FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
1. _The law against murder and its death-penalty._
When the waters of the great deluge had subsided and Noah and his
family found themselves once more upon the face of the solid earth――an
unpeopled solitude――that which we read in Gen. 9, was beautifully
in place:――“_And God blessed Noah and his sons._” So long imprisoned
in the ark; so long in the presence of this fearful visitation of
a righteous God upon a hopelessly corrupt generation, how naturally
must their view of human life take on a somber hue, and how refreshing
to be assured that the Great God was still their loving Father! “God
blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the
earth,’”――for God would have it filled again with living men. Moreover,
though few and feeble, they need not fear the violence of the animal
creation, for “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every
beast of the earth; ... into your hand are they delivered.” Then by
special provision, apparently never made before, God sanctioned the use
of animal flesh for human food. Yet lest this sanction should make them
dangerously familiar with the shedding of blood, and tend to lesson the
sacredness of human life, God solemnly forbade the use of blood for
food, and then proceeded to ordain that human blood shed by ferocious
animals should be avenged with their life. Then follows special
legislation against murder by guilty human hands: “Whoso sheddeth man’s
blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he
man.”――――That this is precept and not merely prophecy is so apparent
that argument in proof might seem almost an insult to the common
understanding of mankind. Yet the passage has been wrested in this way
from its obvious significance. It should be construed in harmony with
the scope of the context. Note therefore, that its close connection
with the use of animals for the food of man and with the “requiring”
of human blood shed by the violence of beasts compel us to find here
precept and not prediction. Still more does the historic place of this
precept, standing upon the ruins of the old world and in the presence
of the yet unwasted bones of thousands whose wickedness had culminated
in such recklessness of human life that “the earth was filled with
violence.” In the presence of such gigantic iniquity, grown up under
the experiment of pardoning and not punishing the crime of murder and
giving unrestrained license to bloody passion, it was pertinent to
lay a new and more effectual foundation for maintaining the peace of
society and the sacredness of human life. The solemn lessons of the
past required, not a prediction of retributive vengeance under the
social law of self-preservation, but a divine precept demanding it and
enforcing it with its logical reason――that “God made man in his own
image.” You may take the life of the lower animals for no higher cause
than human sustenance――food for man’s wants;――but let no man put forth
his hand against the blood of man, for he bears the very “image of
God.”――――To make this new law the more solemnly impressive, man must
himself be the executioner of this divine behest――“_By man shall his
blood be shed._” Society itself must commit to some of its members this
solemn function and they must take the murderer’s life. Nothing less
can shield the life of man from bloody violence; nothing less will duly
honor God’s image in man.
* * * * *
2. _The prophecy of Noah._
In Gen. 9: 25–27 we have the first of those patriarchal utterances
of prophetic sort, in various strain――blessing and _not_ blessing――of
which several examples occur subsequently, as in the case of Jacob
(Gen. 49: 1–27); Moses (Deut. 33: 1–29). The form is thoroughly that
of Hebrew poetry――the brief parallelism of sentiment and language
being the prominent feature.――――The circumstances which called out
these prophetic words are given briefly in the narrative. Noah having
come forth from the ark soon commenced the culture of the vine and
experimented (unfortunately) in the free use of its wine. While he
lay overcome and personally exposed in his tent, his younger son Ham,
lost to all sense of filial duty, reported the sad spectacle. Shem and
Japheth, with filial pity and with the most delicate modesty, covered
his shame. When Noah awoke to consciousness and came to know what his
younger son had done unto him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of
servants shall he be to his brethren. Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem,
and let Canaan be servant to them. Let God enlarge Japheth, and let him
dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be servant to them.”――――It
had been previously said (v. 18), that “Ham was the father of Canaan.”
What part, if any, Canaan bore in this transaction, that the curse
apparently due to Ham should fall so specially on him, the narrative
does not say. The offense of Ham lay in the line of his relation as
a son. Perhaps it was for this reason that his punishment lay in the
humiliation of _his_ son. Be this as it may, the words were prophetic
of the future relations of the posterity of Canaan to the posterity
of both Shem and Japheth. The devoted nations of Canaan were terribly
exterminated by the Hebrew people, sons of Shem; the remnant (_e. g._
the Gibeonites) were made hewers of wood and drawers of water; and
in the age of Solomon, were subjected to the most severe labors. See
Josh. 9: 20–27, and 2 Chron. 2: 17, 18 and 1 Chron. 22: 2.
When Noah’s prophetic eye fell on Shem, the blessings that rose
to his view were too rich and grand for description. He could only
give utterance to his grateful emotions and thanksgivings in the
words――“Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem”! Blessed be Jehovah, the God
of the covenant with his professed people, the God of all blessings,
of ever-enduring love and faithfulness! What will he not do for
his chosen people, brought into relations to himself so near and so
dear!――――In this line the sweep of his prophetic eye took in the Hebrew
race――Abraham and the patriarchs; Moses and the pious kings and holy
prophets; and above all, the Great Messiah――to be born of David’s line
and to be the incarnation of God’s mercy to a lost world. No wonder his
soul was moved to devoutest adoration――Blessed be Jehovah who reveals
himself as the God of Shem!
Of Japheth he predicts enlargement in the sense of a numerous
offspring――“God shall enlarge,” _i. e. multiply_ “Japheth,” with a play
on the significance of his name which signifies _the enlarged one_. God
will verify his name and enlarge the enlarged son; in Hebrew phrase,
will _Japhetize_ Japheth.――――In the last clause of this verse, the
original leaves us in doubt whether the subject of the verb is God or
Japheth. Grammatically it might be either――God shall dwell, or Japheth
shall dwell, in the tents of Shem. In favor of making Japheth the
subject are these considerations:――(a.) The verse preceding gives the
prophetic destiny of Shem; this, of Japheth.――――(b.) The expression is
not altogether apposite when applied to God, for although God dwelt in
the Hebrew temple and dwells by his Spirit in the bodies of his people,
yet he is not elsewhere said to dwell _in the tents_ of his people. The
phrase leads the mind to such dwelling as may be said of men but is not
said of God.――――Applied to Japheth it had a most apposite and beautiful
fulfillment when the Gentile races of Japheth came in as proselytes to
the Hebrew communion, but far more when in the Christian age, the Jews
were broken off from the old stock that the Gentiles might be grafted
in, and they were; and may be almost said to have taken possession
of the deserted tents of Shem as their own through all the Christian
centuries to this hour. All Protestant Christendom is this day of
Japheth’s line, fully at home in the tents of Shem.
A very extraordinary case of the wresting of Scripture to make it
justify crime――so great a crime as the enslaving of men――is the attempt
to force from this prophecy concerning Canaan a vindication of the
enslaving of Africans by Americans. The wresting appears in these
two broad facts:――(a.) That the Africans were not Canaanites, and
therefore the prophecy said nothing about the negro race. Admitting for
argument’s sake that it justified the enslaving of Canaanites, it did
not in the least justify the enslaving of African negroes.――――(b.) If
the passage had named the African negro instead of the Canaanite, even
then a prediction _of what shall be_ might fall very far short of being
a command as to what man _ought to do_. Prophetic predictions of war
form not the least justification of war――fall utterly short of a divine
command enjoining man’s duty. Predictions of the Savior’s death could
never justify his murderers.
* * * * *
3. _The genealogy of the great historic nations._
In Gen. 10 the Bible for once departs from its usual method and gives
a chapter of _universal history_――the only one. Elsewhere it traces the
history of the one nation which had “the oracles of God,” and in later
ages, of the Christian church, touching the nations of the outside
world only as they come into relations to the seed of Abraham or to
the kingdom of Christ. But here we see the sons of Noah branching out
to people the countries of the great Eastern Continent and to found
the old historic nations of the earth.――――Japheth whom Prophecy was
to “_enlarge_” (Gen. 9: 27) furnished the tribes from which grew the
great nations of Northern and Eastern Asia and for the whole of Europe.
At first they occupied the maritime regions bordering on the Caspian,
Black and Mediterranean Seas, spoken of here as “the isles of the
Gentiles”――conforming to the Hebrew usage which called all maritime
countries “isles.”――――Next we have the sons of Ham, among whom were
Nimrod, the builder of Babel; Mizraim with his seven sons who himself
gave name to Egypt; Canaan whose posterity long held Palestine, and
several names which appear either in the cities or the tribes of the
valley of the Euphrates and of Arabia.――――Shem seems to have shared
with Ham the possession of the great fertile basin of the Euphrates and
the Tigris――the cradle of the race――together with portions of Arabia
and in general of South-western Asia.
It is a matter of some interest to know that this remarkable record
of the birth of the great nations of antiquity is perfectly sustained
by the universal history of all subsequent ages. Whether Chaldean
or Phenician, Egyptian or Arabian, Greek or Roman, Mongol or Tartar,
Indo-Germanic, Celtic, Belgic or Briton――all find the germ of their
nationality in this wonderful chapter, and all concur to swell and
substantiate the proof that the human race sprang from Noah and that we
have no occasion to look for pre-Adamic men or for tribes that escaped
the flood and have no pedigree among the sons of Noah. While it was
never the purpose of divine revelation to give to any great extent
the universal history of the race, it is proper to note that what
it does give bears the divine stamp of truth. All historic science
does it homage. All the light that comes up from the comparative
study of the languages of the race helps us still to follow the track
of the emigrating tribes as they diverged from the ancient home of
Noah’s family. The Science of Ethnography begins with this chapter of
inspiration, Gen. 10.
* * * * *
4. _Babel and the confusion of tongues._
Gen. 11: 1–9 records a very remarkable event, of far reaching
consequences toward the geographical diffusion of the race. Up to this
point there was but one language――as the record has it――“_one lip and
one set of words_,” “lip” being (perhaps) used for the mode of speaking,
including pronunciation and possibly inflection; while words are the
_matter_ of language, the roots or ground-forms. The fact that the
latter have been far less variable than the former, appearing to some
extent in all subsequent ages throughout all the diversities of human
tongues, favors this distinction.
Migrating from the Armenian hill country where the ark rested, Noah’s
posterity reached the fertile plain of Shinar, halted there, and set
themselves to the building of a magnificent and lofty tower. There
being no stone at hand, they prepared brick, not sun-dried after the
common Oriental method, but thoroughly burned for greater durability.
As both consequence and proof of this durability, the supposed ruins of
this great tower, known as “Birs Nimrood” [tower of Nimrod] are still
extant within the area of ancient Babylon, silently witnessing alike to
the labors of those fathers of the nations before their dispersion, and
to the truthfulness of this sacred record.
This tower was not built for safety in case of another flood (as some
have supposed) for, with such an object, a high mountain and not a
plain would have been chosen for the site; it could at best have saved
but few; and more than all, the record gives a very different view
of the motive. This motive was _consolidation_――the aggregation of
the masses into one vast nationality or kingdom――a thought due to the
ambition of some controlling minds aspiring to power, distinction,
fame. Foreseeing the tendency to dispersion they sought to forestall it,
to find their own glory in having a multitude under their sway and in
building monuments that could not perish. For wise reasons God blasted
this scheme. Precisely what divine influence was interposed to confound
the language of these men, I doubt if it is possible for us to know
certainly. It is supposable that the many became restive under the
domination of the few and the severe labor of this enterprise, so that
diverse counsels and dissolving social bonds had some influence in
blocking the progress of the work. Misunderstandings sprung up and
found expression in diversities of tongue. What could be more natural
when harmony gave place to discord? So this huge tower-building was
arrested and men scattered abroad as they would.――――The new tongues
which took their rise here had ample opportunity to diverge more and
more widely in subsequent ages. The immense variety in language which
the history of the world discloses has been a growth――the product
of subtle causes, of segregation and non-intercourse in part, and in
part also no doubt of diverse mental traits and various influences of
culture.
What the original language was, common to the race up to this point,
has been much debated by learned men without arriving at uniform and
satisfactory results. Whether it was, as some suppose, the veritable
Hebrew tongue; or as others think, the Aramaic, _i. e._ the Chaldee;
or whether it is utterly lost――these are the alternatives; but for
the choice between them we can have no very positive data. Those
descendants of Noah who best preserved the religious faith of the
fathers would stand most aloof from the scenes of Babel, and be
naturally least affected by its many-tongued controversies and its
resulting confusion of speech. That they escaped these influences
altogether is perhaps too much to assume.――――That the Aramaic (Chaldee)
tongue, closely allied to the Hebrew, held its place for ages in the
valley of the Euphrates, strongly favors its claim to be, if not the
very tongue of Noah, at least of the same family.――――These points
suggest probabilities but fall short of certainty.