15 16 And God spoke to Noah, saying: Go forth from the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and the wives of thy sons, 17 with thee. Every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, of fowl, and of cattle, and of every reptile that creeps upon the earth, bring forth with thee, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.

18

And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and the 19 wives of his sons, with him. Every living thing, every reptile, every fowl, all that moves upon the earth, after their families, went forth from the ark.

20 And Noah built an altar to Jehovah. And he took of all clean cattle, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offer21 ings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the sweet odor. And Jehovah said in his heart: I will not again curse the ground on account of man, for the device of the heart of man is evil from his youth; and I will not again smite every living thing, as I have done. During all the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.

22

he could carry into effect any plan he devised for continuing the race of man and all other animals. In what manner it was done, is a fair question of interpretation.

Of the moral significance of this event, in the world's history, there can be no question; nor is it possible to estimate the influence of such a fact, handed down through the nations by tradition and revelation. It has everywhere testified to the truth, "There is a God that judges in the earth;" and the record of it can not be effaced from the world's literature, or from the minds of men.

VV. 20-22. The new era of the race commences more auspiciously than the first, with acts of piety and devotion, and with the solemn recognition of man's guilt, and of the atoning sacrifice. On this is founded the gracious purpose toward the new race, expressed in vv. 21, 22.

V. 20. The altar, and burnt-offerings, are here mentioned for the first time. For the latter, compare Lev. ch. 1.

V. 21. Smelled the sweet odor. The thought is expressed under a physical image. It was, of course, the spiritual significance of the offering that made it acceptable in the sight of God.

Said in his heart; purposed within himself. It is significant that this purpose, regarding the future of the race, is expressed in connection with Noah's act of faith, and with his accepted offering.

For the device, etc., has been thought to be the reason for the promised forbearance; which appears, however, to be inconsistent with itself, and with what is said in ch. 6: 5-7. The words seem rather intended to show, that this lenity is undeserved forbearance toward man. The connection of thought is: "I will not again curse the ground on account of man,"-for that only does he deserve,-" for the device of the heart of man is evil from his youth."

V. 22. Sowing and reaping, etc. By these are not meant divisions of the year, as some have regarded them. The principal occupations on which men depend for subsistence, and the alternations of temperature and of the seasons, with which these are necessarily connected, and of day and night, are specified, in order to show that the course of nature should ever after be regular and unbroken.

1 AND God blessed Noah and his sons; and he said to 2 them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the heavens, upon all with which the ground teems, and upon all the fishes of 3 the sea; into your hand are they given. Every moving thing that lives, to you shall it be for food; as the green 4 herb have I given you all. But flesh with its life, its blood, ye shall not eat.

5

But also your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of each one's brother will I require the 6 life of man. He that sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he

man.

Ch. 93. Here is the first express permission of the use of animal food. That it was already allowed can not be inferred from the dominion given to man over the lower animals, nor from the keeping of flocks (as in the case of Abel, ch. 4 : 2), which furnished milk and material for clothing, and were offered in sacrifice (ch. 4 : 4). If animal food was used, as is not improbable, it was done without divine permission.

V. 4. In regard to the blood, there are two restrictions. In this verse, the eating of blood is prohibited; "flesh with its life, its blood, ye shall not eat." For the ground of the prohibition see Lev. 17: 11; the principle of life being contained in the blood, it was to be offered on the altar, "to make atonement for the soul," and was sacred to this use.

V. 5. But also; a further restriction, in regard to the blood of man. The blood of beasts may be shed, in sacrifices, and for the use of their flesh as food. But your blood shall not be shed, by man or beast, on penalty of death.

Your blood of your lives; that is, in which your life resides, or with which it is connected. At the hand of every beast will I require it. Compare Exod. 21: 28. Such is the sacredness of human life in the eye of God. It is not meant that the beast is morally guilty, or capable of being so; but the sanctity of human life must be vindicated by the death of its destroyer.

At the hand of each one's brother will I require the life of man. The obvious sense of the words is: For the life of every man I will hold his brother man accountable. Here is an accountability beyond the person of the manslayer. What that accountability is, is expressed in the following verse.

V. 6. He that sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. Such is the accountability to which God holds man for the blood of his fellow-man; as he has said in the preceding verse, "at the hand of each one's brother will I require the life of man." The reason for this requirement is added: For in the image of God made he man. He that violates the sacredness of that image in his fellow-man, shall forfeit it in himself.

Unquestionably, God here requires that the murderer shall be punished with death, and holds men guilty who disregard the requirement. If he intended by these words (as they are sometimes evasively interpreted) merely to predict that men would, unauthorized and criminally, put the murderer to death, then they are out of place in the connection with his own requirement in the preceding verse, and he follows them here with a reason for the act ("for in the image of God made he man") that has no force or pertinence.

This was not a requirement of the Jewish law, to be abolished with it. It was made binding on all the races of men, descendants of Noah, and has never been revoked.

7

8

And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; and bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

And God spoke to Noah, and to his sons with him, saying And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and 10 with your seed after you; and with every living being that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; of all that go forth from the ark of 11 every beast of the earth. And I establish my covenant with you; and all flesh shall not again be cut off by the waters of a flood, and there shall not again be a flood to destroy the earth.

12

And God said: This is a sign of the covenant which I make between me and you, and every living being that is 13 with you, for perpetual generations. My bow I set in the

cloud, and it shall be for a covenant-sign between me and 14 the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud. 15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me

and you, and every living being of all flesh; and the waters 16 shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will see it, to remember the perpetual covenant between God and every living being 17 of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said to Noah : This is a sign of the covenant which I establish between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

18

And the sons of Noah, who went forth from the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth. And Ham was the father of 19 Canaan, These were the three sons of Noah; and from these was the whole earth overspread.

20

And Noah, the husbandman, began and planted a vine

V. 11. Or, I will maintain my covenant

V. 13. My bow I set in the cloud. Its previous occurrence was no reason why God should not make it a sign of his covenant; and these words do not imply that it had never been seen before. He sets his bow in the cloud, whenever it is seen there. It is not permanent and abiding, but occasional; and whenever it is seen in the cloud, he sets it there, as a covenant-sign; and the words, "My bow I set in the cloud," belong to every such appearance.

VV. 20-23. The impartiality and truthfulness of the narrative are shown by the freedom with which it exposes the faults of the most distinguished and highly commended of the personages whose lives it records. If there were extenuating circumstances in this case of Noah, as there probably were, they are unknown to us, and it is useless to conjecture them. It is better (as

21 yard. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he 22 uncovered himself within his tent. And Ham, the father of

Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father; and he told it to 23 his two brothers without. And Shem and Japheth took the mantle, and laid it on the shoulders of them both, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and the nakedness of their father they did not see.

24

25

26

And Noah awoke from his wine; and he knew what his younger son did to him. And he said:

Cursed be Canaan ;

A servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.
And he said :

Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem;

And let Canaan be servant to him.

27

God give enlargement to Japheth,

And he will dwell in the tents of Shem;

And let Canaan be servant to him.

remarked by Calvin) to leave them out of the question, and to learn rather, from this sad record, how vile and detestable a thing is drunkenness.

V. 20. Began and planted a vineyard; either made this his first occupation as a husbandman, or was the first who practiced this mode of husbandry.

V. 23. The mantle; the large square garment, worn over the shoulders and covering the whole body. It was also used at night, as a covering in sleep. See Ex. 22: 26, 27, and Deut. 24: 12, 13, where it should be rendered mantle, and not raiment. The definite article (the mantle) designates a garment of a particular kind.

VV. 25-27. In these predictions (having the form of poetry in the Hebrew) there are two divisions; the first containing the curse upon Canaan, the second the blessings on his two brothers; the former, for greater emphasis, being repeated after each of the two latter.

V. 25. Cursed be Canaan. The language is prophetic; anticipating, by a divinely given foresight, the future character and destiny of this line of Ham's posterity. These did not follow as consequences of the curse here pronounced, but were prophetically anticipated by it.

Canaan alone, not all the posterity of Ham, is the subject of it. See the list of his descendants in ch. 10: 15-19, It was among them that the worst forms of idolatry prevailed, with all its nameless abominations and horrible atrocities, calling down the judgment of heaven here predicted.

V. 26. A beautiful turn is given to the blessing on Shem; namely, Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem! This special relation to the Divine Being, with all its inestimable privileges, is thus indirectly and beautifully summed up, in a burst of grateful praise.

V. 27. Japheth means spreading abroad, enlargement.

He will dwell. It is a question whether Japheth is meant here; or whether he, the subject of this clause, refers to God, the subject of the preceding one.

This statement of the question shows, that one reference is grammatically as probable as the other. But the fact that Japheth is the object of blessing here, and the repetition of the words, "let Canaan be servant to him," seem to favor the former reference.

On the other hand, it is not unnatural that the patriarch, in blessing Japheth with unbounded enlargement, should revert to the favored lot of Shem in his narrower bounds, and should therefore say: God give enlargement to Japheth; and he will dwell in the tents of Shem,—his abiding

28 And Noah lived, after the flood, three hundred and fifty 29 years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years; and he died.

1 AND these are the generations of the sons of Noah; Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and to them were born sons after the flood.

2

The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, 3 and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the place, where he manifests his presence, will be there. The repetition, "let Canaan be servant to him," is not strange, since this belongs essentially to the blessing pronounced on Shem.

To this use of the words, He will dwell, it is objected, that the name Jehovah is the one under which God holds this relation to his people. But not exclusively; and his relation to them is quite as often spoken of under the more general name. It is further objected, that God is said to dwell in his tabernacle, on his holy hill, on Zion among the children of Israel, but never in the tents of Israel. This is good special pleading, but no argument. The idea to be expressed is, that God will dwell with his chosen people; and for this there is no more suitable expression than the one here used.

If Japheth is understood to be the subject of this clause, then the words, dwell in the tents of Shem, do not mean conquest and subjection of his territory, of which they are no suitable expression, but rather participation in the privileges and blessings of his lot, as of one admitted to his fireside. The same promise is expressed under another form, in ch. 12: 3, and more nearly under the form here used, in Isaiah 2: 2, 3.

Chs. 10, 11. Third division: Brief notices of the general history of man, from the Flood to the calling of Abraham.

Ch. 10. Population of the earth by Noah's descendants.

This ancient ethnographic table is of great historical value, and has engaged the attention of many eminent scholars. Its statements are wonderfully comprehensive, and are found to be exact to the minutest details, so far as our knowledge from other sources enables us to verify them. By its aid we can trace satisfactorily the origin of many different nations, and their relation to each other.

The name of the founder of each race is usually given; but occasionally the gentilic name of the race itself (as Jebusite, etc., v. 16 and following), and with the Hebrew plural ending (im), designating the people, and sometimes also the country to which they gave the name, as Kittim, Dodanim in v. 4, Mizraim in v. 6, and Philistim in v. 14.

For the sake of uniformity in the table, the Hebrew plural ending (im) is retained throughout, though in some instances (Philistim, for example) the English plural ending is elsewhere used, as in ch. 21: 32.

In the division of the earth, according to the table, the descendants of Japheth occupied by far the largest portion, on the north and west; those of Shem the middle portion, being a comparatively small tract of western Asia; those of Ham the southern part, though they are found at some points of the tract occupied by Shem's descendants.

VV.2-4. Gomer; ancestor of the Cimmerian (properly, Kimmerian*) race, whose earliest known seat was around the lake Mæotis (Sea of Azof), whence they passed into western Asia, and middle and northwestern Europe. Traces of the name are seen in the ancient Cimmerian (Kimmerian) Bosphorus, etc., and in the modern Crimea. It is probably identical with Gimiri in cuneiform inscriptions of the age of Darius. The same name appears in the Welsh Kymry (Cymry) unaltered; and in Cimbri, and the Cimbrian Chersonese (Denmark) by the euphonic insertion of b between the liquids m and r, as in Cambria and Cumber-land. The Celtic races, which have overspread so large a part of Europe, are from this source.

His sons were Ashkenaz, not identified with certainty, originally in the neighborhood of

* The consonant elements, g (and k, both palatals), m, r, are the same in both words, and the k is represented by c (originally the same sound) in the other examples.