(1) In Biblical language the word "son" is used first of all in its strictly literal sense of male issue or offspring of a man or woman. In a few cases in the Old Testament, as in
Ge 3:16;
Jos 17:2;
Jer 20:15, the Hebrew word ben, is translated correctly in the English by the word "child" or "children" as it includes both sexes, as in
Ge 3:16, or is limited to males by the use of the modifying term "male." Closely connected with this meaning of direct male issue or of children is its use to denote descendants, posterity in the more general sense. This usage which, as in the case of the sons (children) of Israel, may be regarded perhaps as originating in the conception of direct descent from the common ancestor Israel, came in the course of time to
be a mere ethnographic designation, so that the term "the children of Israel" and "the children of Ammon" meant no more than Israelites or Ammonites, that is, inhabitants of the lands of Israel or Ammon respectively. An extension of this usage is to be found in the designation of a people as the sons or children of a land or city; so in
Am 9:7 "children of the Ethiopians," or
Eze 16:28, where the literal rendering would be "sons of Asshur," instead of the Assyrians, and "the children of Jerus" in
Joe 3:6.