"For from the beginning it was the will of God that, as soon as more families arose, the man would leave his father and mother and would choose a wife as his helpmeet not from within but from outside the parental family, from another family. The wonderful expansion of the human race, the infinite variety among people, and the inexhaustible richness of relationships between households and families, generations and peoples, are all due to this divine will. Every marriage blends various psychological gifts and distinct physical strengths, becoming thereby a new source of a particular fullness of life....After the flood the descendants of Noah, who at that point still constituted one people and were still bound together by one language and by the same vocabulary, settled in the land of Shinar, which lay in southern Babylonia. But then later, as punishment for building the tower, their language was confused, and the small human race was split up into groups, tribes, or nations and dis...
Matthew Henry on Genesis 9: "God often visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, especially when the children inherit the fathers’ wicked dispositions, and imitate the fathers’ wicked practices, and do nothing to cut off the entail of the curse. (2.) Disgrace is justly put upon those that put disgrace upon others, especially that dishonour and grieve their own parents. An undutiful child that mocks at his parents is no more worthy to be called a son, but deserves to be made as a hired servant, nay, as a servant of servants, among his brethren. (3.) Though divine curses operate slowly, yet, first or last, they will take effect. The Canaanites were under a curse of slavery, and yet, for a great while, had the dominion; for a family, a people, a person, may lie under the curse of God, and yet may long prosper in the world, till the measure of their iniquity, like that of the Canaanites, be full. Many are marked for ruin that are not yet ripe for ruin. Therefore, Let not...