Ham

AI summary: Ham matters here because biblical world-mapping often begins with ancestral names that later shape the understanding of regions and peoples. The record is best handled cautiously rather than over-localized.¹

Warm, hot, and hence the south; also an Egyptian word meaning “black”, the youngest son of Noah (Gen. 5:32; comp. 9:22, 24). The curse pronounced by Noah against Ham, properly against Canaan his fourth son, was accomplished when the Jews subsequently exterminated the Canaanites. One of the most important facts recorded in Gen. 10 is the foundation of the earliest monarchy in Babylonia by Nimrod the grandson of Ham (6, 8, 10). The primitive Babylonian empire was thus Hamitic, and of a cognate race with the primitive inhabitants of Arabia and of Ethiopia. (See ACCAD.) The race of Ham were the most energetic of all the descendants of Noah in the early times of the post-diluvian world. ³