“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
And cold and heat,
And summer and winter,
And day and night
Shall not cease” (Genesis 8:20-22).
He also made a covenant (promise)with Noah to pass through the generations. God said: “I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. “It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. “When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth” (Gen 9:11-17).You will notice in the Book of Revelation that although many judgments were metered out upon the earth none of them was a flood of this magnitude. God is faithful.
Trouble immediately arose which significantly affected the history of the world to come involving Noah’s sons. “Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
“When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So he said, “Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.”He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, The God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant. “May God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant” (Gen. 9:20-27).
This shameful act by Ham and Canaan (some speculate homosexual act) had the effect of dividing the races of men who were to emerge from the flood. Because of the curse of Noah on the sons of Ham Ham’s line of descendents headed into an evil direction which eventually came to the birth of Nimrod and the initiation of Babel (Babylon). Nimrod, the great hunter (actually soul hunter) became mighty in the earth. The sons of Canaan became the Canaanites which inhabited the land of what became Israel, before they were conquered by Joshua. Babylon continued down through the ages, even to the present day, as the evil system of pagan religion that God had to judge (Revelation 17-18).
The line of Ham and Canaan continued to become Assyria, which conquered the Israelites after Joshua. Further the descendents build other evil cities including Nineveh. Descents of Ham also became the Philistines as well as “and the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite and the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite; and afterward the families of the Canaanite were spread abroad. The territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha. These are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, by their nations” (Gen. 10:16-20). These are the very nations defeated by Joshua as he conquered the Promised Land a millennium later.
Those same descendents were involved in the attempted building of the Tower of Babel, which is again related to Babylon. God judged Babylon in Revelation as a ”mother of harlots”. He said in Revelation 18:1–5: After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird. For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen; and the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues: for her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities“.
As they began to build the Tower in rebellion against God, God confused their languages so they could no longer communicate with one another. As a result the tower was abandoned. God understood the principal of oneness and if left to their own devices evil would have been spread even more and further than it was. God said: “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them” (Gen. 11:6). “Therefore its name was called Babel [Babylon], because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:9). We all know the colloquial term of babel or babbling.
The descents of Shem are named in Genesis 11:10-32. From this line arose Terah, the father of Abraham. “Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there” (Gen. 11:31). Ur was an evil city built by the descendants of Ham and Canaan. Terah died in Haran.
In verse 12 the following occurred: “Now the Lord said to Abram (his name not yet Abraham), Go forth from your country, [Haran] And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan “Gen. 12:1-5). The land of Canaan was filled with the descendents of Ham and the line from his son Canaan (Gen. 12:6). This land would later become the land of Israel, the Promised Land (Gen. 12:7).
Abram sojourned in Egypt because of a famine in the land of Canaan, with his wife Sarai later called Sarah. Abraham claimed that Sarah was his sister, which, under Hurrian law at the time, afforded her special privileges including unwanted sexual advances against her. The Hurrians (Horites) were a civilization which existed in Canaan during this time. Thus contrary to popular thought, Abram’s portrayal of Sarah as a sister was lawful and customary in Canaan. By claiming this privilege Abram was saving his own life as the Egyptians would likely seize the beautiful Sarah and kill Abram. However, Egypt did not follow this law and the Pharaoh seized Sarah for himself. However, the Lord saved both Sarah and Abram in that He brought plagues to the house of Pharaoh causing him to release Sarah, and allow them to leave Egypt. So instead of Abram being seen as deceptive, he may just have been following the customs of his land in claiming Sarah to be his sister.
Abram and Lot settled in Negev but after a time it became apparent that the land would not support both families and their herds so they decided to separate. Lot chose to settle in the fertile Jordon valley near the city of Sodom. Abram chose to stay in Canaan. And the Lord spoke to Abram there: “Now lift up your eyes and