Genesis 10:1-32
“Redeemed out of every tribe, tongue, people and nation”
Vs. 1-5 Japheth and sons
Vs. 6-14 Ham and sons
Vs. 15-20 Canaan and sons
Vs. 21-32 Shem and sons
Intro.
What is given to us in this chapter has been commonly called the table of nations and has led one leading archaeologist to proclaim it as an “astonishingly accurate document”. It seems that Shem, the middle son of Noah, undertook the task of listing the 70 nations that came from his two brothers and himself.
- Vs 2-5 Fourteen from Japheth
- Vs 6-20 Thirty from Ham (Vs. 15-20 includes his youngest son’s Canaan’s children)
- Vs 21-31 Twenty six from Shem
Verse 20 tells us that the listing was “according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands and in their nations,” which suggests that each family was given its own language as they were dispersed at the tower of Babel. The Bible does not categorize mankind into “races,” instead where people are concerned God sees only “tribe, tongue, people and nation”. The concept of race comes from evolutionary thinking in which mankind is divided into subspecies, which are in a state of evolving into a new species. Racism comes from evolutionary thinking, something clearly seen in Hitler’s Germany.
Japheth and sons
Vs. 1 This marks the end of the flood and the beginning of the repopulating of the earth written by those who were eyewitnesses of the events. This story appears in varying forms in some 300 other ancient cultures.
Vs. 2 This is the shortest of the genealogies yet it is the one that most of us belong to here in the U.S.. Folks called ethnologists do the study of people groups and they look at people’s last names in an attempt to trace them back. The challenging thing for them is the spelling of the names as you probably are aware that endings and prefixes are often added or deleted. So they look instead for the names having the same basic root word to determine their origin.
Japheth according to verse 21, was the eldest of Noah’s living descendants and had seven sons but only two of them are traced for us. These seven sons split off from each other, some settling in Europe the other in India. Historically they both trace their heritage back to the same ancestor. The Greeks call him “Iaptos” pronounced Japetos and he is in many of the ancient legends of Greece. To the Aryan Indian people he was known as Iyapeti and they have one of those 300 flood accounts that are quite similar to the Bible’s version. In their story the hero has three sons the oldest is Iyapeti the other two were named Sharma and C’harma (Shem and Ham) and C’harma was cursed when he laughed at his father when he got drunk.
Go’-mer: From this name over time the word Gaul, Gallic and Germany came from. Perhaps you will remember the letter of Paul titled Galatians; it too comes from Gomer. The Irish or Celtic as well as those from Spain, France and Britain owe their ancestry to old Gomer. Which means a lot of us are part Gomer!
Maw-gogue: This people group is mentioned in Ezekiel 38:6 as the people of where Gog is the prince. In Revelation they are identified as people from the Four Corners of the earth. “The place of Gog” as the name means is most likely part of the former USSR specifically the area of Georgia but could have included any area above the Caspian Sea.
Maw-dah’-ee: From him came the empire known as the Medes, which is modern day Iran. It is from this area that the book of Esther takes place after the fall of Babylon as the Medes and the Persians became the world power.
Yaw-vawn: He is identified with Ionia, which is translated elsewhere as Greece.
Too-bal’: He is usually linked with Muskovi or modern Moscow and so it is thought that he settled in modern day Ukraine or somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Meh’-shech: He is the ancestor that I referred to above that settled into modern day Moscow.
Tee-reh-yaw’: He seems to have settled in the Aegean Sea area perhaps around ancient Troy in modern day Turkey.
Vs. 3 Gomer has three sons:
Ash-ken-az’: You might remember this name as being associated with German Jews, as the Jews called Germany by this name. In reality the name has more to do with those that settled the regions of Armenia, Scandinavia and Saxon.
Ree-fath: Some believe that the word Europe comes from his name at any rate they settled the area known as Pontus in central Europe.
To-gar-maw: This name is associated with the Turks and Armenian peoples. They eventually migrated further north into Germany, which owes its name to this ancestor.
Verses 4-5 give us Japheth’s fourth son Yaw-vawn and his four sons.
El-ee-shaw: from this fellow we get the word Hellenes, which is used to describe Greece. So this descendant went with his dad and settled this area.
Tar-sheesh’: Now you will recall this name, as it is associated with the area that Jonah fled to. It is usually used in connection with those people that traveled by sea such as the Phoenicians and their cities of Northern Africa who later sailed and settled Spain.
Kit-tim: Is another name for Cyprus and is possibly preserved in the word Macedonia by the Adriatic Sea. So again you most likely have a case of further migration.
Do-daw-neem: This name is associated with Rhodes and the Dardanelles off the coast of Turkey and then perhaps migrated to France, as the ancient name for it was Rhodanus, which is associated with this name.
Vs. 5 This verse gives us a little insight as it tells us that the islands and coastlands from which the first Europeans came from were divided according to their ability to speak a common language. This tells us two things:
- Shem who most likely wrote this did so after the dispersion at Babel as we are told in Ch 11:2 where God confused the languages. Thus the languages were divided according to family lines.
- The migration of families happened because of the inability to communicate with others. Thus the distinct physical characteristics common with different nationalities was set in order because of this.
Vs. 6-14 Ham and sons
The four sons of Ham are listed for us:
Koosh: Which is the same as Kish and is translated as Ethiopia and Southern Arabia, which almost meet at the tip of the Red Sea.
Mits-rah’-yim: This is the Hebrew word for Egypt and is known as the land of Ham.
Poot: This is commonly called the country of Libya, which is just west of Egypt in Northern Africa.
Canaan: He settled in the Land that God would give to Israel and from him came those dreaded Canaanites, which we will look at in verses 15-19.
Vs. 7-12 Here we are given the six sons of Koosh as well as a mention of two sons from his fourth son Ra-maw’, Sheb-aw and Ded-awn. Finally, inverse 8-12 the focus is going to be on Nim-rode, the youngest son of Koosh.
Vs. 7 It seems that the first five sons of Koosh:
Seb-aw’, Hav-ee-law, Sab-taw’, Rah-maw, and Sab-tek-aw’, all settled in Arabia and then later, Seb-aw’ migrated into modern Sudan (underneath Egypt in Africa) as the ancient name is derived from his name. Rah-maw’s two sons Sheb-aw & Ded-awn were evidently well known Arabians in the days of Abraham as two of his grandsons after his second wife Keturah were named after them.
Vs. 8-12 Nim-rode’ was Koosh’s sixth son, and his name means, “let us rebel,” and appears to have fit his name well. The phrase “a mighty one on the earth”, literally is “a hunter of souls of men”. His legend as the first great emperor is preserved throughout many ancient sites in Iraq and it appears that after his death he was made into a god and worshiped as Marduk. His reputation was as a “mighty hunter,” and its meaning is that of extreme wickedness, some think that his reputation grew from hunting dinosaurs which threatened the human population and that he did a good service but it went to his head. Thus he was worshipped based upon his works which is always what is behind false religion. He began his kingdom at Babel in Iraq but it stretched all the way to Sumeria. He built cities in Assyria (Iran) called Nineveh. People of Resen listed here later migrated to northern Italy.
Vs. 13-14 The names of the seven sons of Mits-rah’-yim are given us:
Loo-deem, An-an-meem, Leh-haw-beem, Naf-too-kheem, Path-roo-seem and Kas-loo-kheem, all made their home in different regions of Africa accept for Kas-loo-kheem who went to dwell on the coast of modern day Israel.
Vs. 15-20 Canaan and sons
Vs. 15-18 Canaan was the fourth son of Ham and had two sons mentioned by name then nine just by the tribes which came from them:
Tsee-done’: Who founded a city mentioned 35 times in scripture located between Tyre & Beirut (Sidon) on the coast of Phoenicia in modern day Lebanon.
Heth: Who was the father of the Hittites who ruled in Asia Minor for over 800 years and later migrated eastward into China where they were known as Khittae or Cathay. The similarities of Hittites and Mongols have long been noted by archaeologists.
Vs. 16-18 The other nine tribes:
Yeb-oo-site’, Em-o-rite, Grir-gaw-shite’, Khiv-vite, Ar-kite, See-nite, Ar-vaw-dite, Tse-aw-rite and Kham-aw-thite inhabited the land that God would give to Israel and were generally known as Canaanites. The only exception is with the See-nite’s which like their brother Heth seem to have been part of populating China as the word comes from his name.
It is interesting that the Canaanites are said to have “dispersed” or literally “spread about”. Again the descendants of Canaan included the Mongol’s who eventually migrated through Asia and across the Bering Strait across a land bridge into North and then South America becoming the native peoples of our hemisphere. So much for the Mormon position which links the Indians with that of Shem and the lost tribes of Israel. Folks, Christians have a faith that is founded upon fact, Mormons having feelings based upon fiction!
Vs. 19-20 The general regional boundaries of their habitations are given and with no surprise included Sodom and Gomorrah. Notice again the fact that the families were according to their languages before they were dispersed into different lands to become different nations.
Vs. 21-32 Shem and sons
Vs. 21 Shem’s is distinguished by his relationship to his third son’s grandchild Ay’-ber. It is from his name that we get the word Hebrew from. Abraham through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, (12:3) is six generations beyond Ay’-ber.
Vs. 22-24 Here we are given the five sons of Shem and we shall focus on the family from the third son, Ar-pak-shad.
Ay-lawm: He was the father of the Elamites who would later merge with the Medes to form the Medo-Persian Empire of Southern Mesopotamia.
Ash-shoor: This is where the name Assyria comes from. It was from this area that Nim-rode took over this area and conquered it and built cities there.
Ar-pak-shad: Who we will look at more fully in a moment.
Lood: He was the father of the Lydians.
Arawm: Was the father of the Aramaeans, or Syrians from which the Aramaic language came from. This was the language in which some parts including Daniel were written.
Vs. 23 Arawm has four sons: Uwts, Khool, Gheh’-there and Mash. Uwts was from an area that later on Job came from (Job 1:1)
Vs. 24 Ar-pak-shad has a son Sheh’-lakh and he was the father of Ay-ber from whom Jesus would one day come forth.
Vs. 25 Ay-ber, who was from the same generation as Nim-rode’, has two sons: Peleg and Yok-tawn.
During Peleg’s time we are told that the earth became divided. This was the time when God confused the languages 11:7.
Vs. 26-32 Yok-tawn has 13 sons who settled where we are told that the boundaries were all within the Arabian Peninsula.