The Dispersion of the Peoples

Noah and God’s New Covenant

Genesis 9:1-2

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and have dominion over it. And the dread and the fear of you shall be upon all the wild beasts of the earth, on all the birds of the sky, and on all things moving upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; I have placed under your power.

Noah is now given authority over creation such as was given to Adam at the very beginning (cf. Gen. 1:28).¹

Genesis 9:3

And every moving thing that lives shall be to you for food.

This is the first time God gives the command allowing people to eat meat.

Genesis 9:3-7

I have given all things to you as the green herbs. But flesh with blood of life ye shall not eat. For your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of all wild beasts, and I will require the life of man at the hand of his brother man. He that sheds man’s blood, instead of that blood shall his own be shed, for in the image of God I made man. But do you increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have dominion over it.

God has given the same commandment to Noah that He gave to Adam: to increase and multiply. He has given food as He gave to Adam, except that now He has also allowed meat to be eaten (corresponding to the new conditions of man after the Flood). And just like Adam was given one fasting commandment to keep—not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—so Noah is given one command: not to eat blood. The blood belongs to God, the meat to man. That is why, according to Jewish food rules, you have to slaughter the animal with a sharp weapon, and not strangle it so that the blood remains inside. It is symbolical: the blood that comes out is offered to God.²

The commandment regarding blood, says St. John Chrysostom, was given to Noah to act against man’s inclination to murder, to make him meek, even while allowing him to eat meat (which requires killing).³

Blood is, at it were, a symbol of life—and that belongs to God. This particular teaching was still in force in the Acts of the Apostles. In the teachings of the Apostles described in Acts, the one dietary command given to Gentile converts to Christianity was that they not eat strangled animals, from which the blood was not let out (cf. Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25).

Genesis 9:8-17

And God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, And behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you, and with every living creature with you, of birds and of beasts, and with all the wild beasts of the earth, as many as are with you, of all that come out of the Ark. And I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall not any more die by the water of the flood, and there shall no more be a flood of water to destroy all the earth. And the Lord God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant which I set between Me and you, and between every living creature which is with you for perpetual generations. I set my bow [rainbow] in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall be when I gather clouds upon the earth, that My bow shall be seen in the cloud. And I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you, and between every living soul in all flesh, and there shall no longer be water for a deluge, so as to blot out all flesh. And My bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look to remember the everlasting covenant between Me and the earth, and between every living soul in all flesh, which is upon the earth. And God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant, which I have made between Me and all flesh, which is upon the earth.

Here God makes a covenant with mankind through Noah, just as years later He makes a covenant with Abraham, and still later with Moses.

The rainbow is an appropriate reminder that the rain is not perpetual, since it occurs only when the sun breaks through the clouds. It is very likely that rainbows were not seen before the Flood, since the sun did not shine directly then: there was a cloud layer across the firmament, causing a greenhouse effect over the earth. The rainbow, therefore, became another part of the new conditions of the world after the Flood, when there was no more cloud covering.

Genesis 9:18-19

Now the sons of Noah which came out of the Ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. And Ham was the father of Canaan. These three are the sons of Noah; of these were men scattered over all the earth.

This reemphasizes that Noah is like a new Adam. From him come all men after the Flood.

Ham is mentioned as the “father of Canaan” because, according to St. John Chrysostom,⁴ Ham did not restrain his passion in the Ark but conceived a child when he should have been refraining like his father and brothers. In the Ark, the people were in a state of prayer and fasting. Men abstained from their wives, except for Ham. This sin against the law of prayer and fasting already reveals Ham’s character.

Genesis 9:20-21

And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and was naked in his house.

Why did Noah, a righteous man, get drunk? Perhaps, as St. Ephraim suggests, it was because he had not drunk wine for many years; he had been a year in the Ark, and it takes several years to plant the vines and get grapes with which to make wine. Or else, as St. John Chrysostom suggests, wine was actually not even drunk before the Flood. Noah was the first to cultivate vineyards. Therefore, he would not have known the power of wine; he drank it to see what it was like, and it overwhelmed him.⁵ If this was the case, wine-drinking goes together with meat-eating as one of the new conditions of the post-Flood world.

Genesis 9:22-25

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and he went out and told his two brothers without. And Shem and Japheth, having taken a garment, put it on both their backs and went backwards, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their face was backward and they saw not the nakedness of their father. And Noah recovered from the wine, and knew all that his young son had done to him. And he said, Cursed be the servant Canaan, a slave shall he be to his brethren.

Verse 22 again calls Ham “the father of Canaan” to remind us of his uncontrolled nature.

What was this sin of Ham? The sin was not so much that he saw his father naked, because then they were not nearly as fastidious about that kind of thing as we are now. Rather, his sin lay in the fact that he saw him in a shameful condition—drunk, all sprawled out—and therefore he mocked his father; he stared at the spectacle and went out and spread tales about his father’s sin.

In English, a “ham” is an actor who makes a big show of himself. In Russian, the word “ham” means something much worse. It refers to someone absolutely shameful, without any manners, politeness or decency (like the Soviets in modern times).

The sin of Ham was the sin of being totally shameless. His brothers, on the contrary, came in with respect, covered up their father, and thus covered up the whole thing before it could be spread about. Thus Ham, the second son, now became the youngest.

But why was Canaan cursed instead of Ham his father? St. John Chrysostom says it was because Ham once received God’s blessing,⁶ and now the curse must be on his offspring, which hurts him, too. Moreover, Canaan probably also sinned. St. Ephraim suggests that it was actually Canaan, as a small boy, who went in and was the first to see Noah. He went out and told his father, so he himself was partly guilty.⁷

Now we will see the difference between the three sons of Noah.

Genesis 9:26-27

And he [Noah] said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his bond servant. May God make room for Japheth, and let him dwell in the habitations of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

Here Noah is making a prophecy, as all the Patriarchs did when they blessed their sons. He prophesies about these three sons from whom the whole population of the earth will come.

Shem is the blessed one, the ancestor of the Semitic tribes, especially the chosen people, the Jews. Japheth is the ancestor of Gentiles, who later accept the word of salvation which Christ revealed first of all to the Jews; they come to dwell in salvation (“the habitations of Shem”) after the coming of Christ and the teaching of the Apostles.⁸

Canaan and the offspring of Ham are to be the bond servants—but they are also given salvation. The Holy Fathers make a special point that, no matter who your ancestors are, you can still be saved. For example, in Genesis chapter 10 one of Ham’s descendants founded Nineveh, which pleased God by its repentance in the times of the Prophet Jonah. St. John Chrysostom says of this: “Notice how the impiety of one’s ancestors does not entirely put our nature into disorder.”⁹ It does not make any difference if one’s ancestor is cursed. Any individual or people can repent and seek God’s grace, especially after the coming of Christ. But even before Christ, the Ninevites, even though they were offspring of Canaan who was cursed, still came to repentance.

In the Gospel we read of the Canaanite woman who obtained grace; her daughter was healed through her faith. Christ said to her, “O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt” (Matt. 15:28). She was a direct offspring ofCanaan, who was cursed. This shows that salvation is given to everyone.

Genesis 9:28-29

And Noah lived after the Flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.

Noah, the second progenitor of the human race, lived slightly longer than Adam.

The Generations of Noah

Genesis 10:1-4

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, Japheth; and sons were born to them after the Flood. The sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madoi, and Jovan, and Elishah, and Thobel, and Mosoch, and Thiras. And the sons of Gomer: Aschanaz, and Riphath, and Thorgama. And the sons of Jovan: Elishah, and Tarshish, Cetians, Rhodians.

The tenth chapter goes into the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Seventy-two offspring of the three sons of Noah are named, from whom come the different kinds of people. “Each of these nations,” says St. Ephraim, “dwelt in its own distinct place, with its own people, and spoke its own tongue.”¹⁰ Some of these kinds of people we can now identify fairly well; others are more difficult to identify.

Genesis 10:5

From these were the islands of the Gentiles divided in their land, each according to his tongue, in their tribes and in their nations.

This is a reference to what will occur after the fall of the Tower of Babel. Out of all the seventy-two basic types of people, there will be a dispersion of humanity throughout all the earth.

“Islands of the Gentiles” refers not necessarily to literal islands, but to the fact that the Gentiles formed separate peoples who were like islands of humanity.

Genesis 10:6-20

And the sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, Phud, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush: Saba, and Evila, and Sabatha, and Rhegma, and Sabathaca. And the sons of Rhegma: Saba, and Dadan. And Cush begot Nimrod: he began to be a giant upon the earth. He was a great hunter before the Lord God, therefore they say, As Nimrod the giant hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babylon, and Grech, and Archad, and Chalanne, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land came Ashur, and built Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Chalach. And Dase between Nineveh and Chalach: this is the great city. And Mizraim begot the Ludiim, and the Nephthalim, and the Enemetiim, and the Labiim, and the Patrosoniim, and the Chasmoniim (whence came forth Phylistiim) and the Gaphthoriim. And Canaan begot Sidon his firstborn, and the Hettite, and the jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Evite, and the Arukite, and the Sinite, and the Aradian, and the Samarean, and the Amathite; and after this the tribes of the Canaanites were dispersed. And the boundaries of the Canaanites were.from Sidon till one comes to Gerara and Gaza, till one comes to Sodom and Gomorrah, Adama and Seboim, as far as Dasa. These were the sons of Ham in their tribes according to their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.

Here are named the offspring of Ham. Many of these are tribes the Hebrews later fought; but they include the Ninevites, who as we have said repented when the Prophet Jonah preached to them.

Genesis 10:21

And to Shem himself also were children born, the father of all the sons of Heber, the brother of Japheth the elder.

Shem is the ancestor of Heber. Heber is where we get the name Hebrew.

Genesis 10:22-32

Sons of Shem, Elam, and Ashur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram, and Cainan. And sons of Aram, Uz, and Ul, and Gater, and Mosoch. And Arphaxad begot Cainan, and Cainan begot Sala. And Sala begot Heber. And to Heber were born two sons, the name of one, Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided, and the name of his brother Jektan. And Jektan begot Elmodad, and Saleth, and Sarmoth, and Jarach, and Odorrah, and Aibel, and Decla, and Eval, and Abimael, and Saba, and Uphir, and Evila, and Jobab, all these were the sons of Jektan. And their dwelling was from Masse, till one comes to Saphera, a mountain of the east. These were the sons of Shem in their tribes, according to their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations. These are the tribes of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, according to their nations: of them were the islands of the Gentiles scattered over the earth after the Flood

The islands of people shall now begin to lead their own individual lives.

Of the seventy-two different peoples named, fourteen are of Japheth, thirty-one are of Ham, and twenty-seven are of Shem.

The Tower of Babel

Genesis 11:1-3

And all the earth was one lip, and there was one language to all. And it came to pass as they moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.

Evidently this was before all the descendants mentioned in chapter 10, when mankind was not yet so dispersed. The sons began to beget their offspring, but apparently mankind was still fairly concentrated in that area. They still had one language and were one in mind. Shinar is the plain of Babylon, of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Genesis 11:3-4

And a man said to his neighbor, Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And the brick was to them for stone, and their mortar was bitumen. And they said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city and tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make to ourselves a name, before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.

They already knew the prophecy that man would be scattered over all the face of the earth. They made one more attempt to make a great name for themselves: a great tremendous project, which would prove that we are supreme beings. This is repeated throughout history—the empire of Alexander the Great, the Communist regime, Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich, etc. The sin behind this is pride.

Such towers are known in Babylonian-Assyrian history, and some still survive. They are called ziggurats: temples with a shrine on top. These are a symbol that, as St. John Chrysostom says, man did not want to stay within the limits that God had given him. He wanted to make himself a god: self-deification. In our modern times, an image of this can be found in our skyscrapers. The idea is to build something higher than anyone has ever built before. You can go to the top, and the climate is totally different from down below. It can be raining down below, and you can be on top above the clouds, in the sunshine.

In chapter 11 we see that, within five hundred years after the Flood, mankind had again become corrupt and proud. It says men were of one tongue, one voice. They all agreed on one thing: that they would become great.

It is like mankind today. There are a few exceptions—people who do not agree with what is going on—but for the most part, men are either agreeing with what is going on or else they are being dragged along with this great project to build Paradise on earth: the Communist society, or a comfortable reign of earthly values; but God is forgotten. Mankind is doing it again. And if man does that, what is God going to do? He promised that He will not destroy the earth like He did before; therefore, He will find various other ways to stop man: plagues, disasters, earthquakes, volcanoes. In this case, He confounds their tongues.

Genesis 11:5

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men built.

Of course, this does not mean that He did not “see” before; it emphasizes that He was looking very carefully at what was going on. He does not chastise without knowing.

Genesis 11:6

And the Lord said, Behold, there is one race, and one lip of all and they have begun to do this, and now nothing shall fail from them of all that they may have undertaken to do.

In other words, they have continued to be proud, and have undertaken this tremendous project against God.

Genesis 11:7

Come, and having gone down, let Us there confound their tongue, that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbor.

When God says here, “Come,” to whom is He speaking? It is the same as in the beginning, when He created man, saying, “Let Us make man.” It is God talking to God in the Holy Trinity.

Genesis 11:8

And the Lord scattered them thence over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city and the tower.

St. John Chrysostom says about this:

If now, taking advantage of such oneness of ideas and language, men have fallen into such wildness, what might they not do that is worse with the passage of time? … Nothing will be able to restrain their efforts; on the contrary, they will strive to fulfill all their intentions, if they do not immediately endure punishment for their brazen undertakings.¹¹

That is why one expects soon this kind of thing to happen to the world today. Men are more and more inclined towards evil, and to tremendous projects of pride which leave God completely out.

Genesis 11:9

On this account, its name was called Confasion, because there the Lord confounded the languages of all the earth, and thence the Lord scattered them upon the face of all the earth.

The name of the city was Babylon, which means “Confusion.”
This is the real beginning of the world as we know it: scattered over the face of the earth, each its own nation and language.

Genesis 11:10-26

And these are the generations of Shem: and Shem was an hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, the second year after the Flood. And Shem lived, after he had begotten Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Arphaxad lived an hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan. And Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Cainan, four hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Cainan lived an hundred and thirty years and begot Sala; and Cainan lived after he had begotten Sala, three hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Sala lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot Heber. And Sala lived after he had begotten Heber, three hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Peleg. And Heber lived after he had begotten Peleg two hundred and seventy years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Peleg lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot Ragau. And Peleg lived after he had begotten Ragau, two hundred and nine years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Ragau lived an hundred thirty and two years, and begot Seruch. And Ragau lived after he had begotten Seruch, two hundred and seven years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Seruch lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot Nachor. And Seruch lived after he had begotten Nachor, two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
And Nachor lived an hundred and seventy-nine years, and begot Tharrha. And Nachor lived after he had begotten Tharrha, an hundred and twenty-five years, and begot sons and daughters, and he died. And Tharrha lived seventy years, and begot Abram, and Nachor, and Haran.

These are the offspring of Shem, down to Abraham—the new chosen one, whose descendants were to be a great nation.

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Footnotes

1. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 26.5, 27.4, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 264, 276 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 156, 171-172 (26.16, 27.12)]. ↩

2. St. Ephraim the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 9, Tvoreniya 6, pp. 361-62 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 143 (6.14.1)].; St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 27.4, Tvoreniya 4, p. 276 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 172 (27.13)]. ↩

3. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 27.5, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 276-78 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 172-174 (27.13-17)]. ↩

4. Ibid. 28.4, p. 291 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 191 (28.11)]. ↩

5. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.2, Tvoreniya 4, p. 299 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 202-203 (29.6)]. ↩

6. Ibid. 29.6, p. 306 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 212-13 (29.21)]. See also St. Ephraim the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 9, Tvoreniya 6, pp. 364-65 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 145 (7.3.1-2)]. ↩

7. St. Ephraim the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 9, Tvoreniya 6, pp. 364-66 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 145 (7.3.1-3)]. ↩

8. Cf. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.7, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 309-10 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 216-17 (29.26)]. [See also St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 22, Pocket Patristics Series. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977—., 17, pp. 52-53.] ↩

9. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.8, Tvoreniya 4, p. 311 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 219 (29.30)]. ↩

10. St. Ephraim the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 10, Tvoreniya 6, p. 366 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 146 (8.1.1)]. ↩

11. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 30.4, Tvoreniya 4, p. 318 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 228 (30.11)]. ↩