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Gen_10:20 These [are] the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, [and] in their nations.
Ver. 20. These are the sons of Ham.] More in number, and more sweetly situated, than the posterity of either Shem or Japheth: thirty sons and nephews of cursed Ham are here recited and registered, when of blessed Shem we find but twenty-six, and of Japheth but fourteen. And for their countries, Canaan hath the navel of the world ( sumen totius orbis , as one {a} calls that country), a land that floweth with milk for necessity, and honey for delight; where the hardest rocks sweat out honey and oil. {Deu_32:13 Exo_3:17} Nihil mollius coelo, nihil uberius solo , as Florus saith of Campania; a land that God had spied out among all lands for his own peculiar people, yea, for himself to dwell in. Lo, this was Ham’s possession, when his two better brethren dwelt in the more barren waste countries of the east and west. God deals by his people here as the host doth by his guests, who lets them have the best meats and fairest lodgings, but reserves the inheritance for his children. The Lord holds his servants to hard meat many times; but then they have it of free cost: whereas the wicked eat of the fat and drink of the sweet; but their "meat in their bowels is turned into the gall of asps, God shall cast it out of their bellies". {Job_20:14-15} In fattening them he doth but fit them for destruction, as he did these Canaanites, whose pleasant land he afterwards made a spoil to his own Israel. They grew a burden to that good land, which therefore, for their wickedness, spued them out, {Lev_18:25} after they had filled it from corner to corner with their abominable uncleannesses. {Ezr_9:11}
{a} L. Flor, lib. i. cap. 16. See Deu_8:7-9; Deu_11:11-12.