-That Ham was older than Japheth, appears from the
circumstance that the order in which the sons of Noah are introduced is
uniformly thus: Shem, Ham, Japheth; or, beginning, as in chap. x., from
the youngest, [Pg 32] Japheth, Ham, Shem,--where, however, in ver. 21,
the words added immediately after Shem--"the elder brother of Japheth,"
expressly indicate that, for a certain purpose, the writer has
proceeded in order from the youngest to the oldest. It is altogether in
vain that some have attempted to prove from chap. xi. 10 (according to
which Shem was, two years after the flood, only a hundred years old),
compared with chap. v. 32 (according to which Noah began to beget when
he was five hundred years old), that Shem was not the first-born. The
words in chap. v. 32 are: "And Noah was five hundred years old, and
Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth." That the chronology can here be
determined in a way which only approximates to the truth, is implied,
as a matter of course, in the statement, that all the three sons were
begotten when Noah was five hundred years of age; nothing more is meant
than that Noah begat them after he had finished his fifth, or at the
beginning of his sixth, century. (Compare _Ranke's Untersuchungen_.) It
is just an indefinite statement of time which points forward to another
genealogy, in which the details will be given with greater precision.
Ham everywhere stands between the two; but that, nevertheless, he is,
in this passage, called the younger son, can be explained only on the
ground that, in the case before us, Shem and Ham are the two more
especially noticed--Shem as positively good, and Ham as positively
evil, while Japheth only takes part with Shem. We have thus laid an
excellent foundation for the right understanding of the subsequent
prophetic utterance of Noah--for the announcement, namely, of Japheth's
dwelling in the tents of Shem.

Ver. 25. "_And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall
he be to his brethren._"--_Luther_ says: "Good old Noah, who is
regarded by his son as a foolish and stupid old man, deserving only of
mockery, appears here in truly prophetic majesty, and announces to his
sons a divine revelation of what shall come to pass in future days;
thus verifying what Paul says in 2 Cor. xii., that God's strength is
made perfect in weakness."

According to the opinion now current, Canaan is said to mean "lowland,"
and to be transferred from the land to the people,