HALYBURTON, THOMAS (1674-1712), Scottish divine, was born at Dupplin, near Perth, on the 25th of December 1674. His father, one of the ejected ministers, having died in 1682, he was taken by his mother in 1685 to Rotterdam to escape persecution, where he for some time attended the school founded by Erasmus. On his return to his native country in 1687 he completed his elementary education at Perth and Edinburgh, and in 1696 graduated at the university of St Andrews. In 1700 he was ordained minister of the parish of Ceres, and in 1710 he was recommended by the synod of Fife for the chair of theology in St Leonard’s College, St Andrews, to which accordingly he was appointed by Queen Anne. After a brief term of active professorial life he died from the effects of overwork in 1712.
The works by which he continues to be known were all of them published after his death. Wesley and Whitefield were accustomed to commend them to their followers. They were published as follows: Natural Religion Insufficient, and Revealed Religion Necessary, to Man’s Happiness in his Present State (1714), an able statement of the orthodox Calvinistic criticism of the deism of Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Charles Blount; Memoirs of the Life of Mr Thomas Halyburton (1715), three parts by his own hand, the fourth from his diary by another hand; The Great Concern of Salvation (1721), with a word of commendation by I. Watts; Ten Sermons Preached Before and After the Lord’s Supper (1722); The Unpardonable Sin Against the Holy Ghost (1784). See Halyburton’s Memoirs (1714).
HAM, in the Bible. (1) חם, Ḥām, in Gen. v. 32, vi. 10, vii. 13, ix. 18, x. 5, 1 Chron. i. 4, the second son of Noah; in Gen. ix. 24, the youngest son (but cf. below); and in Gen. x. 6, 1 Chron. i. 8, the father of Cush (Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Phut and Canaan. Genesis x. exhibits in the form of genealogies the political, racial and geographical relations of the peoples known to Israel; as it was compiled from various sources and has been more than once edited, it does not exactly represent the situation at any given date,[1] but Ham seems to stand roughly for the south-western division of the world as known to Israel, which division was regarded as the natural sphere of influence of Egypt. Ham is held to be the Egyptian word Khem (black) which was the native name of Egypt; thus in Pss. lxxviii. 51, cv. 23, 27, cvi. 22, Ham = Egypt. In Gen. ix. 20-26 Canaan was originally the third son of Noah and the villain of the story. Ham is a later addition to harmonize with other passages.
(2) חם, Ḥām, 1 Chron. iv. 40, apparently the name of a place or tribe. It can hardly be identical with (1); nothing else is known of this second Ham, which may be a scribe’s error; the Syriac version rejects the name.
(3) חם, Ḥam, Gen. xiv. 5; the place where Chedorlaomer defeated the Zuzim, apparently in eastern Palestine. The place is unknown, and the name may be a scribe’s error, perhaps for Ammon.
(W. H. Be.)