Genesis 10:6-20 comments: sons of Ham

Genesis 10:6 ¶  And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan. 7  And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan. 8  And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. 9  He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. 10  And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11  Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, 12  And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city. 13  And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim, 14  And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.

Ham’s sons included Cush. Cush has long been associated with the region of the Sudan and Ethiopia south of Egypt. The word is translated as Ethiopia in a number of places. See Ezekiel 29:10. The kingdom of Cush was located in the area of Nubia in Northern Sudan.

Mizraim lends his name to the Hebrew name for Egypt.

Genesis 50:11  And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan.

Mizraim’s son Casluhim gives birth to the Philistine culture. So, the Philistines were related to the Egyptians.

Phut, eventually lived between Egypt and Canaan, perhaps, but the Jewish historical writer, Josephus, names the people of Phut as the founders of ancient Libya.

Canaan, as we know from extensive writing in the Bible, lived in what we call Palestine and environs.

But, none of these geographical relationships are yet established. Remember, that everyone is still together, still pretty much probably brown-skinned, dark-haired, and brown-eyed, speaking one language moving about in the region of the ancient Near East.

The most notable of Cush’s sons was the first ancient conqueror, a man who brought people together, you might say. His name was Nimrod. He is said to be a mighty one in the earth and a mighty hunter before the Lord. At least one myth I have read details that he led people in defense against the great proliferation of predators, lions and such, after the Flood, therefore justifying the hunter epithet. Whatever the case we will see such a thing again as per Revelation 6:8. Nimrod would represent the first great empire as a type of the end-time Antichrist, the beast of Revelation.

Nimrod founds four cities of note in the land of Shinar, which is where we will soon see that the families of Noah journeyed after leaving the Ark. Shinar is the ancient name for the region of Babylonia. (See Daniel 1:1,2) Think of the area centered on Iraq today. Nimrod, Cush’s son, builds Babel in the south while Asshur, Shem’s son, builds Nineveh, which will become the capital of Assyria, the northern part of the culture that includes Babylon.

Nimrod will live on in various attributes of hunter-gods such as Artemis in Greece. Legends about him and other pre-Babel persons will make them deified over time and they will be viewed as male or female, sometimes both. Call it the memory of the human race, if you will, but these figures will become archetypes in our mythologies, histories, and cultures.

The world of men is one, united in culture, language, and color.

Genesis 10:15 ¶  And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, 16  And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, 17  And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, 18  And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad. 19  And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha. 20  These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.

As Canaan is of particular noteworthiness due to the prophecy of him being cursed and the way it plays out in Biblical history this passage is devoted to him. We can see how Israel interacted with some of these families and tribes in the Bible.

Sidon is also called Zidon, both translated from the same word.

1Chronicles 1:13  And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn…

Sidon/Zidon is known as a city of Phoenicia, whose merchants will spread the alphabet from what is called Proto-Canaanite script, that plays such a part in the Exodus, as in God giving His Law, creating the writing that contrasted with the pictograms of hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing that dominated the ancient world. The basic units of writing, the letters, become symbols for ideas rather than pictures representing things to be worshipped as idols. ‘A’, instead of a symbol for a bull or an ox, is Aleph in Hebrew and Alpha in Greek, and ‘A’ for modern purposes. A good study for this is Marc A. Ouaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet.

The Phoenicians spread the alphabet, and their pernicious religious practices even to the sacrificing of 300 babies to Baal in one day in Carthage as a plea to that devil to end a Roman siege, probably started during their sojourn in Babel or Babylon, sailing around the world, trading from England to Somalia to Australia, and perhaps even the Americas based on some limited archaeological evidence of Phoenician coins and other things. Early American Christians believed that the Native Americans of the east coast, at least, were descendants of Canaanites, as some of them wrote.

Isaiah 23:2  Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished.

A descendant of Heth is a Hittite.

Genesis 23:10  And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying,

2Samuel 11:3  And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

The Jebusites would eventually inhabit Jerusalem.

Joshua 15:63  As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.

The Canaanites, in developing their religion that included temple prostitutes called whores, depending on the context, for women and sodomites for men, in practicing bestiality, child sacrifice, and other abominations, will have been condemned in God’s foresight as inheritors of their ancestor, Ham’s, notorious character.

Deuteronomy 23:17  There shall be no whore [female temple prostitute] of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite [male temple prostitute] of the sons of Israel. 18  Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog [slang for a male temple prostitute as per the context], into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.