This chapter gives Noah's family and personal fall, and the judgment on Canaan, son of Ham. It is Noah's personal history and prophecy; but it was the fall of the head of the new world, with all its consequent history. Babylon was another thing—association to make a center to themselves without God. Then God constitutes nations out of a family, or three families, at most. It is the actual basis of the state of the existing world—the world such as it is.
2. What a different dominion from Adam's! (chap. 2: 19, 20). God there, as Creator, puts all living animals under Adam's power; he names them. Here, God is a preserver, soter, but the animals are merely placed in Noah's power, and fear, the character of relationship; Noah is their destroyer, whom they fear. Blood is put into his hand in the way of government, for blood shedding, life taking, was in the earth. It is clearly a setting of the whole thing upon a new system, and footing (compare chap. 1: 28, 29).
6. This puts evidently the image of God on a different footing from moral qualities.
20. The history of Noah, and his patriarchal prophecy.
26, 27. Is it intended, the difference of Shem and Japheth? Jehovah, the name of relationship with Shem—Jehovah, the God of Shem; and Elohim, simply the fact of divine power and providence—"God shall enlarge him"; he gets the world, as such, when direct relationship is not established in the world; this is the basis of the world's history.
The whole chapter gives the relationship of God with the new world and its order; this is the world's history in general, in prophetic plan according to God.