1 Chronicles 1:16

[See comments on 1 Chronicles 1:5].

And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, No JFB commentary on these verses.

THE SONS OF HAM, THE DARK-SKINNED OR SWARTHY (1 Chronicles 1:8-16). (8) Cush.—The Greek Meroλ, Assyrian Miluhha, or Kϋsu, south of Egypt, in our Bibles often called Ethiopia (Isaiah 19:1). The Arabic gives Habesh, i.e., Ethiopia. Mizraim.—The common Hebrew name of Egypt: strictly, “the two Miηrs”—i.e., Upper and Lower Egypt. But the name should rather be spelt Mizrim—the Egyptians; the form Mizraim being probably a mere fancy of the Jewish punctuators. The Assyrians wrote Muηum, Muηru, Muηur. The Inscription of Darius has Miηir. Maητr was the name of the wall which protected Egypt on the north-east. Hence it gave its name to the whole of Lower Egypt.—Cush and Muηur are coupled together in the inscriptions of Esarhaddon and his son Assurbanipal. Put.—Perhaps the Egyptian Punt, on the east coast of Africa. King Darius mentioned Pϋta and Kϋsu as subject to him (Behist, Inscr.). Comp. Nahum 3:9; Jeremiah 46:9; Ezekiel 30:5. The Arabic has Kibtu, i.e., Coptland. Canaan.—There are many proofs of an early connection between Egypt and Canaan. The Philistines were colonists from the Delta (1 Chronicles 1:12), and Ramses II. had wars and made alliance with the Hittites. (9) Seba.—Capital of Meroλ. The other names represent Arabian tribes and their districts. Sheba.—The famous Sabaeans, whose language, the Himyaritic, has quite recently been deciphered from inscriptions. (10) Cush begat Nimrod.—Micah (Micah 5:6) speaks of the “land of Nimrod” in connection with the “land of Asshur.” The land of Nimrod is plainly Babylonia; and some have supposed the primitive inhabitants of Babylonia—“the black-headed race” (zalmat qayqadi) as they styled themselves—to have been akin to the peoples of Muηur and Cush. At all events, Cush in this table of races appears as father of a series of mixed populations, ramifying from the north-west of the Persian Gulf in a southernly direction to the coast of Arabia. The Asiatic Cush represents that primitive Elamitic Sumerian race which occupied the north-west and north coast of the Persian Gulf; or rather that portion of it which attained to empire in Babylonia. The name Nimrod appears to be identical with Merodach, the Accadian Amar-utu, or Amar-utuki, Assyrian Maruduk. Merodach was the tutelar deity of Babylon, as Asshur was of Assyria; and many Babylonian sovereigns bore his name. (Comp. Merodach-baladan, Isaiah 39:1.) He began to be.—He was the first to become. Tradition made Nimrod the first founder of a great Oriental empire. The statement about his four cities (Genesis 10:10), the first of which was Babel (Babylon), is omitted here. Mighty.—Literally, a hero, warrior (gibbτr); a title of Merodach. (11, 12) The names in these verses are all in the masculine plural, and obviously designate nations. Mizraim, the two Egypts, is said to have begotten the chief races inhabiting those regions—a common Oriental metaphor. The Ludim are the Ludu, or Rudu, of the hieroglyphs (Prof. Sayce thinks, the Lydian mercenaries of the Egyptian sovereigns); the Anamim are perhaps the men of An (On, Genesis 41:50), Lehabim, the Lybians. The Naphtuhim seem to get their name from Noph, i.e., Memphis, and the god Ptah.

5–23. The “Genealogy” of the Nations The table which follows is taken from Genesis 10:2-29. In the A.V. several variations between Gen. and Chron. occur in the spelling of proper names. In the R.V. the spelling has been made uniform. The table is geographical rather than ethnological, i.e. neighbouring nations are regarded as having the same descent. The world, as known to the writer, is divided into three zones, of which the Northern is assigned to the Sons of Japheth (5–7), the Southern to the Sons of Ham (8–16), and the Central to the Sons of Shem (17–23). Had the arrangement been according to descent the Semitic Zidonians and the (probably Mongoloid) Hittites would not have been equally described as the offspring of Ham (cp. Sayce, Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 122). It must be noticed, moreover, that the passage contains a general table with two appendices. The General Table is derived from the so-called “Priestly” narrative (PC) of the Hexateuch, while the appendices have been inserted by a Redactor from an earlier narrative, the “Prophetical” (J) (cp. Driver, Introduction, p. 13). Thus we get the following scheme:— Ch 1:5-9. PC (General Table of the descendants of Japheth and Ham).–16. J (Appendix to the descendants of Ham).. PC (General Table of the descendants of Shem).–23. J (Appendix to the descendants of Shem). It must be further noted that though the Priestly source is assigned in its main stock by critics to “the exilic or early post-exilic period,” some elements in it belong to pre-exilic times. This table of the nations in particular agrees with the state of the world as referred to by Ezekiel, and is probably to be assigned to a date anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. (Sayce in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, i. 347, suggests that the table is as early as the period of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Egyptian dynasties, when Palestine was under Egyptian suzerainty.)

The Zemarite - See Genesis 10:18 note. The inscriptions of the Assyrian monarch, Sargon, (720 B.C.) mention Zimira, which is joined with Arpad (Arvad); and there can be little doubt that it is the