The Books of Chronicles review the history of the earthly people of God, and chiefly that of the royal line of David, from the standpoint of grace. It is as though God were in tender mercy and unchanging love and pity, lingering in memory over His people, sinful and wayward as they had, alas! ever proved.
How different the history of man, from. the life of the Son of God, as He passed through this world from the manger to the cross and the glory! In Him there was nothing to hide, naught to conceal but I lis own personal glory, but in these divinely inspired records of the human race, we notice that which is traceable back to the fall of man sin—though in the Chronicles only that which brings out prominently the grace, and thereby the blessing of God, is seen.
Examining Chapter 1, we first notice the entire absence of the murderer, Cain, and all his descendants (Genesis 4). They set the fashion of things in their day, in going out of the presence of God, in city building, in the lust of the flesh, in music and manufactures, and in other respects, too, no doubt; not all such essentially wrong, but founded upon unconfessed and upon the giving up of God.
After the flood, the peopling of the cleansed earth comes in view, through Noah's three sons, of whom Japheth is mentioned first, and his descendants sufficiently to show what parts of the early world they occupied; their names, shortly applied to the regions they occupied, indicate Europe and a great area of Asia.
Ham is second, of whom came one who began to be mighty upon the earth (verse 10); thus man early began to oppress his fellows. Ham's descendants peopled Africa, and from the Mediterranean Sea eastward.
Third in order of mention appear the sons of Shem, of whom God was to separate a family to Himself, worshipers of the living and true God, when idolatry filled the earth. At verse 24 we are directed to the Peleg line of Shem, of which came Abram; then Abram's offspring according to the flesh, leaving the mention of the family in which divine grace worked to chapter 2.