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Ham

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 [257]ACCAD.) The race of Ham were the most energetic of all the descendants of Noah in the early times of the post-diluvian world.

Passages cited in this entry

Genesis 5:32

M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 3rd edition (1897). Public domain; text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. A nineteenth-century Protestant reference: its dates, archaeology and judgements reflect the scholarship of its time and are not Imago Dei's editorial position.