Other Interesting Facts About Ham's Descendants

If we take the view that the Bible is written in order to give us information about God and His plan of salvation for mankind, it can be noted that Ham's descendants were, generally speaking, the nations which aligned themselves against the Israelites. Not only the Canaanites, but other sons of Ham became Israel's enemies. Egypt, Assyria, the Philistines, the Babylonians -- all were from the line of Ham. In Leviticus chapter 18, God warns Moses to tell the Israelites not to participate in the sins of the nations which they had seen in Egypt and in the nations around them. God tells them not to defile themselves by these depraved practices, or they, too, will be cast out of the land. In fact, in the Bible, Leviticus 19 continues the account by noting that Israel should be holy, like the Lord their God. Of course, Israel did not always live up to that standard, and in fact, one of the reasons why Israel went into exile was that the nation sinned even more than those nations which had been cast out before them. Psalm 14:1-3 makes it clear that 'there is no one who does good, not even one' (v.3), so it goes without saying (yet I will say it anyway!) that I am not saying that Ham's descendants or the Israelites had any kind of monopoly on sinful behavior.