Can this have been the time when
Noah's family made up the whole population of the earth? or in
other words, does xi. 1-9 go back before chap x. and join on to
vi.-ix.? Manifestly not: "the whole earth" (xi. 1) is not
merely Shem and Ham and Japhet; the multitude of men who seek by
artificial means to concentrate themselves, and are then split up
into different peoples, cannot consist of only one family. The
point of view is quite different from what it would be if chaps.
vi.-ix. were taken into account; the narrator knows nothing of
the flood, which left Noah's family alone surviving out of the
whole world. Nor would it avail to place xi. 1 at a period so
long subsequent to the flood that the family might have increased
again to a great people; even this would not give the requisite
connection with the idea of Noah and his three sons. If the latter
united themselves afterwards in one family, and one coherent
people thus grew out of them, which was then split up by a higher
power into different languages, then Shem, Ham, and Japhet
entirely lose their significance as the great heads of the
nations.
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