191. Noah's heart must have been divinely illumined since he makes such a distinction between his sons, rejecting Ham with his posterity and placing Shem in line with the saints and the Church because the spiritual blessing, given in paradise concerning the seed, would rest upon him. Therefore, this holy man blesses God and gives thanks unto him. C. Blessing Pronounced Upon Japheth. V. 27. _God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant._ 192. This prophecy is wonderful for the aptness of each single word. Noah did not bless Shem, but the God of Shem, by way of giving thanks to God for having embraced Shem and having adorned him with a spiritual promise, or the blessing of the woman's seed. But when he mentions Japheth he does not employ the same manner of speaking as in the case of Shem. His words are chosen for the purpose of showing the mystery of which Paul speaks (Rom 11, 11) and Christ (Jn 4, 22), that salvation is from the Jews and yet the gentiles also became partakers of this salvation. Shem alone is the true root and stem, yet the heathen are grafted upon this stem, as a foreign branch, and become partakers of the fatness and the sap which are in the chosen tree. 193. Noah, seeing this through the Holy Spirit, predicts, in dim allusions but correctly, that Christ's kingdom is to spread in the world from the root of Shem, and not from that of Japheth. 194. The Jews prate that Japheth stands for the neighboring nations around Jerusalem which were admitted to the temple and its worship. But Noah makes little ado about the temple of Jerusalem, or the tabernacle of Moses; his words refer to greater matters. He treats of the three patriarchs who are to replenish the earth. While he affirms of Japheth that he does not belong to the root of the people of God which possesses the promise of the Christ, he declares that he shall be incorporated through the call of the Gospel into the fellowship of that people which has God and the promises. 195. Here, then, we have a picture of the Church of the Gentiles and of the Jews. Ham, being wicked, is not admitted to the spiritual blessing of the seed, except as it happens by uncovenanted grace. To Japheth, however, though he has not the promise of the seed, like Shem, the hope is nevertheless given that he will, at some future time, be taken into the fellowship of the Church. Thus we Gentiles, being sons of Japheth, have no direct promise, indeed, and yet we are included in the promise given to the Jews, since we are predestined to the fellowship of the holy people of God. These matters are here recorded, not for Shem and Japheth so much as for their posterity.