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Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
St Irenaeus of Lyons, tr. Robinson, 1920
Chapter 21
And even as the curse passed on, so also the blessing passed on to the race of him who was blessed, to each in his own order. For first of them was Shem blessed in these words: Blessed1 be the Lord, the God of Shem; and Ham 2 shall be his servant. The power of the blessing lies in this, that the God and Lord of all should be to Shem a peculiar possession of worship. And the blessing extended and reached unto Abraham, who was reckoned as descended in the tenth generation from the race of Shem: and therefore the Father and God of all was pleased to be called the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; because the blessing of Shem reached out and attached itself to Abraham. Now the blessing of Japheth is on this wise: God shall enlarge unto3 Japheth, and he shall dwell in the house of Shem, and Ham 4 shall be his servant. That is to say: In the end of the ages he blossomed forth, at the appearing of the Lord, through the calling of the Gentiles, when God enlarged unto them the calling; and their sound went out into all the earth, and5 their words to the end of the world. The enlarging, then, is the calling from among the Gentiles, that is to say, the Church.6 And he dwells in the house of Shem; that is, in the inheritance of the fathers, receiving in Christ Jesus the right of the firstborn. So in the rank in which each was blessed, in that same order through his posterity he received the fruit of the blessing.7
Notes
- Gen. ix. 26.
- The LXX reads Canaan, but one cursive has Ham.
- Gen. ix. 27.
- Here again the LXX reads Canaan, though E and other MSS. have Ham. The Arm. here has “he shall bless” for “he shall dwell”; but this is a slip, as appears from below.
- Ps. xix. 4.
- “The calling of the Gentiles,” or, as we have it also here, “the calling from among the Gentiles,” recurs in cc. 28, 41 bis, 42, 89, 91. I have noted it in the Armenian version of IV, xxxiv. 12, where however we find in the Greek ἡ ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἐκκλησία, and in the Latin ea quae ex gentibus est ecclesia. I do not remember to have met with it elsewhere in the writings of Irenaeus, or in any earlier writer. In the fragments of Hippolytus on Gen. xlix (ed. Achelis, pp. 59 ff.) ἡ ἐξ ἐθνῶν κλῆσις is found several times, and more than once ἐκκλησία occurs as a various reading. It is not found, however, in the corresponding comments in The Blessings of Jacob (Texte u. Unters. xxxviii. 1).
- With all the above cf. Just. M. Dial. 139.