The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 232

EXPOSITION. enabling him to trace the descent of the CHAPTER :X. woman's seed, and to mark the fulfilments ot It is impossible to exaggerate the import- Scripture prophecies concerning the nations ance of this ethnological table. Whether of the earth. In the interpretation of the regarded from a geographical, a political, or names which are here recorded, it is obviously a theocratical standpoint, "this unparalleled impossible in every instance to arrive at liet, the combined result of reflection and certainty, in some cases the names of indi- .ieep research," is '' no less valuable ns a viduals being mentioned, while in others historical document than II.!! a las~ nroof it is as conspicuously those of peoples. of the brilliant capacity of the Hebrew mind." Undoubtedly the earliest effort of Ver. 1.-Now these are the generations the human intellect to exhibit in a tabulated of the sons of Noah (cf. eh. v. 1; vi. 9), Shem, Ham, and J'apheth. Not the order of age form the geographical distribution of the but of theocratic importance (vide eh. v. 32). human race, it bears unmistakable witness And unto them were sons bom (cf. eh. ix. in its own strnctnre to its high antiquity, 1, 7, 19, 22) after the flood. An indication occupying imelf least with the Japhetic of the punctum temporis whence the period tribes which were furthest from the theo- embraced in the present section takes its departure. cratic centre, and were latest in attaining Ver. 2.-The sons of J'apheth are first to historic eminence, and enlarging with mentioned not because Japheth was the much greater minuteness of detail on those eldest of the three brothers, althon~h that Hamitic nations, the Egyptian, Canaanite, was true, but because of the greater distance and Arabian, whi~h were soonest de,elopcd, of the J aphetic tribes from the theocratic centre, the Hamites having always been much and with which the Hebrews came most more nearly situated to and closely connected into contact in the initial stages of their with the Shemites than they. The imme- career. It describes the rise of states, and, diate descendants of Japheth, whose name, consistently with all subsequent historical 'Ia1rtTo!:', occurs again in the mythology of and archreological testimony, gives the promi- a Japhetic race, were fourteen m number, seven sons and seven grandsons, each of nence to the Egyptian or Arabian Hamites, which became the progenitor of one of the as the first founders of empires. It exhibits primitive nations. Gomer. A peoplo in- the separation of the Shemites from the habiting "the sides of the north" (Ezok. other sons of Noah, and the budding forth xxxviii. 6); the Galatm of the Greeks (Jose- of the line of promise in the fumily of phus, 'Ant.,' i. 6) ; tho Chomarii, a nation in llactriana on the Oxus (Shulthess, Kalisch); Arphaxad. While thus useful to the geo- but more generally tho Cimmerians of grapher, the historian, the politician, it is Homer (' Odyas.,' xi. 13-19), whoso nbodes ~ially serviceable to the theologian, as were the shores of the Caspian and Euxini, OR, X. 1-82.] THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 157