Shem

“ For what can we understand by the division of the earth, if not the diversity of languages? And, therefore, omitting the other sons of Shem, who are not concerned in this matter, Scripture gives the genealogy of those by whom the line runs on to Abraham, as before the flood those are given who carried on the line to Noah from Seth. Accordingly this series of generations begins thus: “These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood. And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.” ”

“ Shem, king of righteousness, and king of peace, and priest of the Most High God, is the type, contemporary with the holder of the promises, of the Seed, or Christ, on the throne of the Kingdom of God. ”

“ How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnished, flaming arch did first descry!
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot,
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair,
Forms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air:
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers. ”

“ Now that I have come to the close of my earthly days, and that the higher circles will soon open to me, whereof I have learned the secrets from my revered Master—where there is neither eating nor drinking, but the pious sit crowned and delight themselves with the vision of the Godhead—I would fain leave some chronicle, in these confused and evil days, of him whom I have loved best on earth, for he came to teach man the true life and the true worship. To him, the ever glorious and luminous Israel Baal Shem, the one true Master of the Name, I owe my redemption from a living death. ”

“ Although the universal Father of all the nations of the earth, he may be said to have more particularly adopted the descendants of Shem, in choosing them to be the depositaries of the true religion, while the rest of mankind were sunk in idolatry and ignorance. ”

“ The conquest of the descendants of Ham by the Greeks and Romans, and their slavery, attest the truth of Scripture.
The settlements of the descendants of Shem. The descendants of Shem occupied another belt or zone. It extended from the southeastern part of Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf and the peninsula of Arabia. The people lived in tents, were not ambitious of conquest, were religious and contemplative. The great theogonies of the East came from this people. They studied the stars. They meditated on God and theological questions. They were a chosen race with whom sacred history dwells. ”

“ Ham will be ever lower than Shem; Shem will be ever lower than Japheth. All will rise in the Christian grandeur to be revealed. Ham will be lower than Shem, because he was sent to Central Africa. Man south of the Equator--in Asia, Australia, Oceanica, America, especially Africa--is inferior to his Northern brother. The blessing was upon Shem in his magnificent Asia. The greater blessing was upon Japheth in his man-developing Europe. ”

“ Note, a family of saints is more truly honourable than a family of nobles, Shem's holy seed than Ham's royal seed, Jacob's twelve patriarchs than Ishmael's twelve princes, ch. xvii. 20. Goodness is true greatness. 2. He was the brother of Japheth the elder, by which it appears that, though Shem is commonly put first, he was not Noah's first-born, but Japheth was older. But why should this also be put as part of Shem's title and description, that he was the brother of Japheth, since it had been, in effect, said often before? ”

“ Of Shem the Rabbis have somewhat to say. "I have found in the Midrash that the Rabbi Johanan, son of Nuri, said: 'The holy, ever-blessed God took Shem, son of Noah, and consecrated him priest of the Most High, that he should minister before Him; and He let his Majesty dwell with Him, and He gave him the name Melchizedek, a priest of the Most High God, king of Salem. His brother Japheth learnt the law of him in his school, till Abraham came, who learnt it in the school of Shem. ”

“ SHEM (Hebrew for “ name, renown, posterity ”) , in the Bible, the eldest of the three sons of Noah, whose superiority over Canaan is reflected in the tradition that Noah pronounced a curse upon the latter (Gen. ix. 20–27) . In the genealogies (x. 2X sqq.) , Shem numbers among his descendants Assyrian, Arabian, Aramaean and Hebrew populations, whence the ethnic Semitic (strictly speaking, Shemitic) has been coined as a convenient term for these peoples. ”

“ But Assur, father of the Assyrian, was not one of the sons of Ham, Noah’s son, but is found among the sons of Shem, his eldest son. Whence it appears that among Shem’s offspring there arose men who afterwards took possession of that giant’s kingdom, and advancing from it, founded other cities, the first of which was called Nineveh, from Ninus. From him Scripture returns to Ham’s other son, Mizraim; and his sons are enumerated, not as seven individuals, but as seven nations. ”

“ When the khakham noticed the minister, he screamed to him, "Brother, look! They are beating and torturing me so intensely--these hooligans--for no reason!" The minister snarled at him, "Still, you hold to your contrivances and don't want to believe in anything at all?! You say these are people?? Now see here! Look! This is the Baal Shem whom you had denied. He is specifically the one who can take you out (and he will show you the truth) ." The tam, the minister, beseeched the Baal Shem to take them out and show them that this is the Devil and that these are not humans. ”

“ Having recently passed into what my great-grandson Shem calls my Anecdotage, it has occurred to me that perhaps some of the recollections of a more or less extended existence upon this globular [1] mass of dust and water that we are pleased to call the earth, may prove of interest to posterity, and I have accordingly, at [2] the earnest solicitation of my grandson, Noah, and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet, consented to put them into permanent literary form. ”

“ Shem had five sons, Elam, Asher, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aran, who peopled the richest provinces of Asia.
SHEPHERDS. The patriarchal shepherds, rich in flocks and herds, in silver and gold, and attended by a numerous train of servants purchased with their money, or hired from the neighbouring towns and villages, acknowledge no civil superior; they held the rank, and exercised the rights, of sovereign princes; they concluded alliances with the kings in whose territories they tended their flocks ”

“ Now we know that both Daniel and Berosus, the old Babylonian historians, were right, and the Bible was right in using the word third. God in His revelation has always been equal to man’s need. Tradition—Abraham p. 163saw Shem, for Shem lived some thirty years after Abraham’s death. Shem, and Melchisedek, and Job, are likely the same person. Certainly, Shem and Melchisedek are the same, and by Egyptian historians called Philitis. This Philitis was the builder of the Great Pyramid. Now Shem saw Methuselah and Methuselah Adam. ”

“ The geographical position of Japheth in Europe, Ham in Africa, and Shem in Asia, will lead to correct conclusions respecting the peopling of the continent discovered by Columbus in the West, and that found by Hartog in the South; while the vicinity of these continents to Asia, and their conquest and occupation by the descendants of Japheth, will leave no doubt in reflecting minds that the Aboriginal inhabitants of America and Australasia are also the descendants of Shem. ”

“ The most obvious meaning of the expression is, that Providence would bless Japhet with a numerous progeny, which should not only spread over an ample tract of country, but that they would afterwards encroach on the territory of Shem’s descendants. And this sense of the words is supported by history; for the whole of Europe, and a considerable part of Asia, was originally peopled, and has been always occupied, by Japhet’s offspring, who, not contented with their own possessions, have repeatedly made encroachments on the sons of Shem ”

“ First, that the name of Shem is put by mistake for that of Noah. Secondly, that Yima, who is here identified with Adam, is never represented in the Avesta as the first man, but is preceded there by numerous ancestors, and surrounded by numerous subjects, who are not his offspring. ”

“ Now the tribe of Shem increased and flourished under heaven. And a certain man of that tribe, of thoughtful heart and given to virtue, had noble children. Two goodly sons were born to him, and bred in Babylon, great-hearted princes named Abraham and Haran. And the Lord of angels was their guide and friend. Now Haran had a noble son, whose name was Lot. And Abraham and Lot throve excellently before the Lord as was their nature from their elders. Wherefore men proclaim their virtues far and wide upon the earth. ”

“ One of the Jewish congregations is of reformed practice. Both of them represent comparative wealth, and are growing in numbers. These children of Shem—at least the German part of them—are a domestic, home-loving people. ”

“ He was a great man in Israel, a scholar profound as few. Even the enemies of the Chassidim—and they were many and envenomed—admitted his learning, and complained that his defection to the sect had greatly strengthened and drawn grave disciples to this ignorant movement. For, according to them, the Baal Shem was as unlettered as he gave himself out to be, nor did they credit the story of his followers that all his apparent ignorance was due to his celestial oath not to reveal himself till his thirty-sixth year. As for the followers, they were esteemed simply a set of lewd, dancing fanatics ”

“ It represents Shem as dying nearly a century and a half before the death of Peleg, instead of more than that number of years afterward, and 118almost four centuries and a half before the death of Abraham; whom, in accordance with the history, it makes to survive his father Terah precisely a hundred years. It removes the difficulties with which the Hebrew chronology invests the whole history, by giving time, while it allows the dispersion to have taken place in the latter part of Peleg’s life, for the thirteen sons of his younger brother Joktan to have become heads of families ”

“ Num. xxi, 21, until they were destroyed by Moses and Joshua, with the rest of the devoted nations of Canaan’s family.
3. Shem and his family are noticed last, Gen. x, 21–30. His posterity were confined to middle Asia. (1.) His son Elam appears to have been settled in Elymais, or southern Persia, contiguous to the maritime tract of Chusistan, Dan. viii, 2. (2.) His son Ashur planted the land thence called Assyria, which soon became a province of the Cushite, or Cuthic empire, founded by Nimrod. (3.) Arphaxad, through his grandson, Eber, branched out into the two houses of Peleg and Joktan. ”

“ Shem declared he only would succeed as a professor in some college.—My, I wish one of my sons would be a lawyer or a doctor. It gives distinction to the family. I’m glad I haven’t any daughters. All a woman thinks about is getting married, and I’d have a hard time finding good husbands for them. [Pg 108]
MONDAY.
Remarks:
Mrs. Shem and I beat Japheth and Mrs. Japheth at deck shuffleboard. Score 100 to 97. Mrs. Ham and Shem challenged us. I like to play that game. It’s fun pushing those stone checkers along the deck.—The boa constrictor peeled himself today.—Mrs. ”

“ The preceding opinion was concurred in 136by many Spanish writers; but the first English writer to support the theory was Thorowgood, in his work entitled, Jewes in America. [162] L’Estrange, who replied to this work, controverted the theory of the lost tribes of Israel, but concluded that Shem was the progenitor of the Americans; that he was ninety-eight years old at the time of the flood, and was not present at the building of Babel. ”

“ One beautiful moonlight night, Jelāl and Shems were together on the terraced roof of the college, and all the inhabitants of Qonya were sleeping on their housetops.
Shems remarked: “See all these poor creatures! They are dead to every sense of their Creator on this beautiful night of God’s decree. Wilt thou not, Jelāl, of thy infinite compassion, wake them up, and let them gain a share in the shower of blessings of this night?” ”

“ English Translation A baal keri should think about the Shema in his heart [i.e., instead of saying it out loud] and should not recite the blessings, either before or after. On food, he makes the blessing after, but not the blessing before. Rabbi Yehudah says: He blesses before and after. Explanation
Baal keri: Baal keri is a Mishnaic euphemism for a person who has had a seminal emission but has not yet been purified according to the relevant laws.
Think about: I.e. he should say the words in his head, concentrating on their meanings.
Blessings: I.e. the blessings of the Shema. ”

“ Believes in socialism and wants everything. Author of considerable sarcasm, wit, and divided opinion as to his talents. Ambition: An Americanless England. Also, sales. Address: Watch bill-boards.
SHEBA, Queen of, an ancient mere woman who matched her brains against the brainiest man who ever lived. She lost.
SHEM, Noah's heir. Was first officer of the Ark.
SHERMAN, General, secured his fame by marching to the sea and giving a terse definition of war.
SHERRY, proprietor of a New York restaurant where a person feels wealthy while at the table and poor afterward. ”