And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.
The sons of Ham - (see on meaning of this name, Genesis 6:10; Genesis 9:18.) His name was given to Egypt, as appears both from the Biblical views (Psalms 78:51; Psalms 105:23; Psalms 106:22) and from monumental evidence; because the ancient name of that country was Chem or Chemi; and the conjecture that the appellation was derived from the patriarch is confirmed by the fact that the great body of the Hamites, with the exception of Canaan, established themselves, probably, under the personal superintendence of Ham in Egypt, whence colonies from time to time emigrated to overspread Africa. His family line is traced further than that of Japheth; for, excepting in one case, the second generation of all his sons is mentioned, and the third of one of them.
Cush - being named first, he may be presumed to have been the oldest son of Ham. He gave his name to a people as well as to a country, the exact situation of which, however, has been the subject of much discussion. Cush in our English version is rendered Ethiopia, a rendering which is supported by the circumstance that most, if not all the passages in the later books of the Old Testament, in which it is so translated, seem to point to that African region which lies south of Egypt, and that it is frequently conjoined with Mizraim, implying contiguity to that country. In the Egyptian monumental inscriptions, too, it is called Keesh (the modern Geez), which is very like Cush. On all these accounts it has been strenuously maintained that the Biblical Cush exclusively refers to a country in Africa. But conclusive evidence has been obtained that the word Cush was used anciently in a very loose and general acceptation, being applied to an Asiatic as well as an African Ethiopian.
Colonel Chesney ('Euphrates Expedition') found, in his historical researches into the antiquities of Babylonia, that a colony of Cushites had settled north of the Araxes (Jihon), in a district called by classical writers Cossoea or Cissia; a name the mention of which frequently occurs in connection with the territory north and north-eastward of that country, and which is still preserved in Shus, Sus, Susiana (Chuzistan).
Moses of Chorene speaks of some of the early Cushites being located eastward of Persia Proper; and the name of Chus was given to the whole tract lying between Chuzistan and the Caucasus. Other colonies of the Cushites traveled southwards, and occupied the most fertile districts of Arabia; and even in the present day, traces of the Cushite population in the district called Chuzistan (Susiana) may be discovered at the head of the Persian Gulf, and along the coasts, as far as the south-western extremity of the land, where the children of Ham crossed over into Africa, by the straits of Babel-mandeb, in quest of greater security and a larger territory. Further south still, the Cushites had settlements, because they (2 Chronicles 16:8) are in the Syriac version rendered Indians; and Cush (Isaiah 11:11; Zephaniah 3:10) is taken for India both by the Syriac and the Chaldee. In accordance with this is the Hindu tradition that Cush (Valmic) was one of the sons of Brahma, and progenitor of the Indian race (Sir William Jones, 'Origin of Families and Nations').
In short, the descendants of Cush fixed their residence in localities widely separate, and by their influence gave the character of a Cushite population to their various settlements, insomuch that Strabo describes the Ethiopians as a twofold people, whose possessions lay in a tract stretching from the rising to the setting of the sun. The name Cush, like the classical Ethiopian, came to be used for a territory whose boundaries were indeterminate except on the north; and under this name is comprised the whole tract of country from the Indus to the Euphrates, between the Nile on the west, and the Tigris on the east, (see the note at Genesis 2:1-25).
Mizraim. This evidently denotes a people or country, so called from the second son of Ham, whose name was probably Mizr, and who, accompanied by his father, is generally believed to have settled in Egypt. Hence, that country received the name of the "land of Ham," which Gesenius suggests might be the domestic or familiar name of the country (in the Coptic and Sahidic dialects, Chemi or Cheme, the name still given to it by the natives), and of "Mizraim," a dual termination, signifying either on both banks, or rather, perhaps, Lower and Upper Egypt-the first colonizers of Egypt. That country is still known generally throughout the East as the land of Mizr; but the word Mizraim has not yet been discovered in the monumental inscriptions. The settlements of Mizraim stretched from the Philistine territory through Egypt and along the northern coast of Africa to the west.
Phut - or, spelled variously as Put, Pul (Septuagint, Phoud). It is allowed on all hands that the name represents an African people, who, as Josephus says, occupied Mauritania, in which there was a river called Phut (Pliny, 'Natural History'); but, according to the Septuagint and Vulgate versions, they settled on the oases of the Lybian desert-these versions rendering the Hebrew word Phut, Lybia, in the several texts where it occurs (Isaiah 66:19; Jeremiah 46:9; Ezekiel 27:10; Ezekiel 30:5; Ezekiel 38:5; Nahum 3:9). The descendants of Phut, with some correlative tribes, particularly Ludim (Genesis 10:13), are found located in the Foota and Ludamar districts of the river Dhioliba, where they pursue the trade of traveling merchants. Poole ('Smith's Dictionary') doubts these identifications, as founded merely on similarity of sound, and has put forth another hypothesis, that Phut, from the frequent mention of it in the Bible as a dependency of Egypt, may be the Egyptian Set, "the land of the bow," i:e., Nubia.
Canaan - the fourth son of Ham. This name designates the country afterward known as Judea, now as Palestine. But whether he, as the progenitor of the original colonists, gave this appellation to the country, or the name of the country was applied to the founder, cannot be determined. The meaning of the word is, depressed (see the note at Genesis 9:18), and the name Canaan, therefore, is very descriptive of the most striking feature of the country. that of being low-lying; for, excepting the central hills, it consists of two great plains-the maritime lowland, the Shephela, on the west, and the still deeper valley of the Jordan, the Ghor, on the east.