535. The church called Noah should not be counted among the churches preceding the Flood, as verse 29 makes clear; that church was to "console them from their work and from the labor of their hands from the ground, which Jehovah had cursed." The consolation was that it would survive and endure.

But more will be said about Noah and his sons below, ¹ with the Lord's divine mercy.

Footnotes:

1140. The mode of the earliest church continues through this chapter and the next up to the mention of Eber, but it is halfway between a made-up story and true history. Noah and his offspring — Shem, Ham, Japheth, and Canaan — did not and do not mean anything but the ancient church in respect to its worship, in the abstract. Specifically, Shem means inner worship; Japheth, outward worship that corresponds to it; Ham, inner worship corrupted; and Canaan, outward worship detached from inner. These particular people never existed. Instead, different kinds of worship were given their names, because all the different forms of worship, or all the specific differences among them, could be reduced to these basic kinds.

Noah, then, simply meant the ancient church in general, embracing all types of worship, as their progenitor.

Still, aside from those of Eber and his descendants, the names in the current chapter mean individual nations, and all of them were nations forming a part of the ancient church. That church was scattered far and wide in the lands surrounding Canaan.