Genesis 10:6

6. Ham Or rather Cham, is from a root signifying to be hot, and hence burnt, black . The Hamites are dark-skinned peoples, dwelling mainly in the torrid zone . Ham is used frequently in Scripture for Egypt and the Egyptians, an Hamitic country and people . It, or its Egyptian equivalent, was also the common name for that land and people among the Egyptians themselves . It is written with two letters in the hieroglyphic language, K M, and occurs in the form Ch M E more than ten times on the Rosetta Stone .

The Hamites are presented here, 1) as Cushite Ethiopians, Assyrians, Babylonians; 2) Egyptians; 3) Lybyans; 4) and Canaanites.

Cush Ethiopia in the Sept. and Vulg., and so often rendered in our version. Isaiah 43:3; Isaiah 45:14, etc . Monumental and linguistic research has now established the long-disputed theory that there was an Asiatic as well as an African Cush . Lepsius finds the name in Egypt on monuments of the sixth dynasty, and Rawlinson proves an ethnic connexion between the Ethiopians and the primitive Babylonians . The later Babylonians were Shemitic in origin, but Knobel shows ( Volk. , p . 246) that the Cushites primarily peopled Babylonia and spread eastward to India . Thus has it been shown by the research of our own day that the Asiatic kingdoms of Nineveh and Babylon are Hamitic in origin . The African and the Asiatic Cush freely communicated with each other through Meroe, on the upper Nile, and the Red Sea, by caravans and ships .

Mizraim This is the Hebrew name for Egypt and the Egyptians. It is primarily a geographical word, in the dual number, well rendered by Lewis the Narrows, a designation singularly descriptive of Egypt, which is a narrow strip of verdure threaded by the Nile, hundreds of miles in length and only a dozen or so in breadth, stretching from Ethiopia to the Mediterranean, and separating the deserts of Africa and Asia. The name was naturally imposed by the first Hamite settlers, and afterwards transferred from the country to its inhabitants.

Phut Lybyans, in the wide sense of the word inhabitants of the North African coast west of Egypt. Ptolemy and Pliny mention a river Phtuth, ( φθουθ ,) in north-western Africa . The Egyptian designation of Lybya is Phet, from Pet, Coptic Phit, a bow, by which symbol it is represented in the hieroglyphics . (Knobel, p . 296 . ) Jeremiah (xlvi, 9) associates Phut (Lybyans) with Cush, (Ethiopians,) as rising up against Pharaoh-necho; and Nahum (Nahum 3:9) makes Phut an ally with Nineveh in connexion with Ethiopia and Egypt .

Canaan Rather, Kenaan, from a root signifying to be low.

Hengstenberg supposes that Ham thus named his son in a tyrannical spirit, to denote the obedience which he exacted from him, though so irreverent himself, while God’s secret providence had a national humiliation in view in permitting the child to receive this name. Comp. Genesis 9:25, and the note . Some understand Kenaan as geographical, signifying Lowland, but this is not in harmony with Noah’s prophecy in Genesis 9:25, etc . Herodian states that the ancient name of Phenicia (Palm-land) was Χνα , or Kenaan .