Now, for a moment, let us suppose that Ham did marry and take into the
ark a daughter of the race of Cain. If the general intermixture of the
Sethites with the Cainites had so deteriorated the Sethites, and reduced
them to the moral degradation of the Cainites, that God did not deem
them worthy of longer encumbering the earth before the flood, would it
be an extraordinary manifestation of his displeasure at the supposed
marriage of Ham with one of the cursed race of Cain, to subject the
issue of such marriage to a degraded and perpetual bondage?
But again, in case this supposed marriage of Ham with the race of Cain
be true, then Ham would be the progenitor of all the race of Cain who
should exist after the flood; and such fact would be among the most
prominent features of his history. It would, in such case, be in strict
conformity with the usages of these early times for his father to have
called him by a name indicative of such fact: instead of calling him
Ham, he would announce to him a term implying his relationship with the
house of Cain. If such relation did not exist, why did he call him
_Canaan_?
Some suppose that this question would be answered by saying that the
term was applied to the youngest son of Ham; but all the sons of Ham
were born after the flood; yet the planting of the vineyard and the
drinking of the wine are the first acts of Noah which are mentioned
after that deluge; and further, Canaan, the son of Ham, was most
certainly not the individual whose ill-behaviour was simultaneous with
and followed by the curse of slavery. Have we any proof, or any reason
to believe, that Canaan, the son of Ham, was then even born? But in the
catalogue of Noah’s sons, even before the planting of the vineyard is
mentioned, Ham is called the father of Canaan, even before we are told
that he had any sons. Why was he then so called the father of Canaan,
unless upon the fact that by his marriage he necessarily was to become
the progenitor of the race of Cain in his own then unborn descendants?
Under all the facts that have come down to us, we are not to suppose
that there was any Cainite blood in Noah, or in Noah’s wife. Why then
did Ham choose to commemorate the race of Cain, by naming his fourth son
Cain, a term synonymous with Cainite, or Canaanite? And why did the race
of Ham do the same thing through many centuries, using terms differently
varied, sometimes interchanging the consonant and vowel sounds, as was
common in the language they used? These variations, it is true, when
descending into a language so remote as ours, might not be noticed, yet
the linguist surely will trace them all back to their root, the original
of “Cain.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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