e almost
unaided taught the Gospel doctrine to the posterity of Japheth. He
says: "From Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I have
fully preached the Gospel of Christ" (Rom 15, 19). Almost all of Asia,
with the exception of the oriental peoples, together with Europe,
belongs to the posterity of Japheth. The Gentiles, therefore, did not,
as the Jews did, receive the kingdom and the priesthood from God. They
had neither the law nor the promise. Yet by the mercy of God they have
heard that sweet voice of the Gospel, the persuader, which is
indicated by the very name of Japheth.

218. The interpreters failed to recognize this as the true meaning,
and God permitted them to make this mistake. Still they did not miss
the true meaning altogether. For the verb _hirchib_, which means "to
enlarge," means also "to give consolation," just as conversely in
Latin the word _angustiae_ (narrow place) signifies also "pains," or
"perils," or "disaster." Thus we read in Psalms 4, 1: "Thou hast set
me at large when I was in distress." The only real enlargement, or
consolation, is the Word of the Gospel.

219. Thus the several expositions are harmonized by proper
interpretation. But the primary meaning of _enlarge_, which conveys
the idea of _persuasion_, is the native and proper one. It sheds a
bright light upon the fact that we Gentiles, although the promise was
not given to us, have nevertheless been called by the providence of
God to the Gospel. The promise pertains to Shem alone, but Japheth, as
Paul has it in Romans 11, 17, was grafted into the olive tree, like a
wild olive, and became a partaker of the original fatness, or the sap,
of the olive. The older portions of the Bible agree with the newer,
and what God promised in the days of Noah, he now carries out.

220. "Ham" signifies "the hot and burning one." This name was given to
him by his father, I believe, because of the great things he hoped for
his youngest son. To Noah the other two were cold men in comparison.
Eve rejoiced greatly when Cain was born (Gen 4, 1). She believed that
he would restore whatever had been wrought amiss. Yet he was the first
to harm mankind in a new way, in that he killed his brother.

221. Thus God, according to his unsearchable counsel, changes the
expectations even of the saints. Ham, whom his father, at his birth,
had expected to be inflamed with greater zeal for the support of the
Church than his brothers, was hot and burning, indee