HAM
41
HAM
8. The Sinife (Josephus ^eivaloi;) probably dwelt near I his brother, the iVrkite, on the moimtain fortress of Siv- vcic, mentioned by Strabo (xv, 755) and by Jerome.
{). The .1 rcadite (Josephus ' Apovcaloq) is mentioned by Josephus as occupying an island which was very cel- ebrated in Phoenician history. (Strabo describes it in xvi, 75o.) '■ The men of .1 rvad" are celebrated by Ezek. xxvii, 8, 11. See Arvad.
10. The Zemarite (Josci^uis Sft/Kapfaof) inhabited the town of Sbnyra (liii.ivpa, mentioned by Strabo), near the river Eleutherus, at the western extremity of the mountains of Lebanon; extensive ruins of this city !ire found at the present day bearing the name of Sum- rah.
11. The Ilamathite (Josephus AnnSiioQ). "The en- tering in of JIamutIi' indicates the extreme northern frontier of the Holy Land, as " the river of Egypt" does its southernmost limit (1 Kings viii, Go sq.).
In the \-crse tbllowing the enumeration of these names, the sacred writer says, " Afterwards were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad." This seems to indicate subsequent conquests made by them previous to their own subjugation by the Israelites. " To show the great goodness of Ciod towards Israel," says the Jewish com- mentator Mendelssohn, " jNIoses records in Gen. x the original narrow limits of the land possessed by the Ca- naanites, which they were permitted to extend by con- quest from the neighboring nations, and that (as in the case of the Amorite Sihon, Numb, xxi, 2G) up to the very time when Israel was ready to take possession of the whole. To prepare his readers for the great increase of tlic Canaanitish dominions, the sacred historian (in this early chapter, where he mentions their original boundaries) takes care to state that subsecpicntly to their .primitive occupation of the land, ' the families of the Canaanites spread abroad,' until their boundaries be- came such as are described in Numbers xxxiv." The Hamathites alone of those identified were settled in ear- ly times wholly beyond the laud of Canaan. Perhaps there was a primeval extension of the Canaanitish tribe: after their first establishment in the laud called after their ancestor. One of their most important extensions was to the north-east, where was a great branch of the Hittite nation in the valley of the Orontes, constantly mentioned in the Avars of the Pharaohs, and in those of the kings of Assyria. Two passages which have occa- sioned much controversy may here be noticed. In the account of Abraham's entrance into Palestine it is said, "And the Canaanite [wasj then in the land" (Gen. xii, 6) ; and as to a somewhat later time, that of the separa- tion of Abraham and Lot, we read that '-the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt then in the land" (xiii,7). These passages have been supposed either to be late glosses, or to indicate that the Pentateuch was written at a late period. A comparison of all the passages referring to the primitive history of Palestine and Idumoea shows that there was an earlier population expelled by the Hamitlc and Abrahamite settlers. This population was important in the time of the war of Chedorlaomer ; but at the Exodus, more than four hundred years after- wards, there was but a remnant of it. It is most nat- ural, therefore, to infer that the two passages under con- sideration mean that the Canaanitish settlers were al- ready in the land, not that they were still there.
(^.General Characteristics. — Such were Ham and his family, notwithstanding the stigma which adhered to that section of them which came into the nearest rela- tion to the Israelites aftenvards; they were the most en- ergetic of the descendants of Noah in the early ages of the postdiluvian world — at least we have a fuller de- scription of their enterprise than of their brethren's as cUsplayed in the jjrimitive ages. The development of empire among the Euphratean Cushites was a step much in advance of the rest of mankind in political or- ganization ; nor was the grandson of Harh less conspicu- ous as a conqueror. The only coherent interpretation of the important passage which is contained in Gen. x.
10-12, is that which is adopted in the margin of the A. V. After Nimrod had laid the foundation of his empire (■' the beginning of his kingdom," in^biap ^l"l^^<'^, the territory of which it was at first composed — comp. Hos. ix, 10, " as the first ripe in the fig-tree Pin'itJX^a at her first time," that is, when the tree first begins to bear — Gesen.) in his native Shinar, not satisfied with the splendid acquisitions which he took at first, no doubt, from his own kinsmen, he invaded the north-eastern coimtries, where the children of Shcm were for the first time disturbed in their patriarchal simplicity : " Out of that land [even Shinar, Nimrod] went forth to Asshur [or Assyria], and builded Nuieveh, and the city Keho- both, and Calah, and Kesen, between Nineveh and Ca- lah ; the same is a great city," i. e. the combination of ' the forementioned four formed, with their interjacent spaces, the "great city." (The objection to this ren- dering is based by Eosenmiiller [JSchvI. ad loc), after other commentators, on the absence of the )! "local" ap- pended to "Tni'X [which they say ought to be iT^ViX to produce the meaning to Assyria^. The M "local" is, however, far from indispensable for the sense we re- quire, which has been advocated by authorities of great value well versed in Hebrew construction ; Knobel [who himself holds our view] mentions Onkelos,Targ.Jonath., Bochart, Clericus, De Wette, Tuch, Baumgarten, Dc- litzsch, as supporting it. He might have added Jose- phus, who makes Nimrod the builder of Babylon [Ant. i, 4], and Kalisch, and Keil. To make the passage Gen. X, 10-12 descriptive of the Shemitic Asshur, is to do vio- lence to the passage itself and its context. Asshur, morever, is mentioned in his projier place in ver. 22, without, however, the least indication of an intention of describing him as the foimder of a rival empire to that of Nimrod. Gesenius admits the probability of our view, without any objection of grammatical structure. [See, for instances of the accus. noun (without the suflix of " local" il)- after verbs of motion. Numb, xxxiv, 4 ; Gen. xxxiii, 18 ; 2 Chron. xx, 36. Compare Gesenius, Gram. p. 130, 172, and Nordheimer's Grain, sec. 841].) This is the opinion of Knobel, answering to the'theory which has connected the ruins of Khorsabad, Koyunjik, Nimrud, and Kerendis together as the remains of a vast quadrilateral city. \)v] lularly called Nuieveh. (For a dif- ferent view of the whole subject the reader is referred to jMr. Eawlinson's recent volume on The Five Great Jfona7xkies, i, 311-315.) But the genius which mould- ed imperial power at first, did not avail to retain it long ; the sceptre, before many ages, passed to the race of • Shem (for the Shemitic character of the Arabian tribes who crushed the primitive Cushite poAver of Babylon, see Rawlinson, Great Empires, i, 222, 223. The Arabian Hamites of Yemen seem also to have merged, probablj'- by conquest, into a Joktanite population of Shemitic de- scent [see for these Gen. x, 25-29, and Assemani, Bihl. Orient. Ill, ii, 553, 544]), except in Africa, where Miz- raim's descendants had a longer tenure of the Egyptian monarchy. It is well to bear in mind (and the more so, inasmuch as a different theory has here greatly obsciu-ed plain historic truth) that in the primeval Cushite em- pire of Babylon considerable progress was made in the arts of civilized .society (an early allusion to which is made in Josh, vii, 21 ; and a later in Dan. i, 4 : see Baw- linson. First Monarchif, chap. v).