1 Chronicles 1:16

About the races mentioned after these, little more can be said than what lies on the surface of Scripture… There were Hivites further north and outside, near whom the last five families settled, or on the coast, and also on the island of Aradus.

Family name of one of the sons of Canaan. Genesis 10:18; 1 Chronicles 1:16: doubtless connected with the island of Arvad.

The notes on the Canaanite families are fuller, because God had His people in view. It was their duty to carry out judgment and to dispossess them of the promised land. These families might be "spread abroad" or scattered. They might be seen to flourish for a while. But the curse was on them, from the first on moral grounds. At the end it was made worse by outrages against God and man which in His eyes called for extermination.

District and a noted city in the north of Syria. We read of the HAMATHITE as early as Genesis 10:18. The district lay north of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. It perhaps reached further south too, since Scripture calls the northern border of Israel "the entrance of Hamath" (1 Kings 8:65). Toi, king of Hamath, sent congratulations to David on his victory over Hadadezer. Hamath lay more than a hundred miles further north than Dan. Yet it paid tribute to Solomon, and he built store cities there.

Genesis 10 deals with how the nations were spread over the earth. The details it gives there would be of no use for the aim of the book we are now considering. For the same reason this book says nothing at all about the boundaries of the Canaanites in Genesis 10:18-20, or about those of the sons of Joktan in Genesis 10:30-32 (compare verses 16, 23).

We find Shem mentioned first in verse 4, although he is not the firstborn. But Chronicles gives the genealogies of Japheth and of Ham before his (vv. 5-16), as we see also in Genesis 10. In God's eyes Shem, chosen by grace, has the first place. Yet in the natural order what is spiritual does not come first, as we have already pointed out. The same is true of Abraham's offspring: "The sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael" (v. 28). Isaac is named first, seen as first in God's thoughts. But Ishmael, the elder, comes first in the list of descendants (v. 29), as the seed according to the flesh.

The man who believed God knew that seventy years would see them return from their captivity. So care for God and confidence in His Word would make them guard their genealogies carefully. Then, when they did return, they could enter on the portion God had allotted them. For this was what made every homestead in Israel so precious — that it was God who gave it. It was not merely something a man earned by his own labour or skill. It was the gift of God to them.