We have also the
characteristic difference, that Shem, Ham, and Japhet give us a
division of mankind according to nations, while Jabal, Jubal, Tubal
give a division according to guilds, which are necessarily those
of the same people, as no people consists entirely of musicians
or entirely of smiths. And it is undoubtedly the aim of chapter
iv. 16 seq. to describe the origin of the present civilisation,
not of that which is extinct, having been destroyed by the flood.
Tubal-Cain is the father of the smiths of the present, not of
those before the flood; Jubal the father of the musicians, Jabal
of the shepherds of the narrator's own period; hence they stand
at the end of the genealogy and open the second period. But as
Genesis iv. 16-24 does not look forward to the flood, so neither
does Genesis xi. 1-9 (the building of the tower of Babel) look back
to it. This piece is obviously not the continuation of chapter x.
That chapter brought us to a point at which the earth was occupied
by different peoples and different tongues; and here (xi. 1) we
are suddenly carried back to a time when the whole earth was of
one language and one speech.
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