wall-defending soldiers. Across these passages the Arvadites are presented as a Canaanite people of the northern coast whose later history runs alongside Tyre's commercial reach.

Descendants of Canaan

In Genesis 10 the Arvadite is listed as one of the clans begotten from Canaan, set in a tri-clan sequence with the Zemarite and the Hamathite, and followed by the note that the Canaanite families spread abroad: "and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanite spread abroad" (Gen 10:18). The Chronicler reproduces the same tri-clan sequence in his opening genealogy, naming the Arvadite together with the Zemarite and the Hamathite: "and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite" (1Ch 1:16). In both rosters the Arvadites stand at the close of Canaan's begetting-list rather than in any independent narrative, so the UPDV's primary identification of this people is genealogical: they are exhibited as a Canaanite descendant-clan named at the Table-of-Nations close, and again in the Chronicler's recapitulation of that same line.

Arvad in the Tyre Oracle

The second body of UPDV material naming the Arvadites occurs within the Ezekiel-27 lament over Tyre, where Arvad supplies two distinct contributions to Tyre's commercial and military strength. First, Arvad is paired with Sidon as the source of Tyre's rowers: "The inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were your rowers: your wise men, O Tyre, were in you, they were your pilots" (Eze 27:8). The verse pairs the two coastal communities at the oars while reserving the pilot-role for Tyre's own wise men. Second, the men of Arvad reappear later in the same oracle as wall-defenders within Tyre's army: "The men of Arvad with your army were on your walls round about, and valorous men were in your towers; they hanged their shields on your walls round about; they have perfected your beauty" (Eze 27:11). The Arvadites here man the city's circuit-wall and hang their shields upon it, a contribution the oracle credits with perfecting Tyre's beauty. Read together, the two Ezekiel verses give Arvad a maritime and a military function in Tyre's economy, and they confirm the Genesis-Chronicler placement of the Arvadites along the Phoenician coast where Sidon and Tyre also lay.