2. The prophecy of Noah.
In Gen. 9: 25–27 we have the first of those patriarchal utterances of prophetic sort, in various strain—blessing and not blessing—of which several examples occur subsequently, as in the case of Jacob (Gen. 49: 1–27); Moses (Deut. 33: 1–29). The form is thoroughly that of Hebrew poetry—the brief parallelism of sentiment and language being the prominent feature.——The circumstances which called out these prophetic words are given briefly in the narrative. Noah having come forth from the ark soon commenced the culture of the vine and experimented (unfortunately) in the free use of its wine. While he lay overcome and personally exposed in his tent, his younger son Ham, lost to all sense of filial duty, reported the sad spectacle. Shem and Japheth,with filial pity and with the most delicate modesty, covered his shame. When Noah awoke to consciousness and came to know what his younger son had done unto him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren. Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem, and let Canaan be servant to them. Let God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be servant to them.”——It had been previously said (v. 18), that “Ham was the father of Canaan.” What part, if any, Canaan bore in this transaction, that the curse apparently due to Ham should fall so specially on him, the narrative does not say. The offense of Ham lay in the line of his relation as a son. Perhaps it was for this reason that his punishment lay in the humiliation of his son. Be this as it may, the words were prophetic of the future relations of the posterity of Canaan to the posterity of both Shem and Japheth. The devoted nations of Canaan were terribly exterminated by the Hebrew people, sons of Shem; the remnant (e. g. the Gibeonites) were made hewers of wood and drawers of water; and in the age of Solomon, were subjected to the most severe labors. See Josh. 9: 20–27, and 2 Chron. 2: 17, 18 and 1 Chron. 22: 2.
When Noah’s prophetic eye fell on Shem, the blessings that rose to his view were too rich and grand for description. He could only give utterance to his grateful emotions and thanksgivings in the words—“Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem”! Blessed be Jehovah, the God of the covenant with his professed people, the God of all blessings, of ever-enduring love and faithfulness! What will he not do for his chosen people, brought into relations to himself so near and so dear!——In this line the sweep of his prophetic eye took in the Hebrew race—Abraham and the patriarchs; Moses and the pious kings and holy prophets; and above all, the Great Messiah—to be born of David’s line and to be the incarnation of God’s mercy to a lost world. No wonder his soul was moved to devoutest adoration—Blessed be Jehovah who reveals himself as the God of Shem!
Of Japheth he predicts enlargement in the sense of a numerous offspring—“God shall enlarge,” i. e. multiply “Japheth,” with a play on the significance of his name which signifies the enlarged one. God will verify his name and enlarge the enlarged son; in Hebrew phrase,will Japhetize Japheth.——In the last clause of this verse, the original leaves us in doubt whether the subject of the verb is God or Japheth. Grammatically it might be either—God shall dwell, or Japheth shall dwell, in the tents of Shem. In favor of making Japheth the subject are these considerations:—(a.) The verse preceding gives the prophetic destiny of Shem; this, of Japheth.——(b.) The expression is not altogether apposite when applied to God, for although God dwelt in the Hebrew temple and dwells by his Spirit in the bodies of his people, yet he is not elsewhere said to dwell in the tents of his people. The phrase leads the mind to such dwelling as may be said of men but is not said of God.——Applied to Japheth it had a most apposite and beautiful fulfillment when the Gentile races of Japheth came in as proselytes to the Hebrew communion, but far more when in the Christian age, the Jews were broken off from the old stock that the Gentiles might be grafted in, and they were; and may be almost said to have taken possession of the deserted tents of Shem as their own through all the Christian centuries to this hour. All Protestant Christendom is this day of Japheth’s line, fully at home in the tents of Shem.
A very extraordinary case of the wresting of Scripture to make it justify crime—so great a crime as the enslaving of men—is the attempt to force from this prophecy concerning Canaan a vindication of the enslaving of Africans by Americans. The wresting appears in these two broad facts:—(a.) That the Africans were not Canaanites, and therefore the prophecy said nothing about the negro race. Admitting for argument’s sake that it justified the enslaving of Canaanites, it did not in the least justify the enslaving of African negroes.——(b.) If the passage had named the African negro instead of the Canaanite, even then a prediction of what shall be might fall very far short of being a command as to what man ought to do. Prophetic predictions of war form not the least justification of war—fall utterly short of a divine command enjoining man’s duty. Predictions of the Savior’s death could never justify his murderers.
3. The genealogy of the great historic nations.
In Gen. 10 the Bible for once departs from its usualmethod and gives a chapter of universal history—the only one. Elsewhere it traces the history of the one nation which had “the oracles of God,” and in later ages, of the Christian church, touching the nations of the outside world only as they come into relations to the seed of Abraham or to the kingdom of Christ. But here we see the sons of Noah branching out to people the countries of the great Eastern Continent and to found the old historic nations of the earth.——Japheth whom Prophecy was to “enlarge” (Gen. 9: 27) furnished the tribes from which grew the great nations of Northern and Eastern Asia and for the whole of Europe. At first they occupied the maritime regions bordering on the Caspian, Black and Mediterranean Seas, spoken of here as “the isles of the Gentiles”—conforming to the Hebrew usage which called all maritime countries “isles.”——Next we have the sons of Ham, among whom were Nimrod, the builder of Babel; Mizraim with his seven sons who himself gave name to Egypt; Canaan whose posterity long held Palestine, and several names which appear either in the cities or the tribes of the valley of the Euphrates and of Arabia.——Shem seems to have shared with Ham the possession of the great fertile basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris—the cradle of the race—together with portions of Arabia and in general of South-western Asia.
It is a matter of some interest to know that this remarkable record of the birth of the great nations of antiquity is perfectly sustained by the universal history of all subsequent ages. Whether Chaldean or Phenician, Egyptian or Arabian, Greek or Roman, Mongol or Tartar, Indo-Germanic, Celtic, Belgic or Briton—all find the germ of their nationality in this wonderful chapter, and all concur to swell and substantiate the proof that the human race sprang from Noah and that we have no occasion to look for pre-Adamic men or for tribes that escaped the flood and have no pedigree among the sons of Noah. While it was never the purpose of divine revelation to give to any great extent the universal history of the race, it is proper to note that what it does give bears the divine stamp of truth. All historic science does it homage. All the light that comes up from the comparative study of the languages of the race helps us still to follow the track of the emigratingtribes as they diverged from the ancient home of Noah’s family. The Science of Ethnography begins with this chapter of inspiration, Gen. 10.