Bible Commentaries

Genesis 10:32

This is the summing up of the Scriptural account of the second spreading of the human race through the earth, after it had been laid bare by the Deluge, just as the fourth and fifth chapters of Genesis give the history of the first increase from Adam and his sons. But there is this remarkable difference between the two: the first is manifestly a history of families; this is a history of nations.

I. Notice first the degree in which the original features of the founders of a race reproduce themselves in their descendants so as to become the distinct and manifest types of national life. The few words wherein, according to the wont of patriarchal times, Noah, as the firstborn priest of his own family, pronounces on his sons his blessing and his curse, sketch in outline the leading characteristics of all their after progeny.

II. We may observe also adumbrations of a mode of dealing with men which seems to imply that in His bestowal of spiritual gifts God deals with them after some similar law. We have seen this already in the descent of spiritual blessings along the line of the pious firstborn of Noah; and the same may be traced again: (1) in the blessing bestowed upon the race of Abraham; and (2) in the transference to the devouter Jacob and his seed of the blessing which was set at nought by the profane firstborn of Isaac.

S. Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 176.

References: Gen 10.—Expositor, 2nd series, vol. 1., p. 275, vol. vi., pp. 356, 357. Genesis 10:1-5.—Parker, vol. i., p. 172. Genesis 10:8-10.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xvi., p. 31. Genesis 10:10, Genesis 10:11.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vii., p. 317.