Chapter XXX.—Noah’s Sons.

“In the twelfth generation, when God had blessed men, and they had begun to multiply,⁵⁵¹⁵⁵¹    Gen. ix. 1. they received a commandment that they should not taste blood, for on account of this also the deluge had been sent.  In the thirteenth generation, when the second of Noah’s three sons had done an injury to his father, and had been cursed by him, he brought the condition of slavery upon his posterity.  His elder brother meantime obtained the lot of a dwelling-place in the middle region of the world, in which is the country of Judæa; the younger obtained the eastern quarter, and he the western.  In the fourteenth generation one of the cursed progeny first erected an altar to demons, for the purpose of magical arts, and offered there bloody sacrifices.  In the fifteenth generation, for the first time, men set up an idol and worshipped it.  Until that time the Hebrew language, which had been given by God to men, bore sole sway.  In the sixteenth generation the sons of men migrated from the east, and, coming to the lands that had been assigned to their fathers, each one marked the place of his own allotment by his own name.  In the seventeenth generation Nimrod I. reigned in Babylonia, and built a city, and thence mi86grated to the Persians, and taught them to worship fire.”⁵⁵²⁵⁵²    [With this chapter compare Homily IX. 3–7.—R.]