Now this is the history of the generations of the sons of Noah and of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood.
The sons of Japheth were: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer were: Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan were: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. Of these were the islands of the nations divided in their lands, everyone after his language, after their families, in their nations.
The sons of Ham were: Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. The sons of Raamah were: Sheba and Dedan. Cush became the father of Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh. Therefore it is said, “like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh”. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went into Assyria, and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and the great city Calah. Mizraim became the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim (which the Philistines descended from), and Caphtorim.
Canaan became the father of Sidon (his firstborn), Heth, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Afterward the families of the Canaanites were spread abroad. The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon—as you go toward Gerar—to Gaza—as you go toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim—to Lasha. These are the sons of Ham, after their families, according to their languages, in their lands and their nations.
Children were also born to Shem (the elder brother of Japheth), the father of all the children of Eber. The sons of Shem were: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. The sons of Aram were: Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash. Arpachshad became the father of Shelah. Shelah became the father of Eber. To Eber were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. His brother’s name was Joktan. Joktan became the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. Their dwelling extended from Mesha, as you go toward Sephar, the mountain of the east.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 10, 11, 21 1. These are the generations. If any one pleases…
1. These are the generations. If any one pleases more accurately to examine the genealogies related by Moses in this and the following chapter, I do not condemn his industry. And some interpreters have not unsuccessfully applied their diligence and study to this point. Let them enjoy, as far as I am concerned the reward of their labors. It shall, however, suffice for me briefly to allude to those things which I deem more useful to be noticed, and for the sake of which I suppose these genealogies to have been written by Moses. First, in these bare names we have still some fragment of the history of the world; and the next chapter will show how many years intervened between the date of the deluge and the time when God made his covenant with Abraham. This second commencement of mankind is especially worthy to be known; and detestable is the ingratitude of those, who, when they had heard, from their fathers and grandfathers of the wonderful restoration of the world in so short a time, yet voluntarily became forgetful of the grace and the salvation of God. Even the memory of the deluge was by the greater part entirely lost. Very few cared by what means or for what end they had been preserved. Many ages afterwards, seeing that the wicked forgetfulness of men had rendered them callous to the judgment and mercy of God, the door was opened to the lies of Satan by whose artifice it came to pass, that heathen poets scattered abroad futile and even noxious fables, by which the truth respecting God’s works was adulterated. The goodness of God, therefore, wonderfully triumphed over the wickedness of men, in having granted a prolongation of life to beings so ungrateful, brutal, and barbarous. Now, to captious men, (who yet do not think it absurd to refuse to acknowledge a Creator of the world,) such a sudden increase of mankind seems incredible, and therefore they ridicule it as fabulous. I grant, indeed, that if we choose to estimate what Moses relates by our own reason, it may be regarded as a fable; but they act very perversely who do not attend to the design of the Holy Spirit. For what else, I ask, did the Spirit intend, than that the offspring of three men should be increased, not by natural means, or in a common manner, but by the unwonted exercise of the power of God, for the purpose of replenishing the earth far and wide? They who regard this miracle of God as fabulous on account of its magnitude, should much less believe that Noah and his sons, with their wives, breathed in the waters, and that animals lived nearly a whole year without sun and air. This then, is a gigantic madness, to hold up to ridicule what is said respecting the restoration of the human race: for there the admirable power of God is displayed. How much better would it be, in the history of these events, — which Noah saw with his own eyes, and not without great admiration, — to behold God, to admire his power, to celebrate his goodness, and to acknowledge his hand, not less filled with mysteries in restoring, than in creating the world? We must, however, observe, that in the three catalogues which Moses furnishes, all the heads of the families are not enumerated; but those only, among the grandsons of Noah, are recorded, who were the princes of nations. For as any one excelled among his brethren, in talent, valor, industry, or other endowments, he obtained for himself a name and power, so that others, resting under his shadow, freely conceded to him the priority. Therefore, among the sons of Japheth, of Ham, and of Shem, Moses enumerates those only who had been celebrated, and by whose names the people were called. Moreover, although no certain cause appears why Moses begins at Japheth, and descends in the second place to Ham, yet it is probable that the first place is given to the sons of Japheth, because they, having wandered over many regions, and having even crossed the sea, had receded farther from their country: and since these nations were less known to the Jews, therefore he alludes to them briefly. He assigns the second place to the sons of Ham, the knowledge of whom, on account of their vicinity, was more familiar to the Jews. But since he had determined to weave the history of the Church in one continuous narrative, he postpones the progeny of Shem, from which the church flowed, to the last place. Wherefore, the order in which they are mentioned is not that of dignity; since Moses puts those first, whom he wished slightly to pass over, as obscure. Besides, we must observe, that the children of this world are exalted for a time, so that the whole earth seems as if it were made for their benefit, but their glory being transient vanishes away; while the Church, in an ignoble and despised condition, as if creeping on the ground, is yet divinely preserved, until at length, in his own time, God shall lift up her head. I have already declared that I leave to others the scrupulous investigation of the names here mentioned. The reason of certain of them is manifest from the Scripture, such as Cush, Mizraim, Madai, Canaan, and the like: in respect to some others there are probable conjectures; in others, the obscurity is too great to allow of any certain conclusion; and those figments which interpreters adduce are, in part, very much distorted and forced; in part, vapid, and without any fair pretext. Undoubtedly it seems to be the part of a frivolous curiosity to seek for certain and distinct nations in each of these names. When Moses says, that the islands of the Gentiles were divided by the sons of Japheth, we understand that the regions beyond the sea were parted among them. For Greece and Italy, and other continental lands, — as well as Rhodes and Cyprus, — are called islands by the Hebrews, because the sea interposed. Whence we infer that we are sprung from those nations.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 21, 25 These generations are here recited, partly to declare the…
These generations are here recited, partly to declare the marvelous increase in so small a time, and also to set forth their great forgetfulness of God’s grace towards their fathers.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–26 Gen 10:1 Now these [are] the generations of the…
Gen 10:1 Now these [are] the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
Ver. 1. And unto them were sons born after the flood.] Great store of sons: else how could they so soon have peopled the whole earth? See here the virtue of that divine benediction, Gen 9:1; Gen 9:7.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30 1. In the search of these genealogies we must…
1. In the search of these genealogies we must avoid both carelessness, for the reasons now mentioned, and excessive curiosity about every particular person here named, and the people sprung from him; which is neither necessary nor profitable, nor indeed possible now to find out, by reason of the great changes of names, through length of time, loss of ancient records, differences of languages, extinction of families, conquest and destruction of nations, and other causes. It may suffice that divers of them, and those the most eminent, are evident and discernible at this day, as will appear in the progress, by which we may and ought to presume the truth of the rest, whose names are lost in the public confusions of the world in former ages, of whom I shall therefore be silent, and only speak of the principal persons, and that briefly.
2. The same people which were originally seated in one place did ofttimes shift their places, or at least sent forth colonies; and that sometimes into places far distant from their brethren, as appears from the ancient and famous expeditions mentioned in sacred and profane story. So you must not wonder if you meet with the same people in divers countries.
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3. In general, the world was divided into three parts, whereof the more eastern parts were allotted to Shem and his issue, the more southern parts to Ham, and the more northern parts of it to Japheth.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 15, 21 Moses begins with Japheth's family, either because he was…
Moses begins with Japheth's family, either because he was the eldest, or because his family lay remotest from Israel and had least concern with them at the time when Moses wrote, and therefore he mentions that race very briefly, hastening to give an account of the posterity of Ham, who were Israel's enemies and of Shem, who were Israel's ancestors; for it is the church that the scripture is designed to be the history of, and of the nations of the world only as they were some way or other related to Israel and interested in the affairs of Israel. Observe, 1. Notice is taken that the sons of Noah had sons born to them after the flood, to repair and rebuild the world of mankind which the flood had ruined. He that had killed now makes alive. 2. The posterity of Japheth were allotted to the isles of the Gentiles (Gen 10:5), which were solemnly, by lot, after a survey, divided among them, and probably this island of ours among the rest; all places beyond the sea from Judea are called isles (Jer 25:22), and this directs us to understand that promise (Isa 42:4), the isles shall wait for his law, of the conversion of the Gentiles to the faith of Christ.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–30 Now these are the generations of the sons of…
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah,.... The genealogy of them, and which is of great use to show the original of the several nations of the world, from whence they sprung, and by whom they were founded; and to confute the pretended antiquity of some nations, as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Chinese, and others; and to point out the particular people, which were to be the seat of the church of God for many ages, and from whom the Messiah was to spring; which seems to be the principal view of the history of Moses, and of this genealogy, with which should be compared Ch1 1:1 Shem, Ham, and Japheth; see Gen 5:32.
and unto them were sons born after the flood; for they had none born to them either before the flood or in it; they were married before the flood, for their wives went into the ark with them; but it does not appear they had any children before, though they then were near an hundred years old; and if they had, they were not in the ark, and therefore must perish with the rest, which is not likely: Shem's son Arphaxad was born two years after the flood, Gen 11:10 when the rest were born, either his or his brethren's, is not said; however they were all born after the flood; though some pretend that Canaan was born in the ark (y), during the flood, for which there is no authority; yea, it is confuted in this chapter, where Canaan stands among the sons of Ham, born to him after the flood.
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(y) See Bayle's Dictionary, vol. 10. art. "Ham", p. 587.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 21 This chapter contains, the only certain account extant of…
This chapter contains, the only certain account extant of the original of nations; and yet, perhaps, there is no nation, but that of the Jews, that can be confident from which of these seventy fountains (for many there are here) it derived its streams. Through the want of early records, the mixtures of people, the revolutions of nations, and distance of time, the knowledge of the lineal descent of the present inhabitants of the earth is lost: nor were any genealogies preserved but those of the Jews, for the sake of the Messiah. Only, in this chapter, we have a brief account,
I. Of the posterity of Japheth, ver. 2-5.
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II. The posterity of Ham, ver. 6-20. and, in that particular notice taken of Nimrod, ver. 8-9.
III. The posterity of Shem, ver. 23-31.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 The generations of the sons of Noah, 1.
CHAPTER X
The generations of the sons of Noah, 1.
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JAPHETH and his descendants, 2-4.
The isles of the Gentiles, or Europe, peopled by the
Japhethites, 5.
HAM and his posterity, 6-20.
Nimrod, one of his descendants, a mighty hunter, 8, 9,
founds the first kingdom, 10.
Nineveh and other cities founded, 11, 12.
The Canaanites in their nine grand branches or families, 15-18.
Their territories, 19.
SHEM and his posterity, 21-31.
The earth divided in the days of Peleg, 25.
The territories of the Shemites, 30.
The whole earth peopled by the descendants of Noah's three
sons, 32.
NOTES ON CHAP. X
Verse 1. Now these are the generations] It is extremely difficult to say what particular nations and people sprang from the three grand divisions of the family of Noah, because the names of many of those ancient people have become changed in the vast lapse of time from the deluge to the Christian era; yet some are so very distinctly marked that they can be easily ascertained, while a few still retain their original names.
Moses does not always give the name of the first settler in a country, but rather that of the people from whom the country afterwards derived its name. Thus Mizraim is the dual of Mezer, and could never be the name of an individual. The like may be said of Kittim, Dodanim, Ludim, Ananim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim, Philistim, and Caphtorim, which are all plurals, and evidently not the names of individuals, but of families or tribes. See Ge 10:4; Ge 10:6; Ge 10:13; Ge 10:14.
In the posterity of Canaan we find whole nations reckoned in the genealogy, instead of the individuals from whom they sprang; thus the Jebusite, Amorite, Girgasite, Hivite, Arkite, Sinite, Arvadite, Zemarite, and Hamathite, Ge 10:16-18, were evidently whole nations or tribes which inhabited the promised land, and were called Canaanites from Canaan, the son of Ham, who settled there.
Moses also, in this genealogy, seems to have introduced even the name of some places that were remarkable in the sacred history, instead of the original settlers. Such as Hazarmaveth, Ge 10:26; and probably Ophir and Havilah, Ge 10:29. But this is not infrequent in the sacred writings, as may be seen 1Ch 2:51, where Salma is called the father of Bethlehem, which certainly never was the name of a man, but of a place sufficiently celebrated in the sacred history; and in 1Ch 4:14, where Joab is called the father of the valley of Charashim, which no person could ever suppose was intended to designate an individual, but the society of craftsmen or artificers who lived there.
Eusebius and others state (from what authority we know not) that Noah was commanded of God to make a will and bequeath the whole of the earth to his three sons and their descendants in the following manner: - To Shem, all the East; to Ham, all Africa; to Japheth, the Continent of Europe with its isles, and the northern parts of Asia. See the notes at the end of the preceding chapter. See Clarke on Gen 9:29.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 15, 21, 25 Gen 10:1. Although this chapter may appear to some…
Gen 10:1. Although this chapter may appear to some unprofitable, it is indeed of great use. 1st, It gives us a true, and the only true account of the origin of the several nations of the world. 2d, It discovers and distinguishes from all other nations, the people in which God’s church was to be preserved, and from which Christ was to come. 3d, It explains and confirms Noah’s prophecy concerning his three sons, and makes the accomplishment of it evident. 4th, It enables us to understand many other parts of Scripture, as well prophetical and poetical, as historical and doctrinal. It is therefore well worth our attention. These are the sons of Noah, Shem, &c. — Although Shem is always named first, when the sons of Noah are enumerated, because he was the progenitor of Abraham and of Christ, and because the church of God was continued in his line, yet it is generally thought he was the youngest of the three, and that Japheth, though always mentioned last, was the eldest.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 21 - Section VIII - The Nations
- Section VIII - The Nations
- Japheth
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2. גמר gomer, “Gomer, completion; related: complete;” Κιμμέριοι Kimmerioi. מגוג māgôg, “Magog, Caucasian, Skyth.” מדי māday, “Madai, middle: Mede.” יון yāvān, “Javan”; Ἰάων Iaōn; “Sanskrit, Javana; Old Persian, Juna.” תבל tubāl, “Tubal”; Τιβαρηνοὶ Tibareenoi. משׁך meshek, “Meshek, drawing possession, valor”; Μόσχοι Moschoi, תירס tı̂yrās, “Tiras;” Θρᾷξ Thrax.
3. אשׁכנו 'ashkenaz, “Ashkenaz,” Ἀσκάνιος Askanios. ריפת rı̂ypat, “Riphath,” ὄρη Ῥίπαια oree Ripaia, תגרמה togarmâh “Togarmah, Thorgom, ancestor of the Armenians.”
4. אלישׁה 'elı̂yshâh, “Elishah;” Ἧλις Eelis, Ἑλλὰς Hellas, Αἰολεῖς Aioleis. תדשׁישׁ tarshı̂ysh, “Tarshish, breaking, fastness: Tartessus, Tarsus, Tyrseni.” כתים kı̂tı̂ym, “Kittim, smiters; Citienses;” Κᾶρες Kares; דדנים dodānı̂ym, “Dodanim, Dodona, Dardani.”
5. אי 'ı̂y, “meadow, land reached by water, island; related: be marked off or bounded (by a water line).” גוי gôy, “nation; related: be born;” γεγάασι gegaasi.
The fifth document relates to the generations of the sons of Noah. It presents first a genealogy of the nations, and then an account of the distribution of mankind into nations, and their dispersion over the earth. This is the last section which treats historically of the whole human race. Only in incidental, didactic, or prophetic passages do we again meet with mankind as a whole in the Old Testament.
The present chapter signalizes a new step in the development of the human race. They pass from the one family to the seventy nations. This great process covers the space of time from Noah to Abraham. During this period the race was rapidly increasing under the covenant made with Noah. From Shem to Abraham were ten generations inclusive; and, therefore, if we suppose the same rate of increase after as we have supposed before, there would be about fifteen million inhabitants when Abraham was thirty years of age. If, however, we take eight as the average of a family, and suppose eleven generations after Shem at the one hundredth year of Abraham’s life, we have about thirty million people on the earth. The average of the three sons of Noah is higher than this; for they had sixteen sons, and we may suppose as many daughters, making in all thirty-two, and, therefore, giving ten children to each household. The present chapter does not touch on the religious aspect of human affairs: it merely presents a table of the primary nations, from which all subsequent nationalities have been derived.
Gen 10:1-2
The sons of Japheth. - Japheth is placed first, because he was, most probably, the oldest brother Gen 9:24; Gen 10:21, and his descendants were the most numerous and most widely spread from the birthplace of mankind. The general description of their territory is “the isles of the nations.” These were evidently maritime countries, or such as were reached by sea. These coastlands were pre-eminently, but not exclusively, the countries bordering on the north side of the Mediterranean and its connected waters. They are said to belong to the nations, because the national form of association was more early and fully developed among them than among the other branches of the race. There is, probably, a relic of Japheth in the, Ιαπετὸς Iapetos, Japetus of the Greeks, said to be the son of Uranus (heaven), and Gaea (earth), and father of Prometheus, and thus in some way connected with the origin or preservation of the human race.
Fourteen of the primitive nations spring from Japheth. Seven of these are of immediate descent.
(1) Gomer is mentioned again, in Ezekiel Eze 38:6, as the ally of Gog, by which the known existence of the nation at that period is indicated. Traces of this name are perhaps found in the Κιμμέριοι Kimmerioi, (Homer, Odyssey Eze 11:14; Herodotus Eze 1:15; Eze 4:12), who lay in the dark north, in the Krimea, the Kimbri who dwelt in north Germany, the Kymry, Cambri, and Cumbri who occupied Britain. These all belong to the race now called Keltic, the first wave of population that reached the Atlantic. Thus, the Γομαρεῖς Gomareis, of Josephus (Ant. 1:6.1) may even be identified with the Galatae. This nation seems to have lain to the north of the Euxine, and to have spread out along the southern coasts of the Baltic into France, Spain, and the British Isles.
(2) Magog is mentioned, by Ezekiel Eze 38:6, as the people of which Gog was the prince. It is introduced in the Apocalypse Rev 20:8, as a designation of the remote nations who had penetrated to the ends or corners of the earth. This indicates a continually progressing people, occupying the north of Europe and Asia, and crossing, it may be, over into America. They seem to have been settled north of the Caspian, and to have wandered north and east from that point. They are accordingly identified by Josephus (Ant. 1:6.1) with the Skyths, and include the Mongols among other Skythic tribes.
(3) Madai has given name to the Medes, who occupied the southern shore of the Caspian. From this region they penetrated southward to Hindostan.
(4) Javan is traced in the Ιάονες Iaones, Iones, who settled in the coasts of the Aegean, in Peloponnesus, Attica, and subsequently on the coast of Asia Minor, and accordingly denotes the Greeks in the language of the Old Testament Isa 66:19; Eze 27:13; Dan 8:21. The name Yunau is found in the cuneiform inscriptions of the times of Sargon, referring to a western people.
(5) Tubal and (6) Meshek are generally associated. (Eze 27:13; 38; 39) connects them, on the one hand, with Magog, and on the other, with Javan. Josephus (Ant. 1:6.1) finds Tubal in Iberia, and Meshek in Cappadocia, tracing the name in Mazaca. Their names are seemingly detected in the Tibareni and Moschi, and their seat was probably between the Euxine and the Caspian, whence they spread themselves northward and westward. The names of the rivers Tobal and Mosqua bear a strong resemblance to these patriarchal names.
(7) Tiras is referred by Josephus to Thrace. The name is perhaps discernible in the Tyras or Dniester. The seat of the nation was east of the Euxine, whence it spread to the north. Thus, we have the original starting-points of these seven nations about the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Aegean Seas.
Gen 10:3
Gomer has three sons, who are the founders of as many nations.
(8) Ashkenaz is supposed to have lain south of the Euxine, and to be traceable in its original name ἄξενος axenos, and in the Ascanius and Ascania of Bithynia, perhaps in Scandinavia. Part of the nation may have migrated to Germany, which is called Ashkenaz by the Jews, and where the word Sachsen (Saxon) occurs. It perhaps contains the root of the name Asia.
(9) Riphath seems to have travelled north, and left his name in the Rhipaean mountains. Josephus, however, places him in Paphlagonia, where the name Tobata occurs (Diphath) 1Ch 1:6.
(10) Togarmah is said to have been settled in Armenia. By a tradition in Moses Chorenensis, Haik, the ancestor of the Armenians, is the son of Thorgom, the son of Gomer. At all events, the Black Sea might convey colonies from Gomer to Asia Minor and Armenia.
Gen 10:4
Javan has four sons, who are the heads of nations.
(11) Elishah is noted by Ezekiel Eze 27:7 as a nation whose maritime country produced purple, which agrees with the coast of Laconia or the Corinthian Gulf. The name has been variously sought in Elis, Hellas, and Aeolis. The last is due to Josephus. It is possible that Elea or Velia, in the south of Italy, may contain some reference to the name.
(12) Tarshish is conjectured by Josephus to be the people of Cilicia; which, he affirms, was anciently called Tharsus, and the capital of which was Tarsus. But whether this be the primitive seat of Tarshish or not, it is almost certain that Spain retains the name, if not in Tarraco, at least in Tartessus.
(13) Kittim is discovered, by Josephus, in Cyprus, where we meet with the town of Citium Κίτιον Kition. He adds, however, that all the islands and the greater part of the seacoasts are called Χεδίμ Chedim by the Hebrews. We may therefore presume that the Kittim spread into northern Greece, where we have a Κίτιον Kition in Macedonia, and ultimately into Italy, which is designated as “the isles of Kittim” Num 24:24; Isa 23:1; Jer 2:10; Eze 27:6; Dan 11:30.
(14) Dodanim leaves a trace, perhaps, in Dodona, an ancient site of the Hellenes in Epirus, and perhaps in Dardania, a district of Illyricum.
Gen 10:5
Thus, we have discovered the ancient seats of Japheth, Iapetos - , around the Caspian, the Euxine, the Aegean, and the north of the Mediterranean. From these coastlands they seem to have spread over Europe, northern, western, and southern Asia, and, both by Behring’s Straits and the Atlantic, they at length poured into America. So true is it that Japheth was enlarged, and that by them were “the isles of the nations divided.”
In their nations. - We here note the characteristics of a nation. First. It is descended from one head. Others may be occasionally grafted on the original stock by intermarriage. But there is a vital union subsisting between all the members and the head, in consequence of which the name of the head is applied to the whole body of the nation. In the case of Kittim and Dodanim we seem to have the national name thrown back upon the patriarchs, who may have themselves been called Keth and Dodan. Similar instances occur in the subsequent parts of the genealogy. Second. A nation has a country or “land” which it calls its own. In the necessary migrations of ancient tribes, the new territories appropriated by the tribe, or any part of it, were naturally called by the old name, or some name belonging to the old country. This is well illustrated by the name of Gomer, which seems to reappear in the Cimmerii, the Cimbri, the Cymri, the Cambri, and the Cumbri. Third. A nation has its own “tongue.” This constitutes at once its unity in itself and its separation from others. Many of the nations in the table may have spoken cognate tongues, or even originally the same tongue. Thus, the Kenaanite, Phoenician, and Punic nations had the same stock of languages with the Shemites. But it is a uniform law, that one nation has only one speech within itself. Fourth. A nation is composed of many “families,” clans, or tribes. These branch off from the nation in the same manner as it did from the parent stock of the race.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 19, 21, 24, 29 Japheth. From his being placed first, some conclude that…
Japheth. From his being placed first, some conclude that he was the eldest; and perhaps the famed Japetus of the Greeks is the same person. (Du Hamel) --- Sem comes last, though elder than Cham, that the history of the true Church may be more connected. Though it would be a work of great labour to discover what nations sprung from the people here mentioned, yet some are sufficiently obvious; and the learned Bochart has given very plausible applications of the different names to the respective nations, in his Phaleg. or sacred Geography. Gomer is supposed to be the father of the Cimbri in Germany, from whom the French and English also probably sprung. (Haydock) --- Magog, father of the Scythians, &c. (Ezechiel. xxvi.) Madai of the Medes, Javan of the Ionians in Greece, Thubal of the Iberians and Spaniards, Mosoch of the Muscovites, Thiras of the Thracians.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 The Ethnological Table.
THIRD SECTION
The Ethnological Table.
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Gen_10:1-32
1Now these are the generations [genealogies] of the sons of Noah; [they were] Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and unto them were sons born after the flood.
1. The Japhethites (Gen_10:2-5).
2The Sons of Japheth; Gomer [the Cimmerians, in the Taurian Chersonesus; Crimea], and Magog [Scythians], and Madai [Medes], and Javan [Ionians], and Tubal [Tibereni], and Meschech 3[Moschi], and Tiras [Thracians]. And the sons of Gomer1; Ashkenaz1 [Germans, Asen], and Riphath [Celts, Paphlagonians], and Togarmah [Armenians]. 4And the sons of Javan2; Elishah2 [Elis, Æolians], and Tarshish [Tartessus; Knobel: Etruscans], Kittim [Cyprians, Carians], and Dodanim [Dardanians]. 5By these Were the isles [dwellers on the islands and the coasts] of the Gentiles [the heathen] divided3 in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
2. The Hamites (Gen_10:6-20).
6And the sons of Ham; Cush [Æthiopians], and Mizraim4 [Egyptians], and Phut 7[Lybians], and Canaan [Canaanites, Lowlanders]. And the sons of Cush; Seba [Meroe], and Havilah [Abyssinians], and Sabtah [Æthiopians in Sabotha], and Raamah [Eastern Arabians], and Sabtecha [Æthiopian Caramanians]: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba and Dedan 8[Sabæan and Dadanic Cushites, on the Persian Gulf]. And Cush begat Nimrod [we will rebel]: Hebrews 9 began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was [he became] a mighty hunter before the Lord5; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod [is he] the mighty hunter before the Lord. 10And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel [Babylon, see ch. xi. 9], and Erech [Orchoe], and Accad, and Calneh [Ktesiphon], in the land of Shinar [Babylonia]. 11Out of that land went forth Asshur6 [Assyrians], and builded Nineveh [city of Ninus], and the city Rehoboth 12[city markets], and Calah [Kelach and Chalach; completion], And Resen [bridle] between Nineveh and Calah; the same is a great city. 13And Mizraim begat Ludim [Berbers? Mauritanian races], and Anamim [inhabitants of the Delta], and Lehabim [Libyans of Egypt], and Naphtuhim 14[middle or lower Egyptians], And Pathrusim [upper Egyptians], and Casluhim [Cholcians], out of whom came Philistim [emigrants, new comers], and Caphtorim [Cappadocians? Cretans?]. 15And Canaan begat Sidon [Sidonians, fishers?] his firstborn, and Heth [Hittites, terror], 16And the Jebusite [Jebus, Jerusalem, threshing-floor], and the Amorite [inhabitants of the hills], and the Girgasite [clay, or marshy soil], 17And the Hivite [paganus?], and the Arkite [inhabitants of Arka, at the foot of Lebanon], and the Sinite [in Sinna, upon Lebanon], 18And the Arvadite Arabians on the island Arados, north of Tripolis], and the Zemarite [inhabitants of Simyra, on the western foot of Lebanon], and the Hamathite [Hamath, on the northern border of Palestine]: and afterwards were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad. 19And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as thou comest to Gerar [city of the Philistines], unto Gaza [city of Philistines, stronghold]; as thou goest unto Sodom [city of burning], and Gomorrah [city of the wood], and Admah [in the territory of Sodom, Adamah?], and Zeboim [city of gazelles or hyenas], even unto Lasha [on the east of the Dead Sea, earth cleft]. 20These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.
3. The Shemites (Gen_10:21-31).
21Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber [on the other side], the brother of Japheth the elder [Lange, more correctly, translates, elder brother of Japheth], even to him were children born. 22The children of Shem; Elam [Elymæans, Persians], and Asshur [Assyrians], and Arphaxad [Arrapachitis, in Northern Assyria, fortress, or territory of the Chaldæans], and Lud 23[Lydians in Asia Minor], and Aram [Aramæans in Syria, highlanders]. And the children o Aram; Uz [Aisites? native country of Job], and Hul [Celo-Syria], and Gether [Arabians], and Mash 24[Mesheg, Syrians]. And Arphaxad begat Salah [sent forth]; and Salah begat Eber [from the other side, emigrant, pilgrim]. 25And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg [division]; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan [diminished; by the Arabians called Kachtan, ancestor of all the Arabian tribes]. 26And Joktan begat Almodad [measured], and Sheleph [Salapenians, old Arabian tribe of Yemen, drawers of the sword], and Hazarmaveth [Hadramath, in S. E. Arabia, court of death], and Jerah [worshipper of the moon, on 27 the Red Sea], and Hadoram [Atramites, on the south coast of Arabia], and Uzal [Sanæ, a city in Yemen], 28and Diklah [a district in Arabia, place of palm-trees], And Obal [in Arabia, stripped of leaves], and Abimael [in Arabia, father of Mael, the Minæans?], and Sheba [Sabæans, with their capital city, Saba], 29And Ophir [in Arabia, probably on the Persian Gulf], and Havilah [probably Chaulan, a district between Sanæ and Mecca, or the Chaulotæ, on the border of stony Arabia], and Jobab: all these were sons of Joktan. 30And their dwelling was from Mesha [according to Gesenius, Mesene, on the Persian Gulf], as thou goest unto Sephar [Himyaric royal city in the Indian Sea, Zhafar], a mount of the east. 31These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. 32These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations [genealogies], in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.
GENERAL REMARKS ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL TABLE, OR THE GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE NATIONS
1. The Literature.—See Matthew, p. 19; the present work, p. 119; Kurtz: “History of the Old Testament,” p. 88; Knobel, p. 107; Keil, p. 108; a full and well-arranged survey see in Delitzsch, p. 287; also the notes in Delitzsch, p. 629. See also the articles, Babel, Babylon, Nineveh, and Mesopotamia, in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopedia. Layard’s account of “Excavations at Nineveh,” together with the “Description of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians in Kurdistan, and to the Jezidi or Worshippers of Satan.” German of Meissner, Leipsic, 1852. Here belong also the “Ethnographical Works, or the National Characteristics,” etc: Lazarus and Steinthal. “Journal of Popular Psychology.” Berlin: Dumler, 1859. Berghaus, Friedrich von Raumer, Vorlander, and others.
2. The basis of the genealogical table. According to Hävernik and Keil, this document was grounded on very old tradition, and had its origin in the time of Abraham. According to Knobel, the knowledge of the nations that is represented in it, had its origin, in great part, in the connection of the Hebrews with the Phœnician Canaanites. Delitzsch assigns its composition to the days of Joshua. The signs of a high antiquity for this table present themselves unmistakably in its ground features. There belong here: 1. The small development of the Japhethan line; on which it may be remarked, that they were the people with whom the Phœnicians maintained the most special intercourse; 2. the position of the Æthiopians at the head of the Hamites, the historical notices of Nimrod, as also the supposition that Sodom and Gomorrah were then existing; 3. the discontinuance of the Jewish line with Peleg, as well as the accurate familiarity with the branching of the Arabian Joktanites, who have as much space assigned to them alone as to all the Japhethites, when for the commercial Phœnicians they would be of least significance. The table indicates various circles of tradition—more universal and more special. The Japhethan groups appear least developed. Besides the seven sons, the grandchildren of Japheth are given only in the descendants of Gomer and Javan, in the people of anterior Asia, and in the inhabitants of the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Magog, Madai, Thubal, Meshech, and Tiras are carried no farther. The table certifies a very copious tradition of the Hamites. First, there are mentioned the four sons of Ham, then five sons of his firstborn, Cush, then the two sons of Raamah, the fourth son of Cush. These two are, therefore, great-grandchildren of Ham. Nimrod is next presented as a specially prominent son of Cush. Then follows the second son of Ham, Mizraim, with six sons. The sixth, Casluhim, is again presented in the mention of the Philistim and Caphtorim, who are, therefore, also great-grandchildren of Ham. Phut, the fourth son of Ham, is the only one who is carried no farther. The fifth, Canaan, appears with eleven sons; namely, Sidon, the ancestor of the Phœnicians, and the heads of the other Canaanitish tribes. Shem, finally, has five sons, of whom, again, Elam, Asshur, and Lud, are no farther developed. The line of his son, Aram, appears in four sons, grandchildren of Shem. Of the sons of Shem, Arphaxad is treated as most important. The line goes from Shem through Arphaxad and Salah, even to the great-grandchild, Eber. Eber forms the most important point of connection in the Shemitic line. With his son Peleg the earth is divided; that is, there is formed the strong monotheistic, Abrahamic line, in contrast with the line of his brother Joktan and the Arabian Joktanites. Joktan is developed in thirteen sons, great-grandchildren of Shem.
From this survey it appears: 1. That the table has a clear and full view of the three ground-types or points of departure of the Noachian humanity—Shem, Ham, Japheth. It however, inverts the order of the names, because Shem, as the ancestor of the people of the promise, is the peculiar point of aim in the representation. Japheth, however, comes first, because, since the history of Israel stands in nearest reciprocal connection with that of the Hamites, the Japhethites in this respect take the background. 2. The table has, in like manner, a clear view of the nearest descendants of the three sons of Noah, of the seven sons of Japheth, of the four sons of Ham, and the five sons of Shem. It presents us, therefore, the sixteen ground-forms of commencing national formations. 3. In the case of five sons of Japheth, one son of Ham, and three sons of Shem, the genealogy is not carried beyond the grandchildren. 4. In respect to the Japhethites, it does not, generally, go beyond the grandchildren; among the Hamites it passes through the grandchild, Raamah, to the great-grandchildren; so, likewise, through the grandchildren, the Casluhim; among the Shemites, through Arphaxad, it proceeds to the great-great-grandchildren, and these, through the great-great-grandchild, Joktan, are carried one step farther. 5. The table occupies itself least with the Japhethans; beyond the Medes, the people of Middle Asia and the eastern nations generally come no farther into the account. It appears, however, to have little familiarity with the Phœnicians proper, since it only makes mention of Sidon, whilst it exhibits a full acquaintance with the Egyptians, with the inhabitants of Canaan, and with the Arabian tribes. In this peculiar form of the table lies the mark of its very high antiquity. 6. It contains three fundamental geographical outlines, one political, and besides this, an important theocratic-ethnographic notice. Geographical: 1. The mention of the spreading of the Javanites (Ionians) over the isles and coasts of the Mediterranean; 2. the spreading of the Canaanites in Canaan; 3. the extension of the Joktanites in Arabia. Political: The first founding of cities (or states) by Nimrod. Theocratic: The division of the world in the time of Peleg, the ancestor of Abraham.
Kurtz recommends the following as fundamental positions in deciding on the names in the ethnological table: 1. The names denote, for the most part, groups of people, whose name is carried back to the ancestor; the race, together with the ancestor, forming one united conception. 2. Moreover, the one designation for a land and its inhabitants, must not be misapprehended; for example, the names Canaan, Aram, etc., pass over from the land to the people, and then from the people to the ancestor. 3. In general, the table proceeds from the status in quo of the present, solving the problem of national origin formally in the way of evolution (unity for multiplicity), but materially in the way of reduction, in that it carries back to unity the nations that lie within the horizon of the conceiving beholder. The last position, however, hardly holds of the sons of Noah himself; just as little can it be applied to the genealogies of the Shemitic branching. In regard, then, to the sources of the table, Kurtz also remarks: “together with Hengstenberg and Delitzsch, we regard the sources of this ethnological table to have been the patriarchal traditions, enriched by the knowledge of the nations that had reached the Israelites through the Egyptians. Hengstenberg had already begun to make available, in proof of this origin, the knowledge of the peoples that was expressed on the Egyptian monuments. In assigning its composition (as a constituent element of Genesis) to about the year 1000 b. c., Knobel must naturally regard the ethnological knowledge of the Phœnicians as its true source.” On the significance of the table, the same writer (Kurtz) remarks: “Now that the sacred history is about to leave the nations to go their own way, the preservation of their names indicates, that notwithstanding this, they are not wholly lost to it, and that they are not forgotten in the counsel of everlasting love. Its interest for the Old Testament history consists particularly in this, that it presents so completely the genealogical position which Israel holds among the nations of the earth. It is, moreover, like the primitive history everywhere, in direct contrast with the philosophemes and myths of the heathen.” In relation to the idea, that henceforth the nations are to be suffered to go their own way, Keil reminds us of Act_14:16; in relation to the prospect of their restoration, he describes the ethnological table as a preparation for the promise of the blessing which is to go forth from the promised race over all the races of the earth (Gen_12:23). For the historicalness of the ethnological table, Keil presents the following arguments: 1. That there is no trace of any superiority claimed for the Shemites; 2. no trace of any design to fill up any historical gaps by conjecture or poetic invention. This is seen in the great differences in the narration as respects the individual sons of Noah; in one case, there is mention made only to the second; then again to the third and fourth member; of many the ancestors are particularly mentioned; whilst in other cases the national distinctions alone are specified; so that in respect to many names we are unable to decide whether it is the people or the ancestor that is meant to be denoted; and this is especially so because, by reason generally of the scantiness and unreliability of ancient accounts that have come down to us from other sources concerning the origin and commencements of the nations, many names cannot be satisfactorily determined as to what people they really belong.
Against the certainty of this ethnological table, there have been made to bear the facts of linguistic affinity. The Phœnicians and the Canaanites are assigned to Ham, but their language is Shemitic. Tuch ascribes this position of the people aforesaid among the Hamites to the Jewish national hatred, and would regard it as false. But on the contrary, it must be remembered that the Jews, notwithstanding their national hatred, never denied their kinsmanship with the Edomites and others. Knobel solves the philological problem by the supposition that the Canaanites who migrated to that country might have received the Shemitic language from Shemites who had previously settled there. Add to this that the affinity of the Phœnicians and Canaanites with the Hamitic nations of the south seems to be established (Kurtz, p. 90; Kaulen, p. 235). As to what concerns the Elamites on the Persian Gulf, we must distinguish them from the eastern Japhethic Persians. Besides these philological difficulties, there has been set in opposition to the ethnological table the hypothesis of autochthonic human races. We have already spoken of this. And again, say some, how, in the space of four hundred years, from Noah till the Patriarchal time, could such a formation of races have been completed? On that we would remark, in the first place, that the American and Malayan races have only been known since the time of modern voyages of discovery. The Mongolian race, too, does not come into the account in the patriarchal age. There is, therefore, only the contrast between the Caucasian and the Æthiopic. For the clearing up of this difficulty, it is sufficient to note: 1. The extraordinary difference, which, in the history of Noah, immediately ensued between Shem and Japheth on the one side, and Ham on the other; 2. the progressive specializing of the Hamitic type in connection with the Hamitic spiritual tendency towards its passional and the sensual; 3. the change that took place in the Hamitic type in its original yielding conformity to the effect of a southern climate. The Hamitic type had, moreover, its universal sphere as the Æthiopic race; this constituted its developed ground-form, whilst single branches, on the other hand, through a progress of ennobling, might make an approach to the Caucasian cultivation.7 That Shem and Japheth, however, in their nobler tendency, should unite in one Caucasian form, is not to be wondered at. The great difference between the Shemitic type and the Japhethan, as existing within the Caucasian, is, notwithstanding, fully acknowledged. Since, however, the Shemitic type in its nobler branches, may make transitions to the Caucasian; so also may separations from the Japhethic and Shemitic form, perhaps, the Mongolian and the American races, in consequence of a common tendency (see Kurtz, p. 80. “The Direction of the Noachidæ.”)
There have also been objected to the table chronological difficulties; in so far as it forms a middle point for the assumption of Jewish and Christian chronology. According to Bunsen, the time before Christ must be reckoned at 20,000 years,—namely, to the flood, 10,000, and from the flood to Abraham, 7,000 (see, on the contrary, Delitzsch, p. 291). Taking these 20,000 years, the ante-Christian humanity loses itself in a Thohu Vabohu running through many thousand years of an unhistorical, beastly existence, wherein the human spirit fails to find any recognition of its nobility.
Delitzsch, in his admirable section on the ethnological table, remarks, p. Genesis 286: “The line of the promise with its chosen race, must be distinguished from the confusion of the Gentiles; such is the aim of this great genealogical chart, and in accordance with which it is constructed. It is a fundamental characteristic of Israel, that it is to embrace all nations as partakers of a like salvation in a participation of hope and love,—an idea unheard of in all antiquity beside.8 The whole ancient world has nothing to show of like universality with this table. The earth-describing sections of the Epic poems of the Hindoos, and some of the Puranas, go greatly astray, even in respect to India, whilst the nearest lands are lost in the wild and monstrous account that is given of them. Their system of the seven world islands (dvîpas) that lay around the Meru, seems occupied with the worlds of gods and genii rather than with the world of man. (Lassen, in the “Journal of Oriental Knowledge,” i. p. 341; Wilson, The Vishnu Purana). Nowhere is there to be found so unique a derivation of the national masses, or so universal a survey of the national connections. A tinge of hopeful green winds through the arid desert of this ethnological register. It presents in perspective the prospect that these far-sundered ways of the nations shall, at the last, come together at the goal which Jehovah has marked. Therefore does Baumgarten complete the saying of Johannes von Müller, “that history has its beginning in this ethnological table,” with a second equally true, “that in it also, as its closing limit, shall history find its end.” We may undervalue this table if we overlook the fact that, in its actual historical and ethnological ground-features it presents, symbolically, a universal image of the one humanity in its genealogical divisions. We may overvalue it, or rather, set a false value upon it, when we attempt to trace back to it, with full confidence, all the known nations now upon the earth. Even the number 70, as the universal symbol of national existences, can only be deduced from it by an artificial method; as, for example, in Delitzsch, p. 289. It is only in the symbolical sense that the catalogue may be regarded as amounting to this number.
Neither can we derive this subdividing the nations to such a multiplicity of national life, from the confusion of languages at Babel. The natural subdivision of the people has something of an ideal aspect; the increased impulse given to it at Babel had its origin in sin. We regard it, therefore, as a strong proof of the canonical intuition that this ethnological table precedes instead of following the history of the tower-building. Kurtz treats the history of Babel as earlier than that of the register; and Keil, too, would seem inclined to identify the diversity of the nations with the confusion of tongues (p. 107).
After these general remarks, we will confine ourselves to the most necessary particulars.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Gen_10:2-5.—The Japhethites.—Gomer.—The Cimbri, as well as the Cumry or Cymry in Wales, and in Bretagne, are to be regarded as in relation with the Cimmerians; They represent the north-western portion of the Japhethan territory.—Magog appears to represent the whole northeast, as the Scythians, in the most general way, denote the cycle of the northeastern nations. “The Sarmatians, for the most part, lie to the west. The chief people in the army of Gog, Eze_38:2-3; Eze_39:1, is רֹאשׁ, that is the Rossi, or Russians.” Knobel.—Madai; the Medes, who inhabit the south and Southwest.—Javan, belonging to the south, the Græco-Italian family of nations.—Thubal and Meshech as well as Thogarma, inhabiting the middle tracts: Iberians, or Georgians, Armenians, Pontus, the districts of Asia Minor generally.—Gomer’s Sons: Ashkenaz is referred to the Germans, by others to Asia Minor, the Asiones. Ashkenaz is explained by Knobel as denoting the race of Asen. The oldest son of the Germanic Mannus was called Iskus, equivalent to Ask, Ascanios.—Riphat is referred by Knobel to the Celts, by Josephus to the Paphlagonians; in which there is no contradiction, since the Celts also (the Gauls) had a home in Asia (Galatia).—Thogarma.—The Armenians to this day call themselves the House of Thorgom or Thorkomatsi.—Sons of Javan: Elisa is referred to Elis and to the Æolians, Tarshish to Tartessus, and also to the Etruscans, whom, nevertheless, Delitzsch holds to have been Shemites; Kittim is referred to the Cyprians and the Carians; Dodanim to the Dardanians.
2. Gen_10:6-20.—The Hamites. The three first sons of Ham settled in Northern Africa. 1. The Æthiopians of the upper Nile; 2. the Egyptians of the lower Nile; 3. the Libyans, west of the Egyptians, in the east of Northern Africa. The Cushites appear to have removed from the high northeast (Cossæ), passing over India, Babylonia, and Arabia, in their course towards the south; for “in these lands the ancients recognized a dark-colored people, who were designated by them as Æthiopians, and who have since, in part, perished, whilst a few have kept their place to this day.” Knobel.—Mizraim.—The name denotes narrowing, enclosing; its dual form denotes the double Egypt (upper and lower Egypt); Αἴγυπτος is probably from Kah-ptah, land of Ptah. The old Egyptian name is Kemi, Chemi, (with reference to Ham).—Canaan.—Between the Mediterranean Sea and the western shore of Jordan.—The name Pœni (Puni), allied to φόνος, blood, and φοινος, blood-red, denotes the Phœnicians in their original Hamitic color.—Sons of Cush. Seba.—Meroë, which, at one time, according to Josephus, was called Seba.—Chavila.—In the Septuagint, Εὐϊλα. The Macrobians (or long living), Æthiopians of the modern Abyssinia.—Sabta.—Sabbata, a capital city in Southern Arabia. “To this day there is in Yemen and Hadramaut a dark race of men who are distinct from the light-colored Arabians. So it is also in Oman on the Persian Gulf.” Knobel.—Raamah.—Septuagint: ‘Ρεγμα, in Southeastern Arabia—Oman. There, too, there are obscure indications of Raamah’s sons Sheba and Dedan.—Sabtecha.—Dark-colored men on the east side of the Persian Gulf, in Caramania.—Aside from these, Nimrod is also made prominent as a son of Cush, Gen_10:8-12. Knobel regards this section as a Jehovistic interpolation, and so does Delitzsch. The name Jehovah, however, as occurring here, is no proof of such a fact; it comes naturally out of the accompanying thoughts. The only thing remarkable is, that Nimrod is not named in immediate connection with the other sons of Cush, but that the two sons of Raamah go before him. It is, however, easy enough to be understood, that the narrator wished first to dispose of this lesser reference.9 Interruptions similar to it are of repeated occurrence in the table, as is the case also in other genealogies (1Ch_2:7; 1Ch_23:4; 1Ch_23:22).—He was a mighty hunter.—“The author presents Nimrod as the son of Cush, putting him far back before the time of Abraham, and assigns him to the Æthiopian race. In fact, the classical writers recognize Æthiopians in Babylonia in the earliest times. They speak, especially, of an Æthiopian king, Cepheus, who belongs to the mythical time, and there is mention of a trace of the Cephenians as existing to the north of Babylon.” Knobel. In the expression, “he began to be a hero, or a mighty one upon the earth,” there is no occasion for calling him a “postdiluvian Lamech” (Delitzsch). He began the unfolding of an extraordinary power of will and deed, in the fact mentioned, that he became a mighty hunter in the presence of Jehovah. The hunting of ravenous beasts was in the early time a beneficent act for the human race. Powerful huntsmen appear as the pioneers of civilization; a fact which clearly proclaims itself in the myth of Hercules. And so the expression, “Nimrod was a mighty hunter before Jehovah,” may mean, that he was one who broke the way for the future institutions of worship and culture which Jehovah intended in the midst of a wild and uncultivated nature. There is another interpretation: he was so mighty a hunter, that even by Jehovah, to whom, in other respects, nothing is distinguished, he was recognized as such (Knobel; Delitzsch); but this seems to us to have little or no meaning. Keil holds fast to the traditional interpretation: in defiance of Jehovah, and, at the same time, takes the literal sense of animal-hunting in connection with the tropical sense of hunting men, so that he explains it, with Herder, as meaning an ensnarer of men by fraud and force. Neither the expression itself, nor the proverb: “like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord,” justifies this view. By such a proverb, there may be denoted a praiseworthy, Herculean pioneer of culture, as well as a blameworthy and violent despot. In truth, the chase of the animals was, for Nimrod, a preparatory exercise for the subjugation of men. “For him and his companions, the chase was a training for war, as we are told by Xenophon (Kunegete, C. i.), the old heroes were pupils of Chiron, and so, μαθηταὶ κυνηγεσίων, disciples of the chase.” Delitzsch.—And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.—Knobel: “His first kingdom in contrast with his second.” This, however, is not necessarily involved in the expression, “the beginning.” It denotes rather the basis. In thus playing the hero, Nimrod established, in the first place, a kingdom that embraced Babel, that is, Babylon, Erech, or Orech, in the southwest of Babylonia, Akkad (in respect to situation ’Ακκήτη), in a northern direction, and in the Northeast, Calneh, in respect to territory corresponding to Chalonitis, or Ktisiphon, on the east shore of the Tigris. This establishment of an empire transforming the patriarchal clan-governments into one monarchy is not to be thought of as happening without force. The hunter becomes a subjugator of men, in other words, a conqueror.—Out of that land went forth Asshur. [Lange translates: Out of that land went he forth towards Asshur.]—The Septuagint, Vulgate, and many interpreters (Luther, Calvin) regard Asshur as the grammatical subject, and give it the sense: Asshur went forth from Shinar. On the contrary, the Targum of Onkelos, Targum of Jonathan, and many other authorities, (Baumgarten, Delitzsch, Knobel) have rightly recognized Nimrod as the subject. Still, it does not seem clear, when Knobel supposes that Nimrod had left his first kingdom for the sake of founding a second. Moreover, it is not to be supposed that he barely extended his rule over an uninhabited territory for the purpose of colonizing it. It was rather characteristic of Nimrod, that he should seek still more strongly to appropriate to himself the occupied district of Assyria by the establishment of cities. The first city was Nineveh (at this day the ruin-district called Nimrud), above the place where the Lycus flows into the Tigris; the second was Rehoboth, probably east of Nineveh; the third Calah, northward in the district of Kalachan, in which there is found the place of ruins called Khorsabad; the fourth was Resen, between Nineveh and Calah.—The same is a great city.—The first suggested sense would seem to denote Resen as the great city, or as the greater city in relation to the others named with it. On the contrary, remarks Knobel: Resen is nowhere else mentioned as known to antiquity, and could not possibly have been so distinguished, as to be called in this short way the great city. Rather does the expression denote the four cities taken together, as making Nineveh in the wider sense, and which, both by Hebrews and Assyrians, was thus briefly called the great city.” According to Ktesias, it had a circumference of four hundred and eighty stadia (twenty-four leagues), with which there well agrees the three days’ journey of Jon_3:3; it embraced the quarter founded by Nimrod, out of which it grew in the times that followed Nimrod, when the Assyrian kings gradually combined the four places into one whole; thus the whole city was named Nineveh after its most southern part. The ancient assertions respecting the circuit of the city are confirmed by the excavations. “These four cities correspond, probably, to the extensive ruins on the east of the Tigris, that have lately been made known by Layard and Botta, namely, Nebi-Junus and Kujundschik, opposite Mosul, Khorsabad, five leagues north, and Nimrud, eight leagues north of Mosul.” Keil. See also the note (p. 112) on the agreement of Rawlinson, Grote, Niebuhr, and others, as opposed by the conjectures of Hitzig and Bunsen.—The sons of Mizraim: 1. Ludim. As distinguished from the Shemitic Ludim, Gen_10:22; Movers regards it as the old Berber race of Levatah that settled by the Syrtis,—so called after the manner of other collective names of the Mauritanian races. According to Knobel it was the Shemitic Ludim, who, after the Egyptian invasion, were called Hyksos. This is in the face of the text. 2. Anamim. This is referred by Knobel to the Egyptian Delta. 3. Lehabim. Ægyptian Libyans, not to be confounded with פּוּט, the Libyans proper. 4. Naphtuhim. According to Knobel, the people of Phthah, the god of Memphis, in Middle Egypt; according to Bochart, it agrees with Νέφθυς, that connects with the northern coast-line of Egypt. 5. Pathrusim. Inhabitants of Pathros, Meridian land, equivalent to Upper Egypt, or Thebais. 6. Casluhim. The Colchians, “who, according to Herod., ii. c. 105, had their descent from the Egyptians.” This may probably be held of one branch of Mizraim; whereas the origin of the Cushites themselves would seem to point back to Colchis (see Genesis 2.).—Out of whom came Philistim.—The name is explained as meaning emigrants, from the Æthiopian word fallasa. According to Amo_9:7; Jer_47:4, the Philistines went forth from Caphtor. We may reconcile both these declarations, by supposing that the beginning of the settlement of the Philistines on the coast-line of Canaan, had been a Casluhian colony, but that this was afterwards strengthened by an immigration from Caphtor, and then their territory enlarged by the dispossession of the Avim, Deu_2:23.—And Caphtorim.—By old Jewish interpreters these are described as Cappadocians; they are regarded by Ewald as Cretans. Both suppositions may agree in denoting the course of migration taken by the Caphtorim.—The sons of Canaan:—“Notwithstanding the Shemitic language, the Phœnician Canaanites are here reckoned among the Hamitic nations, and must, therefore, have had their origin from the South. In fact, ancient writers affirm that they came from the Erythræan Sea, that is, from the Persian Gulf, to the Mediterranean. And with this agrees the mythology which makes the Phœnician ancestors, Agenor and Phœnix, akin, partly to Belus in Babylonia, and partly with Egyptus (Danaus the Æthiopian).” Knobel. 1. Zidon. Although originally the name of a person, this does not exclude its relation to the famous city so called, צוד, primarily, to lay nets; it appears, however, to denote fishing as well as hunting proper. Sidon was the oldest city of the Phœnicians. 2. Heth. This also stands as the name of a person, whereas the designations of the Canaanites that follow have the form of national appellations. In this position of Heth, together with Sidon the first-born, they would appear to be denoted as the peculiar point of departure of the Canaanitish life. The Hittites (Hethites) on the hill-land of Judah, and especially in the neighborhood of Hebron, were only a branch of the great original Hittite family (1Ki_10:29; 2Ki_7:6). The Kittim also, and the Tyrians, are, according to Knobel, comprehended in this name. 3. The Jebusites. Distinguished as the inhabitants of the old Jebus, Jerusalem. 4. The Amorites. On the hill-land of Judah, and on the other side of Jordan, the mightiest family of the Canaanites; therefore may their name embrace all Canaanites (chs. Gen_15:16; Gen_48:22) 5. The Girgasites. (Gen_15:21; Deu_7:1; Jos_24:11); their relation to the Gergesenes (Mat_8:28) is very uncertain. 6. Hivites (or Hevites) in Sichem (Gen_34:2), at Gibeon (Jos_9:7), and at the foot of Hermon (Jos_11:3). “The five last sons of Canaan dwelt northward in Phœnicia.” Knobel. The Arkites. Denoted from the city Arka, north of Sidon. The Sinites, named from the city Sina, mentioned by Hieronymus, still farther north. More northern still the Zemarites, named from the city Simyra (Sùmrah, by the moderns). Farthest north the Arvadites (also on the island Aradus); on the northeast, the Hamathites, name from the city Hamath, still existing.—And afterwards were spread abroad.—This spreading extends from the Phœnician district along the coast. The Kenites, mentioned Gen_15:19-21, the Kenezites, and the Kadmonites, are regarded by Delitzsch as people of Hamitic descent. So also the Rephaim, besides whom there are still farther named the Perezites. The same thing may probably be said of the Geshurim, mentioned 1Sa_27:8. The Susim and Emim, Genesis 14, he (Delitzsch) holds to be not Canaanites, but a people of a later introduction (p. 300). An immigration of Shemites must, in truth, have preceded that of the Hamites into Canaan.—The sons of Shem (Gen_10:21-31). The father (ancestor) of all the children of Eber.—This declaration calls attention beforehand to the fact, that in the sons of Eber the Shemitic line of the descendants of Abraham separates again in Peleg, namely, from Joktan or his Arabian descendants. 1. Elam. Elamites, the most easterly Shemites who dwelt from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea; at a later day they are lost, together with their language, in the Persians. 2. Asshur. Assyrians to the east of the Tigris, from thence extending towards Syria and Asia Minor. Their mother-country was a plain; hence the name (from אָשַׁר). Their Shemitic language also underwent a change, and became foreign to the Hebrew. 3. Arphaxad. Their dwelling-place was in Arrapachitis, on the east side of the Tigris, from which they spread out; by Ewald and Knobel it is interpreted as referring to the Chaldæans, which Keil, however, regards as uncertain. 4. Lud. The Lydians of Asia Minor, related to the Assyrians (see Keil, p. 114; by Knobel they are referred to the Canaanite and Arabian races). 5. Aram. Aramæans, in Syria and Mesopotamia.—The sons of Aram: Uz and Gether, probably Arabians; Hul and Mash, probably Syrians.—The sons of Arphaxad:—The names Salah and Eber (sending forth and passing over) denote the already commencing emigration of the Abrahamic race. The two sons of Eber are called Peleg (division) and Joktan (diminished, small). With them there is a division of the Abrahamic and the Arabian lines. Peleg is the ancestor of the first. This is the explanation: in this manner was it that “in his day the earth was divided.” Fabri interprets this expression of a catastrophe that took place in the body of the earth, whose form was then violently divided into the later continental relations (in his treatise on the “Origin of Heathenism,” 1859). Delitzsch interprets it as referring, in general, to the division of the earlier population; Keil explains it of the division that took place in consequence of the building of the tower of Babel.10 Knobel refers the language of the separa of the two brothers, Peleg and Joktan, in which Joktan and his sons took their way to the south. We find here indicated the germ of the facts by which the earth, that is, the population of the earth, became divided into Judaism and Heathenism. For the separation of Abraham is no immediate or sudden event. The interrupted emigration of Terah had been previously prepared in Salah and Eber; fully so in Peleg. Therefore is Peleg’s son called רְעוּ, friend of God. In contrast with Salah (the sent), Eber (the passing over), and Peleg (the separating, division), Serug denotes again the complicated or entangled, Nahor, the panting, possibly the ineffectual striving, and, finally, Terah, the loitering, the one who tarries on the way. Then comes Abram, the high father, with whom the race of the promise decidedly begins. We have no hesitation in taking these names as at the same time historical and symbolical.—The sons of Joktan: In their multiplicity they present a remarkably clear figure of the Arabian tribes. “Thirteen names, some of which can still be pointed out in places and districts of Arabia, whilst others have not, as yet, been discovered, or have been wholly extinguished.” Knobel. Concerning their strife, and perhaps, too, their merging in the Hamites, who were in Arabia before them, compare Knobel, p. 123—The beni Kahtan, sons of Joktan, or Joktanidæ, form their leading point of view in Northern Yeman. 1. Almodad. The name El Mohdad is found among the princes of the Djorhomites, first in Yemen, and then in Hedjez. 2. Sheleph, the same as Salif, the Salapenians in a district of Yemen. 3. Hazarmaveth, the same as Hadramaut (court of death), in Southeastern Arabia, by the Indian Ocean; so named because of the unhealthy climate. 4. Jereh. Sons of the moon, worshippers of the moon; south from Chaulan. 5. Hadoram. The Adramites, on the south coast of Arabia. 6. Uzal. One with Sanaa, a city of Yemen. 7. Diklah, meaning the palm; probably cultivator of the palm-tree; they may be placed conjecturally in the Wady Nadjran, abounding in dates. 8. Obal. Placed by Knobel with Gebal and the Gebanites. 9. Abimael. Father of Mael;11 undetermined. 10. Sheba. The Sabæans, a trading people whose capital city is Marĭaba. 11. Ophir. Placed by Knobel to the southwest of Arabia, the land of the Himyarites. Lassen, Ritter, and Delitzsch, remove Ophir to the mouths of the Indus. For the different views, see Gesenius. It would appear, however, that the point of departure for Ophir must still be sought in Arabia. 12. Havilah. District of Chaulan, in Northern Yemen; probably also colonized in India (see Delitzsch, p. 308). 13. Jobab.—And their dwelling was from Mesha.—Concerning these undetermined bounding districts of Mesha and Sephar, compare Keil.—And by these were the nations divided.—A preparation for what follows, see the next chapter.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
See the Exegetical.
1. The religious significance of the ethnological table: 1. Personal characters form the basis of the human world; the relation of God to humanity is conditioned by the personal relation of God to personal being. The revelation of salvation, therefore, tends also to take upon itself a genealogical form. The ethnological table is the extended ground-outline of the relation between God and humanity, and of those that men bear to one another. The genealogies are trees of human life that God has planted. 2. In the christological point of view, the genealogical table is the prefiguration of the universality of the gospel, corresponding to the universality of the divine love, grace and compassion. 3. It gives us a clear idea of the regular gravitation of humanity to its centre in Shem, Eber, Abraham, Christ; that is, the genealogy of Christ. 4. As the branching of the three principal races places them in contrast, so, in a special manner, is this the case with the branching of the Hamitic race into the better lines, and in the Canaanites; and so also the branching of the Shemites, or that of the sons of Eber in the line of the descendants of Joktan, and in the line of the promise. 5. The signs of preparation for the later calling of Abraham are already contained in the names of his ancestors from Salah and Eber onward.
2. On the names Babel and Nineveh, compare the Theological dictionaries; on the history of Babel and Nineveh, see the historical works. We must be careful here, not to confound the beginning of this very old city, including in it the Babylonian tower, with its later world-historical development, and its falling into ruin. Nevertheless, even the ruins of that city are still a speaking witness, not only for the fulfilling of the divine predictions and threatenings, by the prophets, but also of the historical consistency and truthfulness of these very narrations in Genesis. Concerning the geographical relations, especially the situation of Babylon on the Euphrates, and of Nineveh on the Tigris, compare the maps of the old world in the Bible-atlas of Welland and Ackerman; the Historico-Geographical Atlas of the Old World, by Kiepert; the Atlas of Kutscheit, and others. Already, in Xenophon’s time, Nineveh lay in ruins; according to Strabo, it perished with the Assyrian Empire (see in Herzog’s “Real-Encyclopedia” the article on the Ruins of Nineveh). Babylon was much broken by the Persian kings, especially by Xerxes; Alexander the Great would have restored it, but contributed only the more to its destruction; the founding of Seleucia laid it in ruins. As Seleucia lies opposite to the ruins of Babylon, so does Mosul to those of Nineveh.
3. Starke: In this chapter we see the origin of many nations in all parts of the world, and therefore, the power of the blessing which God, after the flood, had renewed to men in respect to their multiplying and propagation; and so, finally, we learn the fathers from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. Neither Noah nor his sons begat any offspring during the time of the flood. The same may be conjectured to be true of the animals which were shut up with him in a dark dungeon, and as it were in the midst of death.—Lange: Many readers, when they come to this tenth chapter, are wont to regard it as of little value; some really think it to be superfluous, or of little use, on account of so many unknown names. But, in truth, we ought to regard it as a right noble gem in the crown of Holy Writ, the like of which has never been, or can be shown, from any writings of the old heathenism that yet remain to us.12—Gerlach: There is no account of antiquity which gives us so full and so general a survey of the ancient nations, as this ethnological table; as appears from the fact, that the exactness and truth of the national divisions as presented in the same, are ever more and more confirmed. The heathen had no other relations to people who were foreign to them, than those of war and trade, with the addition, perhaps, of a certain community of religious legends, knowledge, and culture; irrespective of this, however, each nation remained shut up within itself. In the history of revelation, on the other hand, before the narrative of the dispersion of the nations stands the promise that Japheth shall find a home in the tents of Shem.—Bunsen: So much is now clear, that the races of Shem are the Shemites of philology. This is not clear at all; just as little, in fact, as that the Gallic Franks must be of Romanic origin. Compare in other places the learned explanation of the ethnological table by Bunsen. Says the same authority (vol. i. part 2, p. 63): “The ethnological table is the most learned among all the ancient documents, and the most ancient among the learned. For tradition predominates far above research, though the latter is not wanting. In its core it must be regarded as earlier than the time of Abraham; but this by no means excludes the idea that Moses may have made investigations respecting it.” So says Schröder: “From this chapter must the whole universal history of the world take its beginning.” To the same effect Joh. von Müller. Citation of the historical catalogues of Heathen nations, as they are found in the palace of Karnak, a ruin of the old city Thebes, in Bendidad, and on the monuments of Persepolis. These have throughout a national character. Nimrod’s chase of the beasts was the bridge of transition to the hunting of men (Jer_16:16; Lam_3:52; Lam_4:18; Mat_4:19; Luk_5:10).
4. On the numbering of the seventy nations, which the Rabbins make out of this table, as Delitzsch farther constructs it, see Keil, p. 116. Delitzsch traces a relation between the seventy peoples, and the seventy disciples, Luk_10:1, and designates the number as that of the divinely-ordained multiplicity of the human. Probably, also, the name of the Septuagint has reference to the heathen nations for whom the Alexandrian translation of the Old Testament was designed. Keil objects, that the numbering can only come out clean and round when we assign the name of nations to Salah and Eber. But Salah might have actually had more sons. And, besides, it is not necessary that the symbolical numbers should always literally correspond to the historical. This frequent appearance of the number seventy resolves itself into some early symbolizing. Seven is the number of God’s work, including his holy day of rest; ten is the number of the perfect human development; the seventy nations were, therefore, the entire outspreading of God’s host, under his rule.
5. Nimrod’s despotic power, at least if we judge from the name, was denoted as a rebellion, as a revolution. It partook of both forms of revolution against the divine ordinance: 1. From above downwards; 2. from below upwards; of which the first seems, in truth, to have been the oldest.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
In the homiletical treatment of the ethnological table, we must, of all things, avoid giving way to uncertain and etymological and historical conjectures. It contains, however, enough points of certainty to make it a page of Holy Writ rich in life and instruction. Thereto belongs the threefold division of the nations according to the names Japheth, Ham, and Shem, the wide, wide, world-wandering of Japheth, in which the grandchildren and great-great-grand-children disappear from the horizon of the theocratic consciousness; the early ripe, yet most ancient development of the Hamitic culture, with its corruptions, in which the ungodly Cainitic culture once more mirrors itself; the reciprocal intercourse of the Shemites and the Hamites in the early time; finally, the gradual, yet authentically historical preparation for the calling of Abraham, and for the Messianic theocracy in the line of Shem. If the sermon is designed with reference to the ethnological table, the best ground will be furnished by taking directly Gen_10:1, or Deu_32:8; or better still, some New Testament text most appropriate for the purpose, as Mat_28:19; Joh_10:16; Act_14:16-17; Act_15:18; Act_17:26; Rom_11:32; Eph_3:6; 1Pe_4:6; Rev_21:24.—The baptism of the flood a forerunning emblematic baptism of the whole human race. As God knows the name of the stars (that is, their most interior being, Isaiah 40), so does he likewise know the name of all men and of all races (Mat_22:32). The theocratic, believing consciousness hath ever proved itself to be also a humanitarian consciousness, or one that embraces all humanity.—The higher significance of historical tradition.—The commendation of the world’s history in the history of God’s kingdom.—The relation between the history of God’s kingdom and the world-history: 1. The contrast; 2. the connection; 3. the unity (in its wider sense is the whole world’s history a history of the kingdom of God).—Shem’s history, the last in the world, the first in the kingdom of God.—The elect and their appointment to be salvation for all.—The distinction: 1. Among the sons of Noah; 2. of Japheth; 3. of Ham; 4. of Shem.—Nimrod’s threefold position: 1. As the pioneer of civilization; 2. as oppressor of the patriarchal liberties; 3. as the instrument of God for the development of the world.—Peleg, or the dividing and the uniting again of humanity.
Schröder: All these sons, the white posterity of Japheth, the yellow and dark sons of Ham, however they may live in temporal separation, are all still God’s children, and brothers to one another.
[Excursus on the Hebrew Chronology—the state of the Primitive Men—the Rapid Beginnings of History. The brief Hebrew chronology is urged as an objection to the Scriptures. Hence the tendency, even among believers, to prefer the numbers given in the Septuagint. There is hardly time enough, it is thought, for the great historical commencements, and the scale on which they appear, so soon after the flood. Others, like Lepsius and Bunsen, would go very far beyond the LXX., carrying up the human chronology, and that of the Egyptian monarchy along with it, twenty thousand years before the time of Christ, and twelve or fifteen thousand years before the flood. The main ground of this theory is not so much the monuments, though Bunsen has much to say about them, as an assumption respecting the earliest condition and slow progress of the human race. With regard to the monuments, on which so much reliance is placed, there is not space, nor occasion, to say much here. Those who refer to them with most confidence have to admit that there is great difficulty in determining their meaning as well as their historical authority, even if rightly interpreted. It is made a question, too, whether, in many cases, they represent successive or cotemporaneous dynasties. Their barrenness in respect to almost everything else but names, detracts also from their chronological testimony. Like the Chaldean, Hindoo, and Chinese statements, they are hardly anything else but numbers. There is little or no filling up of these blank statistical spaces with anything like a veritable life-like history. Had much that is on these monuments been found in the early Scriptures, it would have made them the scoff of the infidel and the rationalist. There is, however, one concise argument, which, if rightly considered, ought to dispose of the whole matter. Egypt was visited, two thousand three hundred years ago, by a most intelligent Greek, whose valuable history has come down to us entire. In faithful narrative of what he saw, as he saw it, and of what he heard, as he heard it, Herodotus is excelled by no writer, ancient or modern. His pains and fidelity are attested by those immense journeys, whose extent would be deemed a wonder, even with all the facilities of modern travel. Now this most credible witness saw these monuments in their freshness, and when they were as intelligible to the Egyptian priests, as would be to us the contents of a modern census. They decipher for him these hieroglyphics, now so puzzling, and give him, as deduced therefrom, what they understand to be the Egyptian history. It is contained in his second book. Can we ever expect a better interpretation than the one made under such circumstances, and under the direction of such competent guides? They had every motive to present their nation in its most antique and imposing aspect, knowing, as they doubtless did, that the inquirer was collecting materials for a history of the world, as then known. If they erred at all, it would most likely have been on the side of an excessive antiquity. And yet, the chronology of Herodotus13 may, without any great difficulty, be made to agree with that of the Bible—certainly with that of the Septuagint. In regard to the monuments, such a view should be deemed conclusive. Herodotus is, after all, the great historical authority in respect to the antiquity of the Egyptian monarchy; and he is likely to remain so, since we have no reason to expect any interpretation of these hieroglyphics that escaped his eager search, or the intelligence of his well-informed and zealous instructors.
The other ground, that is, the necessity of a very long time to bring about such results in the slow progress of mankind, is a sheer assumption, that may at once be met by arguments drawn from the intrinsic aspects of the case. It all depends upon the hypothesis with which we start in respect to the condition of the primitive men; and this involves, first of all, an inquiry as to the primitive man, or the primus homo, or whether there ever really was such a distinct individual, the head of a distinct race, having a supernatural beginning at a distinct moment of time. Some, who favor the view of the low primitive condition of man, from which he struggled slowly up into language and a distinct human consciousness, making his appearance in history only after he had been many ages upon the earth, may still hold to something like a creation of the species; but logically it is very difficult to separate such a doctrine from that eternal-development theory, which, in opposition to the axiom de nihilo nihil, or, what is equivalent to it, that more cannot come out of less, would bring the highest life out of the lowest forms of matter, and make God himself (supposing it to acknowledge something under that name) the end instead of the beginning of nature. On the contrary, the admission of a creation, in any intelligible sense of the word, is the admission of a distinct time, a distinct moment of time, when the thing created began to be, which a moment before was not. This, however, does not demand the idea of an instantaneous coming from nothing, or even de novo, of everything belonging to, or connected with the new existence, but only the new and distinct, beginnning of that which especially makes it what it is, a new, peculiar entity, separate from everything else. To apply this to man, the origin of his physical, his earthly, may have been as remote as any geological theory of life-periods, or any biblical interpretation supposed to be in accordance with it, may allow. If we admit the idea of growth, or succession in creation, as perfectly consistent with supernatural starts regarded as intervening and originating its successive processes, then man may have been long coming from the earth, from the deepest parts of the earth, as is said Psa_139:15. The formation of the human physical may have begun in the earliest stages of the κτίσις, or world-building. The words מן עפר, “from the dust,” may denote a process comparatively quick or slow. The essential faith is satisfied either way; since it only demands two things—a dual derivation of the completed humanity, and an order, that is, a succession, whether in nature or in time (or in both), rather than any precise duration. Even the common notion of an outward plastic formation of the body implies the use of a previous nature in a previous material or materials—that is, a use of them according to such natures. There is essentially the same idea in the employment of previous growths and processes, as in that of previous material, although with the conception of such successions there necessarily comes that of time, longer or shorter. How many steps there were we cannot know; but in thus bringing up the human physical through lower structural forms, there may have been outwardly approximations to the human, long before there was reached that humanity proper in Which nature and spirit unite. Without scientific comparison and deduction, the simplest inspection of nature is sufficient to suggest the thought that man is built upon types from below him, even as he is formed in the image of that which is above him. If then such a view of successive evolutions from the dust, instead of an immediate outward plastic formation of the human earthly, be not inconsistent with the comprehensive language of Scripture, we should not be startled at the thought of there having been anthropoidal forms14 of various degrees of approximation, some of them, perhaps, larger than any now found upon earth, and which may have perished, like some of the larger or mammoth species of mammalia. If the explorations of science have brought to light any such remains, our faith need not be disturbed by the question of their pre-historicalness. The interpreter of Scripture is little concerned, either in affirming or denying such discoveries. Whatever be their date, we have not yet come to the humanity proper, the Adamic humanity, that humanity which Christ assumed and raises to a still higher sphere. The animal world is not yet surpassed. But there is a moment when the human race now upon the earth had its distinct beginning, and that, too, in a primus homo,—the “first Adam”—even as there is a “new man,” a new humanity, that is to have its finish or completion in a second Adam, or last Adam (ἔσχατος Αδὰμ), as the apostle calls him. This beginning of humanity upon earth was not a physical act merely, or the mere completion of a physical progress. It took place in the spiritual sphere. The true creation of man was not merely a formation, or an animation, but an inspiration, a direct, divine inspiration (Gen_2:7); and now there is what before was not, a בריאה, a new thing upon earth, not simply something higher physically (though even that would require a divine intervention), but an entity distinct as connected with a higher or supernatural world. This Adamic man, thus divinely raised out of nature, and lifted above the pure animality, is the one of whom the Bible gives us so particular an account. He was the one who first awoke to a true rational human consciousness. Thus man “became a living soul.” The emphasis is in the manner of the inbreathing; but to distinguish it wholly from the animation of other kinds who are also called נפש חיה, the wondrous event is described in other language as a sealing, a forming into a higher type, pattern, idea, or image,—not physically, but spiritually. The all-important article of faith is the dual succession, whether regarded as an order in time, or as an order of constitution without reference to time: “first the natural (τὸ ψυχικὸν, the animal), afterwards that which is spiritual” (τὸ πνευματικόν). First that which comes from nature (τὸ ἐκ γῆς χοϊκόν), “from the earth, earthy,” second, that “which bore the image of the heavenly,”15 or of “the Lord from heaven.”
Corresponding to this is the specific designation by which man is distinguished among the created orders. The animals and plants are made each לְמִינֵהוּ, after its מִין, εἶδος, species, form, denoting difference in organic structure, and therefore something ultimately outward as exhibited in its last analysis, however hidden it may seem to the primary observation of the sense. It is not to be thought that the Scripture writers, in their simplicity, intended to speak scientifically or philosophically, but a deeper term was wanted in the case of man, and we have it in a remarkable change of language. Man is nowhere said to be לְמִינֵהוּ, juxta genus suum, or secundum speciem suam, but when this new entity is to be brought into the kosmos, God is represented as saying to himself, or as though addressing some higher associate than nature, “Let us make man בְּצַלְמֵנוּ in our image.” The צֶֹלֶם, therefore, in the case of humanity, may be said to make the מִין, or to come in place of it. In other words, it is the spiritual image here, and not the physical organization, that makes the species; and most important is the distinction in all our reasonings about the essential oneness of humanity, and what most truly constitutes it.
From this primus homo, thus inspired, thus sealed, comes all of human kind that ever has been, or is now upon the earth. To apply what has been said to the more direct subject of this note, there is here the decisive answer to that view which would represent man as commencing in the savage state regarded as barely and imperceptibly rising above the animal. This inspiration is a great and glorious beginning. It is a new divine force in the earth. The fall does not at once destroy it, though giving a tendency to spiritual death, and spiritual degeneracy, carrying with it a physical decline. Even with this, however, the primitive divine impulse in the first man, and in the first men, makes them something very different from what is now called the savage state, and which is everywhere found to be the dregs of a once higher condition, the setting instead of the rising sun, the dying embers fast going out, instead of the kindling and growing flame. All past and present history may be confidently challenged to present the contrary case. Among human tribes, wholly left to themselves, the higher man never comes out of the lower. Apparent exceptions do ever, on closer examination, confirm the universality of the rule in regard to particular peoples, whilst the claim that is made for the world’s general progress can only be urged in opposition by ignoring the supernal aids of revelation that have ever shone somewhere, directly or collaterally, on the human path.
The high creative impulse manifested itself in the Antediluvian period in its resistance to the death-principle, which, through the spiritual, the fall had introduced into the human physical organization. It showed itself in a rapidly developed, though a suicidal or self-corrupting civilization, in the line of Cain, and in an extreme longevity in the holier line of Seth. With a branch of the latter it passed the flood, impaired, it may be, but unspent. The preserved race, tending again to a sensual gregariousness, received a new divine impulse, which may almost be regarded as resembling a second subordinate creation. It was not the renewal of holiness, but of spiritual vigor, making humanity sublime even in its wickedness. It was the spirit of discovery, sending men over the face of the before unknown earth. It was the pioneering spirit, ever leading them on to make new settlements, to overcome new difficulties, to engage in great works, all the more astounding when we consider the little they possessed of what may be called science. What a grand conception was that of building a tower that should reach unto the skies, and make them independent of the mutations they beheld in nature! How has such a thought, though taking far more scientific forms, ever swayed mankind, showing itself still in the pretentious claims of our present knowledge, so boasting, yet so small in comparison with the great unknown, and so little able to relieve the deep-seated evils of our fallen race. “Go to,” said they, “let us build a city and a tower,” as a defence against heaven. It was the same language that was afterwards re-echoed in the Promethean boast,16 and that we still sometimes hear from a godless science, vaunting that it “has annihilated space and time,” that it has disarmed the lightning:
Eripuit cœlo fulmen—
that it will yet deprive the ocean of its terrors, and introduce, at last, that millennium of human achievement which will make man independent of any power above or without him.
It was but a short time after the flood, when there appears this new heroic spirit, this vast ambition, in the very opening of the world’s history. Scripture gives us but few points in the picture, but these are most impressive: Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord,” beginning the kingdom of Babylon; settlements rapidly following it on the upper Euphrates; the descendants of Ham already upon the Nile; the sons of Javan wending their way by the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean; Tyre and Sidon taking their place “at the entry of the sea,” as though already looking out to become “the merchant of the people for many isles.” It was the time of the tower-builders, the pyramid-builders, the great city-builders, the empire-founders. Along with the pioneering and colonizing spirit, there was also the associative tendency, so different from any thing we now see in any modern savagism. There was, also, in vigorous exercise, the government idea, or the government instinct, if any prefer thus to name it, leading men to form great polities, and to recognize in government something of a divine or supernatural nature. We may call it hero-worship, but it was something very different from anything now known in savage tribes, and led to results utterly unknown as ever following from such a state.
Such were the primitive men as the Bible presents them to us, although their mere worldly greatness was to the Scripture writers a wholly subordinate subject. Secular history confirms the account. This it does in two ways: 1st, by its silence as to all before. If men had been so many ages on the earth, what were they doing all this time? What traces have they left of their existence? At the most, only a few ambiguous bones here and there discovered, after the keenest search, and in respect to whose real antiquity men of science are still contending. We ask in vain for the marks of progress, or of any transition state. A speaking silence, like that which seems to come from the blank chamber of the great pyramid, proclaims that man, the Adamic or Noachic man, is not much older than the pyramids,—two thousand years, perhaps, a little more or a little less. If we pay no attention to this striking fact, of the almost total absence of any human remains, it might, perhaps, be said, that history only commences after the emergence from the long savage state, and, therefore, gives no testimony to the many ages of human existence that might have been before it. This, however, supposes a sudden emergence, such as would seem to demand some new power, something like a divine or ab extra impulse, unfelt in the ages before, and which would not greatly differ—at least in the marvellousness and apparent supernaturalness of it—from what the Bible tells us of a new creation of humanity. It would imply something coming into the human movement, greatly accelerating it, at least, if not wholly originating. It would be something undeveloped, or very suddenly and strangely developed, from what went before. And this brings us to the second or positive evidence of history. If it testifies by its silence, still more impressive is it when it begins to speak, and this is at the time when something in human action deemed notable, or worthy of remembrance, demands its voice. The strong self-consciousness which is the result of awakened action immediately seeks its record. The observation of passing times, or chronology, begins with it. It is this commencement of movement that creates history, whether in writing of some kind—which there is good reason to believe was among the very earliest things, and called out by this very demand for a recording medium—or in the measured language of song, or in formal traditions, which, however vague and exaggerated, present an expressive contrast to an utterly unrecording silence.
The history that thus begins to speak has not the exactness of modern annals, but, as compared with what might have been expected on the other theory, its voice is loud and clear. It comes not with muttered tones, inarticulate and unintelligible. Its utterance is more emphatic in the very beginning than in some of the lapsed ages that follow it. How much more distinctly stand out the first Pharaohs, whether of sacred or secular history (see Herod., ii. 100, 101), than the later shadows upon the monuments! The earliest history bursts upon us, as it were. It begins with men doing great things, raising pyramids, building cities,17 founding states. It opens with the Egyptian and Babylonian empires, and that, too, as new powers in fullest vigor, and presenting every appearance of youthful greatness. The proper names given to us, whether of men or places, have nothing of the cloudy, mythical aspect, but stand out with all the distinctness of veritable life. Less is known of the most early East, of India and China, but sufficient to warrant the belief, that by the Ganges, as well as by the Nile and the Euphrates, a young humanity was giving evidence of mighty bodily powers and high spiritual energy; different, indeed, from the present, and presenting some aspects strange to our modern conceptions, yet very unlike the savage state, or a rise from such a state, had such a rise been ever shown in any early or later history of the world. In brief—the first historical appearances of men upon the earth are at war with this theory of savagism. Such independent emergings as are contended for do not now take place, and never have taken place within the times of known history. The savage condition, as has been said, and cannot be denied, is one ever sinking lower and lower, until aid is brought to it from without; and at the early time referred to there was no such aid except from a supernal and supernatural source.
On either view, we are compelled to admit the fact of a great beginning of humanity on the earth. The primitive man was a splendid being—not scientific, nor civilized, in our modern sense of the words, but possessing great power, both of body and soul. He had all to learn, yet learned most rapidly. Researches among the earliest monuments sometimes astonish us by the suggestions they offer of a knowledge supposed to belong only to modern times, or to which, in some cases, modern discovery has not yet reached. There is brought out evidence of results in the arts, in manufactures, and in the employment of mechanical aids, that we find it very difficult to account for. If we cannot believe them to have come from processes of investigation strictly scientific, then must we ascribe them to other powers of a high order, and in which we fail to surpass them—such as keen observation awake to every outward application of natural forces, most acute senses, and unrivalled manual skill. If it was the greatness of force and magnitude, it was greatness still, such as was never attained to by any savage people in historical times. These early men had great aims, they attempted great things, and they accomplished them rapidly. We have only to take this view, fortified as it is by Scripture and the early profane history, to account for what seems so wonderful to some writers, and which has drawn them to their long chronologies. As remarked elsewhere (p. 317), the history of human progress has ever been one of starts and impulses. As in the geological ages, so also within historical times, there are periods in which more has been done in a few generations, than, under other circumstances, has been accomplished in many centuries. Thus the time that intervened between the Scriptural flood and the first mention of the Egyptian monarchy, even as reckoned by the shorter chronology, may have brought on the world’s history faster than ages of comparative torpor, such as have appeared in the varied annals of mankind.
Again, there is an intrinsic difficulty in such views as that of Bunsen, which, when closely examined, presents a greater incredibility than anything of which it professes to give the explanation. Admitting such idea of emergence after ages of unhistorical savagism, still the questions arise: Why was not this more universal after it had commenced? Why did it not appear in other parts of the earth? Why did the early light confine itself to one people for so long a time, making Mitzraim historically what it is geographically and etymologically, the narrows, a line immense in length with the scantiest breadth? During these fifteen thousand years, or more, of monumental history, all the rest of the earth was in comparative night. Established institutions, a regular monarchy for ten thousand years, at least, king inheriting from king, or dynasty succeeding dynasty, a political state unbroken for a period three times as long as the whole series of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman, Mongolian, and Turkish empires—social orders uninterruptedly transmitted, records of all this preserved, monuments attesting it! It is incredible in itself—much more so when we consider the condition of the rest of the earth, even the nearest parts. In Egypt, ten thousand years of government, of civilization, of advanced agriculture, of social order, and all this time Greece, Italy, and even Asia Minor, in total darkness—uninhabited, or in the lowest unhistorical savagism! It is very hard to believe this. It presents a marvel greater than anything recorded in Genesis about the origin and early condition of mankind—greater for the imagination, far greater for the reason. Egyptian history would be like an Egyptian obelisk standing in the desert, spindling up to a vast height, whilst all around was desolation in the view that height presented. Such an antiquity in this one people, should we reason from it a priori, and connect with it the modern claim of progress, would throw out of proportion all the other chapters of history. It would bring the Roman empire before the days of Abraham, and make our nineteenth century antedate the Trojan war.
These considerations do not only support the Bible chronology as prolonged in the LXX., but furnish an argument in favor of the still shorter Hebrew reckoning. Taking the primitive men as the Bible represents them, and the latter gives ample time for all that is recorded. Connected with this there is another thought. How came this Hebrew chronology to present such an example of modesty as compared with the extravagant claims to antiquity made by all other nations? The Jews, doubtless, had, as men, similar national pride, leading them to magnify their age upon the earth, and run it up to thousands and myriads of years. How is it, that the people whose actual records go back the farthest have the briefest reckoning of all? The only answer to this is, that whilst others were left to their unrestrained fancies, this strange nation of Israel were under a providential guidance in the matter. A divine check held them back from this folly. A holy reserve, coming from a constant sense of the divine pupilage, made them feel that “we are but of yesterday,” whilst the inspiration that controlled their historians directly taught them that man had been but a short time upon the earth. They had the same motive as others to swell out their national years; that they have not done so, is one of the strongest evidences of the divine authority of their Scriptures. And how fair is their representation! Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Tyre, the early Javanic settlements, all starting about the same time, and from the same quarter of a late inhabited earth; this is credible, probable, making harmonious sacred and profane history. The other view of the long and lonely Egyptian dynasties is monstrous, out of all proportion—incredible. Had the Bible given such a long, narrow, solitary antiquity of twenty thousand, or even ten thousand, years, to the people whose history it mainly assumes to set forth, it would, doubtless, have called out the scoff of those whose sceptical credulity so easily receives the fabulous chronology of other nations.—T. L.)
Footnotes:
[1][Gen_10:3.—גֹּמֶר, Gomer (G M R). These radical letters are found extensively combined in the history and geography of Europe; as though some early, roving people had left the mark of their name from the Pontus, or Black Sea, to Ireland: G M R., K M R., K y M M e R i i Cymmerians), by metathesis, K R M., C R i M e a, G R M., Germani, C y M R I, Cymri, Cimbri, Cumbri, Cumberland, Humberland, Northumberland, Cambria, etc. They may not be all etymologically connected, but there is every probability that they were left by the same old people, ever driven on Westward by successive waves of migration. אַשְׁכְּנַז, Ashkenaz, by metathesis אכשנז, Aksenaz, Axenas, may be the old name for the Black Sea, or the country lying upon it. The Greeks called it ά̓ξενος, for which they accordingly found a meaning in their own language—the inhospitable—afterwards euphemized to εύ̓ξεινος—the Euxine.—T. L.]
[2][Gen_10:4.—יון, Jwan, Javan, Iwan, Ion. There can be no doubt that this is Greece. Compare Joe_4:6; Eze_27:13; Dan_8:21. It is the name or patrial epithet of Greece in the cognate languages, as given to it in historical terms: Syriac, ܝܰܘ ܒܳܚܶܐ, Chald. יְוָנִי, Arab. םُז ׀ַَ הُ, and also by the Greeks themselves, when they would present the name in its old, Oriental form; as in the Persæ of Æschylus, when the mother of Xerxes is made to call them ̓Ιαόνες, and their land γῆν ̓Ιαόνων (line 175), and in another place, 563, διά δ̓ ̓̓Ιαόνων χέρας. See also, Herod.,i. 56, 58. אֱלִישׁה, ̔Ελλας. דֹדָנִים, in some Hebrew copies רֹדָנִים, which the LXX read, and rendered Ρόδιοι.—T. L.]
[3][Gen_10:5.—נִפְרְדוּ, were parted. Maimonides says this term was applied to the Japhethites because of their far roving, which parted them from each other in separate isles and coasts; whereas it is not said of Ham’s descendants, because they were near to each other, forming dense and contiguous populations.—T. L.]
[4][Gen_10:6.—מִצְרַיִם. This dual name has been supposed to denote the political division of Upper and Lower Egypt. It would seem more likely to have a geographical significance; The Narrows—the two narrows, or the double narrows—the straits. What could be more descriptive of this long and very narrow strip of territory, lying on both sides of the Nile, many hundred miles in length, and averaging only a dozen or so in breadth. It is strange that Rosenmüller should say of this name, that it is uncertain whether it is Hebrew or Egyptian. It is purely Hebrew, and no other proper name in the language ever had a clearer significance. This appearance of extreme narrowness, with mountains or deserts on each side, must have suggested itself at the earliest date, whereas, the other idea must have had a later origin. The son of Ham, who first settled Egypt with his children, must have been at once struck with this territorial peculiarity, so different from anything in the Northern or Eastern regions, whence he came. The name which he gave to it afterwards came back to him as its settler and proprietor. There is reason to suppose that Mitzraim was not his earliest name. It was rather a territorial designation, afterwards genealogically and historically adopted. The original name of this first settler may have been Gupt, Copt, or Cupht, from which came the other popular designation, Αὶ-γυπτ-ος, Egypt.—T. L.]
[5][Gen_10:9.—“Mighty hunter (whether of men or beasts) לִפְנֵי וְהוָֹה before the Lord,” to express his notoriety for boldness and wickedness, as something ever before the divine presence; so bad, that God could not take his eyes from it. Compare with it Gen_6:10, the whole earth corrupt, לִפְנֵי אֱלֹהִים.—T. L.]
[6][Gen_10:11.—יָצָא אַשּׁוּר. In support of the view that אַשּׁוּר here denotes the place whither, instead of being the subject of the verb יָצָא, Maimonides refers to Num_34:4-5, וְיָצָא הֲצַר אַדָּר וְעָבַר עַצְמֹנָה, “and it went out (to) Hazar-addar, and passed over (to) Azmonah;” also to Num_21:33, וְיָצָא עוֹג מֶלֶךְ הַבָּשָׁן אֶדְרֶעִי, “And Og, king of Bashan, went out (to) Edrei;” in neither of which cases is there a preposition. He refers also to Mic_5:5, where “Asshur and the land of Nimrod” are mentioned together.—T. L.]
[7][Caucasian Cultivation. Caucasus, or Caucasia, denotes, geographically, the region between the Black and Caspian Seas. Ethnologically, no term is more indefinite. If we take it of the territory above indicated, it may be truly said, that its inhabitants were, at this early time, and long afterwards, the lowest in the human scale. Where it was not ά̓βατος ἐρημία, as described by Æschylus, it was occupied by tribes proverbial for their barbarism. “The savage Caucasus” (ἀπάνθρωπος, ἀρέρπης) becomes a name for all that was most rude and ferocious. See the account given by Herodotus of the wretched hordes that then lived the lowest nomadic life between these two seas, ἀπ ὔλης ἀγρίης ζώοντα, deriving their sustenance from the wild products of the forest, painting themselves with the figures of animals, and living like them, in ways so gross, that Rawlinson and others omit the passage in their translations,—μίξιν τε τούτων τῶν ἀνθρώπων εῖναι ἐμφανέα κατάπερ τοῖσι προβάτοισι. Herod. i. 203. To say that the Egyptians and Phœnicians, or the Hamites in general, or any single branches of them, “through an ennobling (durch Veredelung) might make an approach to the Caucasian culture,” that is, be raised higher in the scale of civilization, would be very much like ascribing a similar elevating influence to the Finns and the Laplanders, as exercised upon the French and English. The savage, as we now understand the term, was not the primitive condition of mankind; but the earliest appearance of it as a degeneracy, as a loss of the humane-ness, of spiritual superiority, and a tendency to the wilder animal state, presented itself in this very region. The inhabitants have shown the same ever since. No part of the earth, geographically known, has had less of a history, or been less connected with history (if that is a criterion of ethnological rank) than this boasted Caucasia, or Circassia. The Kalmuc, and other Tartar tribes that even now roam its wilds, though perhaps possessing a more comely personal appearance, like the wild horses of the same region, are inferior in civilization, and in some kinds of literary culture, to the inhabitants of Bornou and other kingdoms of Central Africa, in which the old Egyptian and Ethiopian humane-ness has not wholly gone out, or has been kept alive through Arabian influence. The sons of Japheth, who went north, were the earliest of the human race to become wholly savage, and the longest to continue such, until met, at a much later day, by the Southern and Mediterranean streams of civilization carrying with it the Christian cullus. Even the Javanites, the Greeks—not the earliest Pelasgi, merely, but the later Hellenes and Dorians—were, for a long time, the Barbarians, as compared with the Egyptians and the Phœnicians. See how Homer everywhere speaks of these older and more civilized peoples, as compared with his own countrymen. The ancient stream of light has since turned northward, as it may again be deflected to the south; but all the boasting about Caucasian supremacy is in the face of history. It is a carrying of the most modern ideas, and the most irrational of modern prejudices, into our estimate of the ancient world, or of the human race, during much the greater part of its existence—T. L.]
[8][The most secluded people in ancient times, the only one possessing, and carrying with them in their history, a world-idea, and this dating from the very earliest period! See Gen_28:14, and still earlier, Gen_3:15 : “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth he blessed.” This certainly presents the Jewish nation in a most remarkable light, demanding the attention of all who talk about the philosophy of history, and especially of those who are fond of describing the Old Testament as presenting an outward, narrow, and exclusive economy. How universal the influence of Grecian culture and Roman conquest, yet neither of them had what may be called a world-idea, or anything like the Messianic conception.—T. L.]
[9][Maimonides seems to give a better explanation of this. He says: “These, Seba and Havilah, were heads of peoples, and the sons of Raamah became two peoples: but Nimrod did not become a people (genealogically), wherefore the Scripture saith simply, and ‘Cush begat Nimrod,’ and not, the ‘sons of Cush were Nimrod, and Seba, and Havilah.’ ” That is, Nimrod does not come in the ethnological register of peoples, though he is mentioned afterwards as a historical person. He applies the same principle of interpretation to other similar cases.—T. L.]
[10][This would seem to be the interpretation which most readily commends itself to the plain reader. The division of the earth is referred to as something easily known from what is contained in the narrative, or is soon to be mentioned. Had there not been such a division so prominently put forth in the xith chapter, there might be some room for speculation. But the obvious connection seems to shut out every other view : He was called Peleg (division), for in his day did that great event take place that is soon to be mentioned, and which is a ground of all these genealogical divisions. See Bochart : Phaleg.—T.L.]
[11][אֲבִימָאֵל, Abi-mael—a kind of naming similar to that by which Ham was designated, אֲבִי כְנַעַן, Abi-Canaan, father of Canaan, a method which afterwards becomes quite common among the Arabians. In this, and in the appearance of the article in אַלְמוֹדַד, El-modad, verse 26 above, we have germs of peculiar forms in the Arabic dialect, showing that it was already deviating from the Hebrew, or the Hebrew from it, whichever may have been the oldest.—T. L.]
[12][It is as essential to an understanding of the Bible, and of history in general, as is Homer’s catalogue, in the second book of the Iliad, to a true knowledge of the Homeric poems and the Homeric times. The Biblical student can no more undervalue the one than the classical student the other.—T. L.]
[13][The Egyptian chronology here intended is that which can be made out, though in a very general way, from the outlines of actual history as derived by Herodotus from the monuments, and the priests’ interpretation of them, together with other accounts, traditional or otherwise, which they give to him. Menes was the first king, who stands away back at the beginning of Egyptian history. The next one of any historical note is Mœris, who had not been dead 900 years when Herodotus was in Egypt, and must have been, therefore, about 1,350 years before the time of Christ. All that the priests had between these two was contained in a papyrus roll, having the bare names of 330 monarchs, whom, if real, a thousand years, or so, would easily dispose of, on the supposition of cotemporaneous dynasties, or frequent revolutions, such as Egypt must have had as well as other nations, reducing reigns to one or two years, and many of them to months. Let the reader call to mind how rapidly emperors succeed each other during some parts of the later Roman history. These other kings, the priests tell him, were “persons of no account,” with the exception of Mœris, before mentioned, thus showing, that with all their parade of rolls and dynasties, Menes and Mœris were the only two conspicuous points in the Egyptian antiquity, until 1,400 years before Christ. Such are the only data for chronology, though the Egyptian priests pretend to fill up this empty, unhistorical space, with 341 generations, making about 10,000 years (see Herod., ii. 100, 142); but this is evidently due to that national pride which elsewhere led to the same extravagant reckoning. They found little or nothing of record or monument to confirm it, or they certainly would have given it to the historian. What they tell him, that during this period of 300 generations, the sun had twice risen where he now sets, and twice set where he now rises, is enough to show what historical value belongs to the empty numbers with which they would fill up this waste extent of time. See Rawlinson’s Herodotus.—T. L.]
[14][There is so much of caricature and grotesqueness in the appearance of the simia tribe of animals, that we revolt at the thought of any connection with them, even as a link in the mere physical. Their actions are so absurd, they are such a mere mimicry of reason, ludicrous, yet actually lower than the sober instinct of other kinds, that the outward resemblance makes us the more disdain the idea of even a physical relationship. It is thus that the ape-nature places itself in stronger contrast to the human than that of other animals having less outward likeness, either in form or in action. And yet such resemblance, in some degree, is very general. There is something in the most common animal-faces around us, that would startle us by its human look if we had seen nothing of the kind before.—T. L.]
[15][There is a very great difficulty in confining this language of the apostle, 1Co_15:46-47, to the historical incarnation, or to the effect of the coming of Christ at the beginning of the Christian era. It must refer to something constitutive of humanity in the beginning, before the fall, and in the very process of the becoming man. Otherwise it would follow, that before such historical advent, man was an animal merely, wholly earthly and sensual, ψυχικὸς, χοϊκός. If the πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν, the “life-giving spirit,” in distinction from the ψυχὴ ζῶσα, the soul of life, or merely “living soul,” was not in our humanity at its first constitution, then not only Adam, but Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, were only natural men, animal men, having nothing, in a true sense, spiritual about them. If we would avoid this very strange consequence, the language referred to must have something of a creative or constitutive sense, and the πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν, must be regarded as the φῶς φώτιζον πάντα ἄνθρωπον, “the Light that lighteth every man coming into the world” of Joh_1:9, making, in the beginning, that peculiar constitution which we may call the completed man, and which was never wholly lost as a high spiritual power, however much it may have been marred in its ethical aspect. Christianity is indeed καινὴ κτίσις, “a new creation,’ 2Co_5:17, or the making of a “new man,” but this is not inconsistent with the idea of a restoration, a re-creation, a renewed spirituality, or even the bringing back to a higher state than that from which man fell. The second Adam was not absent from the creation of the first. In the spiritual image of Him who is himself styled the express image, or hypostatic image, χαρακτὴρ ὕποστάσεως, Heb_1:3, was man spiritually formed. Through it he became man, and therefore it is truly said of the incarnate Logos, that “he came to his own;” and thus also is he truly bar-nosho, son of man, the Hebrew and Syriac term for the generic homo. In his eternity, and in his historical incarnation, he is “the root as well as the offspring” of humanity.—T. L.]
[16]
Τοῖον παλαιστὴν νῦν παρασκευάζεται
̔̀Ος δὴ κεραυνοῦ κρείσσον’εὑρήσει φλὁγα,
Θαλασσίαν τε γῆς τινάκτειραν νόσον
Τρίαιναν, αἰχμὴν τὴν Ποσειδῶνος σκεδᾶ.
Æschylus, Prom. Vinct. 919.
[17][Four great cities are started in the very “beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom, Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar,” Gen_10:10. This is confirmed by Herodotus. He speaks of it as a remarkable peculiarity of Assyria in his day—the number and greatness of its cities. They must have been founded in the earliest times, and by a people who had a passion for great structures—see Herod., i. 178. Rawlinson regards this large number of important cities as one of “the most striking features of the Assyrian greatness.” He shows, too, how remarkably it is confirmed by the modern discoveries among the vast Assyrian ruins: “Grouped around Nineveh were Calah (Nimrud), Scripture Calneh; Dur Sagina (Khorsabad); Tarbisa (Sherifkhan); Arbel (Arbil); Khazeh (Shamamek); and Asshur (Shirgut). Lower down, the banks of the Tigris exhibit an almost unbroken line of ruins from Tekrit to Baghdad, while Babylonia and Chaldea are throughout studded with mounds from north to south, the remains of the great capitals of which we read in the inscriptions. Again, in upper Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Khabour, Mr. Layard found the whole country covered with mounds, the remnants of cities belonging to the early Assyrian period.” Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. i. p. 243. These go back to the very beginnings of history. They make history. There is none before them, as there is no historical place for them in later annals, when these empires began to crumble, as they did at a very early period. So everything confirms the idea, that the pyramids and the great structures of Thebes and Memphis belong to the very beginnings of Egyptian history. They are monuments of the primæval men. From these ruins they yet speak to us of a period of great action, of a vast ambition suddenly manifesting itself, and before which silence reigned over all the earth.—T. L.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 21, 23, 24, 25 the isles of the Gentiles--a phrase by which the…
the isles of the Gentiles--a phrase by which the Hebrews described all countries which were accessible by sea (Isa 11:11; Isa 20:6; Jer 25:22). Such in relation to them were the countries of Europe, the peninsula of Lesser Asia, and the region lying on the east of the Euxine. Accordingly, it was in these quarters the early descendants of Japheth had their settlements.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 2. Gomer — The word occurs elsewhere in the…
2. Gomer — The word occurs elsewhere in the Scriptures only in Eze_38:6, where it is, as here, associated with Togarmah. The name is undoubtedly preserved in the Homeric name Κιμμεριοι, the Gimiri in the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius Hystaspes, Cimmerians, Kymri or Kymbri, the original Kelts, (Celts,) and Gauls, who were found in possession of all northern and western Europe at the dawn of western civilization. This race settled first on the north of the Black Sea, where they have left traces of their name, as Crimea, Crim-Tartary; driven thence by the Scythians before the time of Herodotus, (Her., 4, 11,) they moved west and south-west to the sea. Traces of the original Celtic language are still preserved in Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and the Scotch Highlands.
The Galatians of Asia Minor, the Celtic people to whom Paul wrote his famous epistle, were called Gomerites by Josephus. The Celts call themselves Kymr, and by orthoepic changes between the liquids L, M, R, as well as the palatals K and G, changes such as are constantly taking place in spoken languages, the names Gomer, Kymr, Gaul, Kelt, Galatae, Kimmeri, Crimea, Cambria, Cumberland, all come from the same root. Linguistic affinities show that these people, the earliest inhabitants of Europe of whom we definitely know, were Asiatic in origin, for the Keltic is an Indo-European language.
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Magog — The name probably means “the place,” (or region,) of Gog, and appears in Eze_38:2; Eze_39:6, as the name of a people dwelling “in the sides of the north,” over whom Gog is king, identified by Josephus, Jerome, and most moderns with the Scythians, who in the time of Herodotus had their home north of the range of Caucasus, in what is now Russia. Furst interprets Magog as Great Mount, that is, Caucasus. The region between the Black and Caspian Seas was called Magog by the Arabians. They came into Europe after the Kelts, a fierce, formidable, nomadic race, who poured down upon Asia Minor and Egypt in the seventh century B.C. (Herod., 4.)
Madai — This word is nowhere else in the Bible rendered as the name of a person, but, whenever it occurs, it is translated Media, or the Medes, (see 2Ki_17:6; Est_1:3; Est_1:18-19,) a powerful nation who once dwelt south and south-west of the Caspian, east of Armenia and Assyria. The Medes are here represented in close affinity with the Kelts (Gomer) and the Greeks, (Javan,) confirming Schlegel’s theory, now deemed established by linguistic researches, that the principal European and East Indian nations are of the same Aryan stock, having in a prehistoric period migrated westward and eastward from the high land of Ivan. This theory is embodied in the word Indo-European.
Javan — יון, Yavan, translated Greece in Zec_9:13; Dan_8:21, etc.; and its plural is rendered Grecians in Joel 4:6. Ionia, the name of a western province of Asia Minor, colonized at an early period by the Greeks, and applied by the Orientals to the Greeks in general. The Rosetta Stone shows that the Egyptians called the Greeks by the same name. The word occurs with the same meaning in Sanskrit and old Persian, showing that the name existed before the rise of the Aryan, Hamitic, and Shemitic families of speech. (Knobel.) The famous Greco-Italian races, which did not arise till many centuries after the composition of this narrative, inhabiting Macedonia, Thessaly, the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and west Asia Minor, are foreshadowed in this name.
Tubal, and Meschech — These peoples are constantly associated together by Ezekiel, (Eze_27:13; Eze_32:26; Eze_38:1-2, etc.,) and by Herodotus, (Herod., 3:94, 7:78.) They are likewise, according to Rawlinson, associated in the Assyrian inscriptions. Josephus identifies Tubal with the Iberians, who once dwelt between the Caspian and Euxine Seas. Knobel considers the Tibareni to have been only a branch of the widespread Iberians, some of whom settled in the east, some in the west. The Moschi were the ancestors of the Muscovites, builders of Moskwa, or Moscow, and still give Russia its name throughout the East. Ezekiel says that they came down from the “sides of the north,” and traded in copper and slaves in the markets of Tyre. Eze_27:13.
Tiras — Thracians, who dwelt between Mt. Haemus and the AEgean, on the south-west shore of the Black Sea. They are associated with Meshech (Meshnash) on the old Egyptian monuments. (Rawlinson.)
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–30 1. Now these are the generations] The title of…
1. Now these are the generations] The title of a new section in P; see note on Gen_2:4.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26 (1) Shem, Ham, and Japheth.—This is the un-deviating arrangement…
(1) Shem, Ham, and Japheth.—This is the un-deviating arrangement of the three brothers. (See Note on Gen_9:24; Gen_10:21.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 10
Genesis 10
This section of our book records the generations of Noah’s three sons, noticing, especially, Nimrod, the founder of the kingdom of Babel, or Babylon, a name which occupies a very prominent place on the page of inspiration. Babylon is a well-known name - a well known influence. From Genesis 10 to Revelation 18 Babylon, again and again, appears before us, and always as something decidedly hostile to those who occupy, for the time being, the position of public testimony for God. Not that we are to look upon the Babylon of Old Testament scripture as identical with the Babylon of the apocalypse. By no means. I believe the former is a city; the latter, a system; But both the city and system exert a powerful influence against God’s people. Hardly had Israel entered upon the wars of Canaan when "a Babylonish garment" brought defilement and sorrow, defeat and confusion, into the host. This is the earliest record of Babylon’s pernicious influence upon the people of God; but every student of Scripture is aware of the place which Babylon gets throughout the entire history of Israel.
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This would not be the place to notice, in detail, the various passages in which this city is introduced. I would only remark, here, that whenever God has a corporate witness on the earth, Satan has a Babylon to mar and corrupt that witness. When God connects His name with a city on the earth, then Babylon takes the form of a city; and when God connects His name with the Church, then Babylon takes the form of a corrupt religious system, called "the great whore," "the mother of abominations," &c. In a word, Satan’s Babylon is always seen as the instrument moulded and fashioned by his hand, for the purpose of counteracting the divine operations, whether in Israel of old, or the Church now. Throughout the Old Testament Israel and Babylon are seen, as it were, in opposite scales: when Israel is up, Babylon is down; and when Babylon is up, Israel is down. Thus, when Israel had utterly failed, as Jehovah’s witness, "the king of Babylon broke his bones," and swallowed him up. The vessels of the house of God, which ought to have remained in the city of Jerusalem, were carried away to the city of Babylon. But Isaiah, in his sublime prophecy, leads us onward to the opposite of all this. He presents, in most magnificent strains, a picture, in which Israel’s star is in the ascendant, and Babylon entirely sunk. "And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! . . . . since thou art laid down, no hewer is come up against us." (Isa. 14: 3-8.)
Thus much as to the Babylon of the Old Testament. Then, as to the Babylon of Revelation, my reader has only to turn to Rev. 17 and Rev. 18 to see her character and end. She is presented in marked contrast with the bride, the Lamb’s wife; and as to her end, she is cast as a great millstone into the sea; after which we have the marriage of the Lamb, - with all its accompanying bliss and glory.
However, I could not attempt to pursue this most interesting subject here: I have merely glanced at it in connection with the name of Nimrod. I feel assured that my reader will find himself amply repaid, for any trouble he may take in the close examination of all those scriptures, in which the name of Babylon is introduced. We shall now return to our chapter.
"And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." Here, then, we have the character of the founder of Babylon. He was" a mighty one in the earth" - "a mighty hunter before the Lord." Such was the origin of Babylon; and its character, throughout the entire book of God, remarkably corresponds therewith. It is always seen as a mighty influence in the earth, acting in positive antagonism to everything which owes its origin to heaven; and it is not until this Babylon has been totally abolished, that the cry is heard, amid the hosts above, "’Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth" Then all Babylon’s mighty hunting will be over for ever, whether it be its hunting of wild beasts, to subdue them; or its hunting of souls, to destroy them. ALL its might, and all its glory, all its pomp and pride, its wealth and luxury, its light and joy, its glitter and glare, its powerful attractions and wide-spread influence, shall have passed away for ever. She shall be swept with the besom of destruction, and plunged in the darkness, the horror and desolation, of an everlasting night. "How long, O Lord?"
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–26 I THE historical credibility of the present section has…
PART II THE POST-DILUVIAN AGE OF THE WORLD. CH. 10:1-11:9).
I THE historical credibility of the present section has been challenged.
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1. On account of a fancied resemblance to the ethnographic mythologies of Greece, the genealogical table of the nations has been relegated to the category of fictitious invention. It has been assigned by many critics to a post-Mosaic decried, to the days of Joshua (Delitzsch), to the age of Hebrew intercourse with the Phenician Canaanites (Knobel), to the era of the exile (Bohlen); and the specific purpose of its composition has been declared to be a desire to gratify the national pride of the Hebrews by tracing their descent to the first-born son of Noah, that their rights might appear to have a superior foundation to those of other nations (Hartmann). But the primogeniture of Sham is at least doubtful, if not entirely incorrect, Japheth being the oldest of Noah"s sons; (vide Gen_5:32 Gen_10:21) while it is a gratuitous assumption that not until the days of the monarchy, or the exile, did the Israelites become acquainted with foreign nations. The authenticity and genuineness of the present register, it is justly remarked by Havernick, are guaranteed by the chronicler. (Gen_1:1) "In the time of the chronicler nothing more was known from antiquity concerning the origin of nations than what Genesis supplied. Supposing, then, that some inquiring mind composed this table of nations from merely reflecting on the nations that happened to exist at the same period, and attempting to give them a systematic arrangement, how could it possibly happen that his turn of mind should be in such complete harmony with that of the other? This could only arise from the one recognizing the decided superiority of the other"s account, which here lies in nothing else than the historical truth itself belonging to it" (Intro., And the historical truthfulness of the Mosaic document is further strikingly authenticated by the accredited results of modern ethnological science, which, having undertaken by a
2. careful analysis of facts to establish a classification of races, has divided mankind into three primitive groups (Shemitic, Aryan, Turanian or Allophylian), corresponding not obscurely to the threefold arrangement of the present table, and presenting in each group the leading races that Genesis assigns to the several sons of Noah; as, e.g., allocating to the Indo-European family, as Moses has done to the sons of Japheth, the principal races of Europe, with the great Asiatic race known as Aryan; to the Shemitie, the Assyrians, Syrians, Hebrews, and Joktauite Arabs, which appear among the sons of Sham in the present table; and to the Allophylian, the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Southern Arabs, and early Babylonians, which the primitive ethnologist of Genesis also writes among the sons of Ham (cf. Rawlinson"s "Hist. Illus. of O.T.," p. 23).
3. The narrative of the building of the tower of Babel has also been impugned, and that chiefly on two grounds: viz.,
(1) an incorrect derivation of the term Babel, which is now said to have no connection whatever with the confusion of tongues, but to be the word Babil," the house or gate of God, or Bab-Bel," the gate or court of Bolus; and
(2) an incorrect explanation of the present diversity of tongues among mankind, which modern philology has now shown to be due to local separation, and not at all to a miraculous interference with the organs or the faculty of speech. To each of these objections a specific reply will be returned in the exposition of the text (q.v.); in the mean time it may be stated that there are not wanting sufficiently numerous testimonies from ancient history, archaeological research, and philological inquiry to authenticate this most interesting portion of the Divine record.
II The literary unity of the present section has been assailed. Tuch ascribes Ge 10. to the Elohist and Gen_11:1-9 to the Jehovist; and with this Bleek and Vaihinger agree, except that they apportion Gen_10:8-12 to the Jehovist. Davidson assigns to him the whole of Ge 10, with the exception of the expression "every one after his tongue" (ver. 5), the similar expressions (vers. 20, 31), the story of Nimrod commencing at "he began" (ver. 8), ver. 21, and the statement beginning "for" (ver. 25), all of which, with Gen_11:1-9, he places to the credit of his redactor. But the literary unity of the entire section is so apparent that Colenso believes both passages, "the table of nations" and "the confusion of tongues," to be the work of the Jehovist; and certainly the latter narrative is represented in so intimate a connection with the former that it is much more likely to have been composed by the original historian than inserted later as a happy afterthought by a post-exilian editor.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this ethnological table. Whether regarded from a geographical, a political, or a theocratical standpoint, "this unparalleled list, the combined result of reflection and deep research," is "no less valuable as a historical document than as a lasting proof of the brilliant capacity of the Hebrew mind." Undoubtedly the earliest effort of the human intellect to exhibit in a tabulated form the geographical distribution of the human race, it bears unmistakable witness in its own structure to its high antiquity, occupying itself least with the Japhetic tribes which were furthest from the theocratic center, and were latest in attaining to historic eminence, and enlarging with much greater minuteness of detail on those Hamitic nations, the Egyptian, Canaanite, and Arabian, which were soonest developed, and with which the Hebrews came most into contact in the initial stages of their career. It describes the rise of states, and, consistently with all subsequent historical and archaeological testimony, gives the prominence to the Egyptian or Arabian Hamites, as the first founders of empires. It exhibits the separation of the Shemites from the other sons of Noah, and the budding forth of the line of promise in the family of Arphaxad. While thus useful to the geographer, the historian, the politician, it is specially serviceable to the theologian, as enabling him to trace the descent of the woman"s seed, and to mark the fulfillments of Scripture prophecies concerning the nations of the earth. In the interpretation of the names which are here recorded, it is obviously impossible in every instance to arrive at certainty, in some cases the names of individuals being mentioned, while in others it is as conspicuously those of peoples.
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah (cf., Gen_5:1 Gen_6:9) Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Not the order of age, but of theocratic importance. (vide Gen_5:32) And unto them were sons born (cf. Gen_9:1, Gen_9:7, Gen_9:19, Gen_9:22) after the flood. An indication of the puncture temporis whence the period embraced in the present section takes its departure.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Now these are the generations of the sons of…
Gen_10:1-32
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah
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A chapter of genealogies
Many readers might be disposed to undervalue a chapter like this, since it is but a collection of names--some of which are quite unknown--and is made up of barren details promising little material for profitable reflection.
Yet a thoughtful reader will be interested here, and discover the germs and suggestions of great truths; for the subject is man, and man, too, considered in reference to Gods great purpose in the government of the world. This chapter is as essential to an understanding of the Bible, and of history in general, as is Homers catalogue, in the second book of the Iliad, to a true knowledge of the Homeric poems and the Homeric times. The Biblical student can no more undervalue the one than the classical student the other.
I. IT IS MARKED BY THE FEATURES OF A TRUTHFUL RECORD.
1. It is not vague and general, but descends to particulars. The forgers of fictitious documents seldom run the risk of scattering the names of persons and places freely over their page. Hence those who write with fraudulent design deal in what is vague and general.
2. Heathen literature when dealing with the origin of nations employs extravagant language. The early annals of all nations, except the Jews, run at length into fable, or else pretend to a most incredible antiquity. National vanity would account for such devices and for the willingness to receive them. The Jews had the same temptations to indulge in this kind of vanity as the other nations around them. It is therefore a remarkable circumstance that they pretend to no fabulous antiquity. We are shut up to the conclusion that their sacred records grew up under the special care of Providence, and were preserved from the common infirmities of merely human authorship.
3. Here we have the ground plan of all history.
II. THAT HISTORY HAS ITS BASIS IN THAT OF INDIVIDUAL MEN. The general lesson of this chapter is plain, namely, that no man can go to the bottom of history who does not study the lives of those men who have made that history what it is.
III. THAT MAN IS THE CENTRAL FIGURE OF SCRIPTURE. Infidels have made this characteristic of revelation a matter of reproach; but all who know how rich Gods purpose towards mankind is, glory in it, and believe that great things must be in store for a race which bus occupied so much of the Divine regard.
IV. THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT OF HISTORY TOWARDS AN END. All the interest centres successively in one people, tribe, and family; then in One who was to come out of that family, bringing redemption for mankind. Salvation is of the Jews. The noblest idea of history is only realized in the Bible. Those of the world had no living Word of God to inspire that idea. That book can scarcely be regarded as of human origin which passes by the great things of the world, and lingers with the man who believed in God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (T. H. Leale.)
Circumstances attendant on man
Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstances, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstances. It is character that builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that, in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins; the block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weakly becomes a stepping stone in the pathway of the strong. (T. Carlyle.)
Oneness of humanity
A clear conception of the import of this marvellous chapter should enlarge and correct our notions in so far as they have been narrowed and perverted by our insular position. We should recognize in all the nations of the earth one common human nature. God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth. This reflection is both humbling and elevating. It is humbling to think that the cannibal is a relative of ours; that the slave crouching in an African wood is bone of our bone; and that the meanest scum of all the earth started from the same foundation as ourselves! On the other hand, it is elevating to think that all kings and mighty men, all soldiers renowned in song, all heroes canonized in history, the wise, the strong, the good, are our elder brothers and immortal friends. If we limit our life to families, clans, and sects, we shall miss the genius of human history, and all its ennobling influences. Better join the common lot. Take it just as it is. Our ancestors have been robbers and oppressors, deliverers and saviours, mean and noble, cowardly and heroic; some hanged, some crowned, some beggars, some kings; take it so, for the earth is one, and humanity is one, and there is only one God over all blessed for evermore! If we take this idea aright we shall get a clear notion of what are called home and foreign missions. What are foreign missions? Where are they? I do not find the word in the Bible. Where does home end; where does foreign begin? It is possible for a man to immure himself so completely as practically to forget that there is anybody beyond his own front gate; we soon grow narrow, we soon become mean; it is easy for us to return to the dust from whence we come. It is here that Christianity redeems us; not from sin only, but from all narrowness, meanness, and littleness of conception; it puts great thoughts into our hearts and bold words into our mouths, and leads us out from our village prisons to behold and to care for all nations of mankind. On this ground alone Christianity is the best educator in the world. It will not allow the soul to be mean. It forces the heart to be noble and hopeful. It says, Go and teach all nations; Go ye into all the world; Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others; Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, heaped up, and running over. It is something for a nation to have a voice so Divine ever stirring its will and mingling with its counsels. It is like a sea breeze blowing over a sickly land; like sunlight piercing the fogs of a long dark night. Truly we have here a standard by which we may judge ourselves. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. If we have narrow sympathies, mean ideas, paltry conceptions, we are not scholars in the school of Christ. Let us bring no reproach upon Christ by our exclusiveness. Let us beware of the bigotry of patriotism, as well as of the bigotry of religion. We are citizens of the world: we are more than the taxpayers of a parish. A right view of this procession of the nations will show us something of the richness and graciousness of Christs nature. What a man must he have been either in madness or in Divinity who supposed that there was something in himself which all these people needed! (J. Parker, D. D.)
The planting of nations great responsibility
The one point to which I would draw your attention is that which lies upon the very surface of this history, and to which, as a great law imprinted by God upon our race, I wish to call your special notice. It is the degree in which the original features of the founders of a race reproduce themselves in their descendants, so as to become the distinct and manifest types of national life. This is so plain here that it has rarely escaped some observation. The few words wherein, according to the wont of patriarchal times, Noah, as the firstborn priest of his own family, pronounces on his sons his blessing and his curse, sketch in outline the leading characteristics of all their after progeny. Thus, the Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, can hardly fail to convey to the heaters mind the impression that devotion to, and a trust in God, as his portion, marked the character of the firstborn of Noah. And so it proved in fact, for it was the line of Abraham and the Semitic race, in the tribes of Israel and Judah, which filled this office of the priests of mankind for two thousand years. So also with regard to the second son of Noah. Sensuality and filial irreverence manifestly stained his character. In the future of such a man lay naturally cruelty--the inseparable companion--and degradation--the unfailing consequence--of lust. A servant of servants should he be. He who disregarded the duties of a son should lose the place of a brother: he who sacrificed to sensual appetite every highest duty, should in the end barter for it his own liberty; and his character, too, has through unnumbered generations reproduced itself in his descendants. Without entering upon the difficult task of tracing in some of its details the outline of the Hamitic race, it is clear beyond all contradiction, that through past ages, and even to the present day, the nations which manifestly sprung from his loins are marked by these characteristics--lust, cruelty, and servitude. The character of Japhet is perhaps, at first sight, less plainly to be traced in his fathers benediction. His words would seem, however, to point to a character marked less strongly than that of his firstborn by piety towards God, but possessed of those family virtues with which, in the course of things, an increasing posterity is commonly connected and endued with the practical activity and vigour, which, as opposed to the more contemplative character of Shem, were essential to that subduing of the earth, which must accompany its replenishment by the enlarging seed. Beyond this lay the unexplained and mysterious blessing of his future dwelling in the tents of Shem, pointing probably, in the personal life of the patriarch, to the pious rest into which the later years of a virtuous activity would so probably subside. And all this has plainly marked the Japhetic races: their increase has furnished the nations of the Gentiles; whilst family virtue, and that practical activity which to this day has so wonderfully subjected the material earth to its obedience, are the distinction of their blood. In all these cases, then, we may trace on the broadest scale the action of that of which I have spoken, as a law impressed upon our common nature, that nations, in their after generations, bear, repeat and expand the character of their progenitor. And then, further, we may observe adumbrations of a mode of dealing with men which seems to imply that in His bestowal of spiritual gifts, God deals with them after some similar law, Hence, then, we may conclude further, that, by the laws of grace as well as of nature, there is a reproduction in the after seed of the character of the progenitor. Now, it is to the application of this principle to our past history and our present duty, that I would specially invite your notice. And first, FOR THE FACT. Since the opening of the historical period, there has been scarcely any national planting of the earth through emigration, until within the last three centuries. Even those events of far distant times, which most resembled it, were widely different. For they were rather irruptions than emigration; and the great wave of life which they brought into some new land, first cast out races in possession, often as numerous as, and commonly more civilized than, their invaders, and who not unfrequently tinged their subduers with their religion, their manners, and their language. The direct replenishment of the earth for the last three hundred years by the Japhetic family, is altogether different. These emigrations have set forth exclusively from Christian lands. They have been directed to vast tracts of thinly peopled countries; and they have borne to them men who have been, in the fullest sense of the words, founders of nations. In this work, we have borne a larger share than any other people. Now, with what an awful character of responsibility does the truth which we have before considered invest such acts! A sensual seed will produce a degraded people; a godless seed will grow into an atheistic empire; nay, even the lesser evils of a worldly, or a sectarian origin, will mark and renew themselves in successive generations. How plainly, then, must it be one of the very highest duties of a Christian people to provide all that is needful to bless and hallow such a national infancy:--to plant a chosen seed, and not a refuse; to send forth with them that faith, which alone can exalt and renew the race of man in its purest form, and with every advantage for its reproduction! How far, then, has England, which has been the chiefest of the nations in this sacred work, acted up to her responsibilities? Let North America,--let Australasia answer. How scanty in its measure--how imperfect in its form--how divided in its character--was the Christianity we mingled with the abundant seed of man which we scattered broadcast over North America; how fearful a paternity of crime did we assume, when we conceived and almost executed the enormity of planting the antipodes with every embodiment of reckless wickedness, and giving it no healing influence of our holy faith! What then must be herein our guilt and shame! But our chief concern is not with the past: it is with that present in which the future lies enfolded. Never has the tide of emigration risen so high as now; never were we so freely planting the earth with our energetic, increasing race as the seed of future empires; never, then, did the duty of planting it aright press so heavily upon us: and what is the prime essential for its adequate discharge? Surely, far beyond all other, that with the seed of fallen man we plant that Church of Christ, through which God the Holy Ghost is pleased to work for his recovery. This, and no less than this, can fulfil our obligations. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.)
In their nations
The characteristics of a nation
1. It is descended from one head. Others may be occasionally grafted on the original stock by intermarriage. But there is a vital union subsisting between all the members and the head, in consequence of which the name of the head is applied to the whole body of the nation. In the case of Kittim and Dodanim we seem to have the national name thrown back upon the patriarchs who may have themselves been called Keth and Dodan. Similar instances occur in the subsequent parts of the genealogy.
2. A nation has a country or land which it calls its own. In the necessary migrations of ancient tribes, the new territories appropriated by the tribe, or any part of it, were naturally called by the old name, or some name belonging to the old country. This is well illustrated by the name of Gomer, which seems to reappear in the Cimmerii, the Cimbri, the Cymry, the Cambri, and the Cumbri.
3. A nation has its own tongue. This constitutes at once its unity in itself and its separation from others. Many of the nations in the table may have spoken cognate tongues, or even originally the same tongue. Thus the Kenaanite, Phoenician and Punic nations had the same stock of languages with the Shemites. But it is a uniform law, that one nation has only one speech within itself.
4. A nation is composed of many families, clans, or tribes. These branch off from the nation in the same manner as it did from the parent stock of the race. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
Hams posterity
1. The most cursed man may have a numerous seed: it enlargeth the curse.
2. Cursed ones bring out sometimes an eminent rebellious seed to hasten vengeance (Gen_10:8).
3. The greatest judgments will not keep wicked ones from sin though being but a little escaped from them.
4. Under a wise providence, power and violence is suffered to rise and spring in the earth (Gen_10:8).
5. It is the property of giants in sin and earthly power to hunt to death Gods saints to His face.
6. God makes in vengeance the names of such wicked ones a proverb (Gen_10:9).
7. The beginning and chief of all the power of wicked ones is but confusion, and the place of wickedness. Babel and Shinar (Gen_10:10).
8. Wicked potentates are still invading others to enlarge themselves (Gen_10:11).
9. Edifying cities, and places of strength, is the wickeds security.
10. Great cities they may have, but such as are under the eye and judgment of God (Gen_10:12). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Nimrod
Nimrod
Nimrod was not merely a giant or mighty one in hunting, but also a cruel oppressor and bloody warrior. He is represented by some ancient historians as having renewed the practice of war, which had for some time been abandoned for agriculture, and hence the well-known couplet--
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began, A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.
Obscurity rests, and ever shall rest, on his particular achievements, although his figure and name have been found of late in Nineveh. What animals he slew, what weapons he employed, what battles he fought, with the blood of what enemies he cemented the cities which he built, how long he lived and where, how and where he died, are not recorded either in profane history or in the Book of God. Imagination figures him as another Hercules, clad in the skins of lions, and pursuing his prey with sounding bow and fiery eye over the vast plains of Asia, and when wild beasts are not to be found, turning his fury against his neighbours. Such men are the ragged and menacing shadows which the sun of civilization casts before it; their strong heart is fit to be the first strong heart of a people; their crimes, for which they must answer to God, are yet made useful to Gods purpose, and from the blood they shed springs up many a glorious harvest of arts and sciences, of culture and progress. Without questioning their guilt or the evil they do, or seeking to solve the mystery why they exist at all, we see many important ends which their permission answers; and acknowledge that the page of history were comparatively tame, did it want the red letters which record the names of a Nimrod, a Nebuchadnezzar, a Charlemagne, a Henry the Eighth, a Rienzi, and a Napoleon. (G. Gilfillan.)
Gospel archery
My text sets forth Nimrod as a hero when it presents him with broad shoulders and shaggy apparel and sun-browned face, and arm bunched with muscle--a mighty hunter before the Lord. I think he used the bow and the arrows with great success practising archery. I have thought if it is such a grand thing and such a brave thing to clear wild beasts out of a country, if it is not a better and braver thing to hunt down and destroy those great evils of society that are stalking the land with fierce eye and bloody paw, and sharp tusk and quick spring. I have wondered if there is not such a thing as Gospel archery, by which these who have been flying from the truth may be captured for God and heaven. The archers of olden times studied their art. They were very precise in the matter. The old books gave special directions as to how an archer should go, and as to what an archer should do. But how clumsy we are about religious work. How little skill and care we exercise. How often our arrows miss the mark.
1. In the first place, if you want to be effectual in doing good, you must be very sure of your weapon. There was something very fascinating about the archery of olden times. Perhaps you do not know what they could do with the bow and arrow. Why, the chief battles fought by the English Plantagenets were with the long-bow. They would take the arrow of polished wood, and feather it with the plume of a bird, and then it would fly from the bowstring of plaited silk. The broad fields of Agincourt, and Solway Moss, and Nevilles Cross heard the loud thrum of the archers bowstring. Now, my Christian friends, we have a mightier weapon than that. It is the arrow of the Gospel; it is a sharp arrow; it is a straight arrow; it is feathered from the wing of the dove of Gods Spirit; it flies from a bow made out of the wood of the cross. Paul knew how to bring the notch of that arrow on to that bowstring, and its whirr was heard through the Corinthian theatres, and through the courtroom, until the knees of Felix knocked together. It was that arrow that stuck in Luthers heart when he cried out: Oh, my sins! Oh, my sins! In the armoury of the Earl of Pembroke, there are old corslets which show that the arrow of the English used to go through the breastplate, through the body of the warrior, and out through the backplate. What a symbol of that Gospel which is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and body, and of the joints and marrow! Would to God we had more faith in that Gospel!
2. Again, if you want to be skilful in spiritual archery, you must hunt in unfrequented and secluded places. The good game is hidden and secluded. Every hunter knows that. So, many of the souls that will be of most worth for Christ and of most value to the Church are secluded. They do not come in your way. You will have to go where they are.
3. I remark, further, if you want to succeed in spiritual archery, you must have courage. If the hunter stand with trembling hand or shoulder that flinches with fear, instead of his taking the catamount, the catamount takes him. What would become of the Greenlander if, when out hunting for the bear, he should stand shivering with terror on an iceberg? What would have become of Du Chaillu and Livingstone in the African thicket, with a faint heart and a weak knee? When a panther comes within twenty paces of you, and it has its eye on you, and it has squatted for the fearful spring, Steady there. Courage, O ye spiritual archers! There are great monsters of iniquity prowling all around about the community. Shall we not in the strength of God go forth and combat them? We not only need more heart, but more backbone. What is the Church of God that it should fear to look in the eye any transgression?
4. I remark again, if you want to be successful in spiritual archery, you need not only to bring down the game, but bring it in. I think one of the most beautiful pictures of Thorwaldsen is his Autumn. It represents a sportsman coming home and standing under a grapevine. He has a staff over his shoulder, and on the other end of that staff are hung a rabbit and a brace of birds. Every hunter brings home the game. No one would think of bringing down a reindeer or whipping up a stream for trout, and letting them lie in the woods. At eventide the camp is adorned with the treasures of the forest--beak, and fin, and antler. If you go out to hunt for immortal souls, not only bring them down under the arrow of the Gospel, but bring them into the Church of God, the grand home and encampment we have pitched this side the skies. Fetch them in; do not let them lie out in the open field. They need our prayers and sympathies and help. That is the meaning of the Church of God--help. O ye hunters for the Lord! not only bring down the game, but bring it in. (Dr. Talmage.)
Lessons
1. The last mention of the Churchs line is not the least in Gods account.
2. Fruitfulness is given to the Church of God, for its continuance on earth.
3. Visible distinction hath God made between the lines of the world and of the Church.
4. Hebers children are the true Church of God.
5. The name and blessing of Shem is on that Church.
6. Sharers in the promise are especially brethren.
7. The first in birth may be last in grace (Gen_10:21).
8. Out of the same holy stock may arise enemies to the Church as well as the right seed (Gen_10:22). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Lessons
1. Syrians may arise from the Father of the Church according to the flesh, very enemies to it.
2. Gods mind is to keep the line of His Church distinct; from all who turn aside (Gen_10:23).
3. The line of the Church is but short in respect of the world (Gen_10:24).
4. Memorable as well as terrible is that division of people and tongues which God hath made (Gen_10:25).
5. Saints have been careful to keep in memory such judgments of division; the naming of the child (Gen_10:25).
6. Numerous is the seed departed from the Church (Gen_10:26; Gen_10:29).
7. God has given a dwelling place to degenerate seed (Gen_10:30).
8. The Church hath its family, tongue, place, and people, distinct from all (verse 37). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Gen_10:1. Generations] The origins, genesis, or developments; a characteristic…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_10:1. Generations] The origins, genesis, or developments; a characteristic note of this book. The whole chapter is a table of the nations which descended from the sons of Noah.—
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Gen_10:2. Japheth] “The order of the generations of the sons of Noah here followed is Japheth, Ham, Shem. The reason why this arrangement begins with Japheth is that he was the eldest of the three. Ham follows next, in order that the main subject, the line of Shem, may be free for treatment; the object of secondary interest having been first disposed of, according to the practice of the sacred writer” (Alford). There is a striking similarity between the name Japheth and the Iapetus, which the Greeks and Romans regarded as the progenitor of the human race.—Gomer] This name has been traced to the Cimmerians of Homer, and also to the Cymry, the national name of the Welsh. The name occurs in the Cimmerian Bosphorus—the Crimea. This people inhabited the N.W. portion of Japheth’s territory; they are mentioned in Eze_38:6.—Magog] Identified with the Scythians—generally the north-eastern nations. “The chief people in the army of Gog (Eze_38:2-3; Eze_39:1) is Rosh, that is, the Rossi, or Russians” (Knobel).—Madai] The Medes, inhabiting the S. and S.W. They became incorporated in the Persian Empire, hence the two nations are spoken of together.—Javan] The Ionians, or Greeks.—Tubal and Meshech] These names frequently occur together in the Old Testament. They are supposed to be identical with the Tiberians, inhabiting Pontus and the districts of Asia Minor generally.—Tiras] Probably the Thracians, dwellers on the River Tiras, or Dniester.—
Gen_10:3. Ashkenaz] Some suppose this name to designate the Asen race, which is said to be the origin of the Germans. “It is somewhat remarkable that the Jews, to this day, call Germany Askenaz” (Alford).—Riphath] Probably the Celts, who dwelt originally on the Riphœan, or Carpathian mountains.—Togarmah] The Arminians, whose first king was named Thorgom, and who still call themselves the House of Thorgom.—
Gen_10:4. Elishah] Josephus and Knobel suppose that the Æolians are represented; others have traced the name to Hellas.—Tarshish] The Tyrseni, or Etruscans, colonised the east and south of Spain, and north of Italy.—Kittim] The original inhabitants of Cyprus, whose ancient capital was Citium, an old Greek town. Alexander the Great is said to have come out of the land of Chittim (1Ma_1:1; 1Ma_8:5).—Dodanim] The Dardanians, who in historic times inhabited Illyrium and Troy.
Gen_10:5. The isles of the Gentiles] “would appear to include the coast of the Mediterranean. The word signifies not only island, but also any maritime tracts. The notice in this verse must evidently be regarded as anticipatory of chapter Gen_11:1” (Alford), The Jews applied the word, besides its strict sense, also to describe those countries which could only be conveniently reached by water.—Every one after his tongue] “Thus clearly evincing that this dispersion took place after the confusion of tongues, though related before it” (Bush).—
Gen_10:6. Cush] This name designates the Ethiopians, also including the Southern Asiatics. Cush is generally rendered Ethiopia in the A. V.—Mizraim] The O. T. name for Egypt or the Egyptians.—
Gen_10:7. Saba] “Meroe-Ethiopians living from Elephantine to Meroe. The prophets represent the accession of Seba to the Church of God as one of the glories of the latter-day triumphs (Psa_72:10).—Candace seems to have been the queen of this region” (Act_8:27.—Jacobus.)—Sheba] The Sabeans, dwelling on shores of the Persian Gulf. They are referred to as men of stature and of commercial importance, in Isa_45:14-18. And Cush begat Nimrod] “The historian here turns aside from the list of nations to notice the origin of the first great empires that were established on the earth. Of the sons of Cush, one is here noted as the first potentate in history” (Jacobus). “The occurrence of the name Jehovah marks the insertion as due to the Jehovist supplementer” (Alford).—A mighty one in the earth] A hero—a conqueror—the first founder of an empire.—
Gen_10:9. He was a mighty hunter] “Taken in its primary sense, that this great conqueror was also a great follower of the chase, a pursuit which, as Delitzch remarks, ‘has remained to this day, true to its origin, the favourite pleasure of tyrants’ ” (Alford).—Before the Lord] An expression denoting his eminent greatness. Some suppose that it refers to his defiance of Jehovah, and this interpretation is favoured by the meaning of his name—let us rebel.—
Gen_10:10. The beginning of his kingdom] The first theatre of his sovereignty.—Babel] Babylon.—
Gen_10:11. Out of the land went forth Asshur] A more probable rendering is, “He came forth to Asshur,” i.e., he extended his conquests from Shinar.—
Gen_10:12. The same is a great city] “Knobel refers this to the whole four just mentioned, Nineveh, Rehoboth, Calah, and Resen; these four places are the site which is named the great city, viz., Nineveh in the wider sense. See Jon_4:11; Jon_3:3” (Alford).
Gen_10:13-20. A continuation of the sons of Ham]
Gen_10:21. The father of all the children of Eber] “This declaration calls attention beforehand to the fact, that in the sons of Eber the Shemetic line of the descendants of Abraham separates again in Peleg, namely, from Joktan, or his Arabian descendants” (Lange).—
Gen_10:25. In his days was the earth divided] These words have given rise to much speculation, but the more probable opinion is that they refer to the incident described in ch. 11.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPHS—Gen_10:1-32
THE FIRST ETHNOLOGICAL TABLE
Many readers might be disposed to undervalue a chapter like this, since it is but a collection of names—some of which are quite unknown—and is made up of barren details promising little material for profitable reflection. Yet a thoughtful reader will be interested here, and discover the germs and suggestions of great truths; for the subject is man, and man, too, considered in reference to God’s great purpose in the government of the world. This chapter “is as essential to an understanding of the Bible, and of history in general, as is Homer’s catalogue, in the second book of the Iliad, to a true knowledge of the Homeric poems and the Homeric times. The Biblical student can no more undervalue the one than the classical student the other.” (Dr. T. Lewis, in Lange’s Genesis.) Let us consider what are the chief characteristics and lessons of this, the oldest ethnological table in all literature.
I. It is marked by the features of a truthful record.
1. It is not vague and general, but descends to particulars. The forgers offictitious documents seldom run the risk of scattering the names of persons and places freely over their page. That would expose them to detection. Hence those who write with fraudulent design deal in what is vague and general. This chapter mentions particulars of names and places, and, in this regard, has the marks of a genuine record. Heathen literature does not furnish so wide and universal a register. One cause why that literature is so deficient in documents of this nature lies in the fact that each heathen nation was shut up within itself, having little relations with others except those of trade and war. But this chapter is framed on a wider basis, is concerned with all races of men, however diversified, and contemplates the human family as having an essential unity under all possible varieties of character and external conditions.
2. Heathen literature when dealing with the origin of nations employs extravagant language. The early annals of all nations, except the Jews, run at length intofable, or else pretend to a most incredible antiquity. National vanity would account for such devices and for the willingness to receive them. The Jews had the same temptations to indulge in this kind of vanity as the other nations around them. It is therefore a remarkable circumstance that they pretend to no fabulous antiquity. We are shut up to the conclusion that their sacred records grew up under the special care of Providence, and were preserved from the common infirmities of merely human authorship. The sober statements of this chapter regarding the origin of nations is a presumption of their truth.
3. Here we have the ground-plan of all history. The physical, intellectual, moral, social, and religious forces represented here sufficiently account for all subsequent history. We have, in this sacred portion of history, a light to guide and inform us over those tracts of time where the records of other nations leave us in darkness. We learn further—
II. That history has its basis in that of individual men. We speak of God’s relations to humanity, of the history of the world; but it will be found that this ultimately resolves itself into the history of individual men, who represent social and moral forces which have determined the currents of events. We find that God’s successive revelations were made to depend upon the characters of individual men. The revelation of salvation itself ever tends to take this form. God did not reveal His plans of mercy, in their ever-expanding outline and detail, to large bodies of men, but to individuals whom He deemed worthy of such sacred communications. It is not therefore strange that single human lives occupy so large a portion of Scripture. All history was to issue in One who would be the flower of humanity; and in whom alone the race could be contemplated with any joy of hope. The general lesson of this chapter is plain, namely, that no man can go to the bottom of history who does not study the lives of those men who have made that history what it is.
III. That man is the central figure in Scripture. The Bible differs, in one important feature, from the sacred books of other nations. They lose themselves in endless theories and speculations concerning the origin of the material universe. They have minute and elaborately detailed systems of cosmogony, geography, and astronomy. Hence the advance of the human mind in natural knowledge must be fatal to their authority. But the Bible commits itself to no detailed description of the laws and phenomena of nature. One short chapter in it is deemed sufficient to tell us that God made the heavens and the earth. The world is only considered as it is a habitation for man, and the platform on which the Supreme works out His great designs. Man is regarded in Scripture not merely as part of the furniture of this planet, but as lord of all. Everything is put under his feet. Hence the sacred records describe a God of men rather than a God of nature. They give a history of man as distinct from nature. Infidels have made this characteristic of revelation a matter of reproach; but all who know how rich God’s purpose towards mankind is, glory in it, and believe that great things must be in store for a race which has occupied so much of the Divine regard.
IV. The progressive movement of history towards an end. No history is marked by signs of living power that does not advance towards some great and noble end. In the highest things, how aimless have been the histories of the chief nations of mankind! Some particulars of Bible history may be regarded as unimportant, and even contemptible, when compared with the more stately and dignified records of the nations around; yet they show the onward march of humanity towards an end. They show how that humanity was gravitating towards its centre in Shem, Abraham, and Christ. How soon does the sacred history leave many of the great names recorded here—some of them founders of great empires; and important forces, as the world accounts—and proceeds to the delineation of individual lives which in the grey dawn and morning of the world reflect the light of the Sun of Righteousness! The great nations of the earth are afterwards little noticed, except when for a moment they are brought into some relation with the chosen people. The reason of this peculiarity is, that the Bible is not a world-history, but a history of the kingdom of God. All the interest centres successively in one people, tribe, and family; then in one who was to come out of that family, bringing redemption for mankind. “Salvation is of the Jews.” The noblest idea of history is only realised in the Bible. Those of the world had no living Word of God to inspire that idea. That book can scarcely be regarded as of human origin which passes by the great things of the world, and lingers with the man who “believed in God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE CHAPTER
In this chapter we see the origin of many nations in all parts of the world, and therefore the power of the blessing which God, after the flood, had renewed to men in respect to their multiplying and propagation; and so, finally, we learn the fathers from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. Neither Noah nor his sons begat any offspring during the time of the flood. The same may be conjectured to be true of the animals which were shut up with him in a dark dungeon, and as it were in the midst of death.—(Starke.)
In this outline of the history of all nations, we have a suggestion of the universality of God’s gracious purposes towards mankind. Heaven will draw inhabitants from every kingdom, people, nation, and tongue.
The relation between the history of God’s kingdom and the world-history:
1. The contrast;
2. the connection;
3. the unity (in its wider sense is the whole world’s history a history of the kingdom of God).—(Lange.)
The fifth document relates to the generations of the sons of Noah. It presents first a genealogy of the nations, and then an account of the distribution of mankind into nations, and their dispersion over the earth. This is the last section which treats historically of the whole human race. Only in incidental, didactic, or prophetic passages do we again meet with mankind as a whole in the Old Testament.—(Murphy.)
This chapter illustrates one stage of advance in the development of the human race. The family grows into the nation. The history reaches from Noah to Abraham, who is the representative of all the children of faith. Hence arises the Church, the highest form of life, the home for all mankind, however diversified in country, race, or tongue.
Though the race of man, as a whole, now disappears from the sacred page, yet in the progress of God’s revelation to man we are led on to Christ, in whom all things and men that have been sundered and scattered shall be gathered together.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON SPECIAL PORTIONS
Gen_10:1. Note the connection of this with the former history. Noah had prophesied before concerning all his sons, and then was added his expiration, the Spirit meaning to speak no more of him: but now, that being done, He proceeds to show the persons and posterity upon whom all these words were to be fulfilled. God’s word must not fall to the ground. God’s prophecies and performances are joined together in His word, so they should be in our faith and observation.—(Hughes.)
Gen_10:5. The Scripture, foreseeing that Europe would, from the first, embrace the Gospel, and for many ages be the principal seat of its operations, the Messiah Himself is introduced by Isaiah as addressing Himself to its inhabitants—“Listen, O isles, unto Me; and hearken ye people from afar. Jehovah hath called Me from the womb, and hath said unto Me, It is a light thing that Thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob. I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou shouldest be My salvation to the end of the earth” (Is. 49:1-6). Here we see not only the first peopling of our native country, but the kind remembrance of us in the way of mercy, and this, though far removed the means of salvation. What a call is this to us who occupy what is denominated the end of the earth, to be thankful for the Gospel, and to listen to the sweet accents of the Saviour’s voice.—(Fuller.)
It was God’s plan that men should be divided and dispersed all over the earth, and He has Himself determined the bounds of their habitation.
In their nations. We note here the characteristics of a nation—
1. It is descended from one head. Others may be occasionally grafted on the original stock by inter-marriage. But there is a vital union subsisting between all the members and the head, in consequence of which the name of the head is applied to the whole body of the nation.
2. A nation has a country or “land” which it calls its own. In the necessary migrations of ancient tribes, the new territories appropriated by the tribe, or any part of it, were naturally called by the old name, or some other name belonging to the old country.
3. A nation has its own “tongue.” This constitutes at once its unity in itself, and its separation from others. Many of the nations in the table may have spoken cognate tongues, or even originally the same tongue. But it is a uniform law that one nation has only one speech within itself.
4. A nation is composed of many “families,” clans, or tribes. These branch off from the nation in the same manner as it did from the parent stock of the race.—(Murphy.)
Gen_10:9. The original term for “hunting” occurs elsewhere, not so much in reference to the pursuit of game in the forest, as to a violent invasion of the persons and rights of men. Thus 1Sa_24:11, “Thou huntest my soul (i.e. my life) to take it.” This usage undoubtedly affords us a key to Nimrod’s true character; though probably, like most of the heroes of remote classical antiquity, addicted to the hunting of wild beasts; yet his bold, aspiring, arrogant spirit rested not content with this mode of displaying his prowess. With the band of adventurous and lawless spirits which his predatory skill had gathered around him, he proceeded gradually from hunting beasts to assaulting, oppressing, and subjugating his fellow-men. That the inhuman practice of war, at least in the ages after the flood, originated with this daring usurper, is in the highest degree probable.
“Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,
A mighty hunter—and his prey was man.”
(Bush).
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Scripture Strata! Gen_10:1-31.
(1) Geologists have found great truths embedded in the earth’s strata. Enduring traces left behind by the eruption of the volcano and the tranquil lapse of the waves on the beach—faint but indelible footprints of creatures which crawled over the soft mud—ripple marks of primeval seas whose murmurs passed into silence countless ages ago—circular and oval hollows produced by showers of rain which no eye witnessed, and which fell on no waving cornfield or flowery meadow—impressions caused by viewless winds indicating the strength of their currents and the direction in which they moved; all these have taught great scientific truths.
(2) Is the Book of Revelation—with its strata pregnant of the annals of the human race—different, in this respect, from the Book of Nature? Both are by the same author, and just as the student of the geological strata reasons, as well as infers from his records, so may the student of the Scripture strata reason and infer from his annals. The names here are full of significance. They are the ripple marks telling of tides of human thought and action—impressions caused by the currents of human conception and purpose under the great wonder-working God!
“O strange mosaic! wondrously inlaid
Are all its depths of shade,
With beauteous stones of promise, marbles fair.”
Toldoth Beni Noah! Gen_10:1-32. (l) Rawlinson says that this genealogy of the sons of Noah is the most authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of nations. Kalisch says that it is an unparalleled list—the combined result of reflection and deep research, and no less valuable as a historical document than as a lasting proof of the brilliant capacity of the Hebrew mind.
(2) It is indisputable that the majority of scientific ethnologists regard this record as of the very highest value. Ethnological science has established a triple division of mankind, and speaks of all races as either Semitic, Aryan, or Turanian. And certainly Genesis 10 may be regarded as a document furnishing an ethnological arrangement of mankind under three heads.
(3) The particular allotment, or portion of each, after their families, &c., is distinctly specified. And although the different nations descended from any one of the sons of Noah have intermingled with each other, and undergone many revolutions—even as the various strata of the earth have been dislocated, and undergone convulsions—yet the three great divisions of the world remain intact and distinct, as separately peopled and possessed of the posterity of each of the sons of Noah, by the holy will and wisdom of Him whose purpose is fixed, and whose counsel shall stand, to make all things new.
“Is blessing built upon such dark foundation!
And can a temple rising from such woe,
Rising upon such mournful crypts below,
Be filled with light and joy and sounding adoration?”
Human Unity! Gen_10:1.
(1) Humboldt funishes an interesting suggestion as to the unity of the human race. In a letter to Dr. Ahrendt at Guatemala, he asks whether the idols Bhudda in India, Woden in Western Europe, and Votan in Central America—all of which gave name to the Wednesday of the week—are not the same, evidencing most distinctly a unity of origin.
(2) Forbes and Pickering have apparently established the fact that, in regard to the animal and vegetable families, these have not been created in particular centres, and that Nature has not reproduced any species in different quarters of the globe. It may, therefore, be reasonably inferred that different human races have not been created in different centres.
(3) The unity of the human race, as detailed in Genesis 10, may further be inferred from the scientific discovery that there is a marked similarity between the blood corpuscles of all races of men, and that, as Ragg remarks, while blood has been transfused from human veins without failure, a transfusion from different species to man has invariably proved fatal. And
“Now this truth is felt—believed and felt—
That men are really of one common stock;
That no man ever hath been more than man.”—Pollock.
Human Diversity! Gen_10:1.
(1) It has been argued that when God, who from the beginning determined the bounds of man’s habitation, parcelled out the earth among the sons of Noah, it is reasonable to conceive that He gave them an adaptation to the portions He allotted them, or endued them with an unusually plastic power, by which the race of Ham became indigenous in Africa, the race of Shem in Asia, and that of Japhet in Europe’s colder clime.
(2) One fact in support of this argument may be drawn from the adaptation of all animal and vegetable matter to their respective peculiar spheres and purposes. Geology has discovered to us that each new and successive creation formed a harmonious part of the great whole. Yet how diversified they each and all are—a diversity explicable to students of Nature by law of preadaptation.
(3) It has been remarked over and over again that there is no exception to this range of adaptation; so that we may fairly include the Shem, Ham, and Japhet diversities. And when we remember that there is no indication in any quarter of separate creations, we realise the grand Scripture assertion of human origin—as of all creation—
“Shade unperceived, so softening into shade,
And all so forming one harmonious whole.”—Ragg.
Human Origin! Gen_10:1. Shem, Ham, and Japhet were brethren, yet how different the races of the three originals. Is the Scripture record wrong? or has climate produced the remarkable diversity of hue, etc.? Most careful investigation has established the fact that the differences arise from differences in climate.
(1) Ragg says that it has been found that, in a very few generations, the fair European of Shemetic or Japetan race became dark within the tropics. Bishop Heber says that the descendants of Europeans in India have totally changed their colour, though they have not lived as exposed to the influences of the sun as uncivilised or barbarian races. Dr. Wiseman shows that the Portuguese who have been naturalised in the African colonies of their nation have become entirely black.
(2) This is observable in the Jews. In the plains of the Ganges the Jew puts on the jet black skin and crisped hair of the native Hindoo. In milder climates he wears the natural dusky hue and dark hair of the inhabitant of Syria. Under the cooler sky of Poland and Germany he assumes the light hair and fair, ruddy complexion of the Anglo-Saxon. Smythe says that on the Malabar coast of Hindostan are two colonies of Jews—the elder colony black, and the younger comparatively fair, in exact proportion to the length of their sojourn there.
“Amazing race! deprived of land and laws,
A general language, and a public cause;
With a religion none can now obey,
With a reproach that none can take away.”—Crabbe.
Heathen History! Gen_10:2-30.
(1) The history of almost all ancient peoples show, at their commencement, a number of mythological stories, as in Greece, Rome, and Britain, which are of great interest in regard to any inquiries into their origin and early history. There are traces of a large and singularly rich collection of these legends, both in Assyria and in Babylonia. A good example of such documents is the cuneiform account of the descent of the goddess Ishtar into Hades—she who conceived an ardent passion for Nimrod. The whole account is most curious, as showing the religious opinions of that age; and the story has some striking parallels in the poems and legendary stories of other and later countries.
(2) Contrast all these heathen histories with the unique Sacred History. Legends and portents there are none. The history of the origin of nations is unrivalled for its stern simplicity—its freedom from all wonderful details. Free and natural as the plan of a river, it begins at the source in Noah, and flows on in quiet, easy course, with an entire absence of all portents and prodigies, such as make heathen history ridiculous even to children.
“They, and they only, amongst all mankind,
Received the transcript of the Eternal Mind;
Were trusted with His own engraven laws,
And constituted guardians of His cause.”—Cowper.
Bible Annals! Gen_10:2-31.
(1) An eminent professor says that there are glories in the Bible on which the eye of man has not gazed sufficiently long to admire them. There are notes struck in places which, like some discoveries of science, have sounded before their time, and only after many days been caught up, and found a response on the earth. There are germs of truth which, after thousands of years, have never yet taken root in the world.
(2) Jukes remarks on the names here that in them we have the true theory of development, given by One who cannot lie, and given for our learning and instruction in righteousness. It would be full of deepest interest to trace the course of these different families through their successive generations. For in them (he thinks) is prefigured the parentage and birth of every sect and heresy which has sprung up, and troubled the bosom of the regenerate Church; and which
“As prowls a pack of lean and hungry wolves,
Driven by fierce winter from Siberian steppes,
Around a camp’s bright flashing fires, have fix’d
Their ravenous glances on the Bride of Christ.”
Life Architecture! Gen_10:2-14.
(1) Carlyle remarks that, instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character that builds an existence out of circumstance. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives in a hovel. The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
(2) The Hamertons were brothers; both were nearly of an age, and both were brought up in the same home. In due time both attended the same seminary, and both entered upon the theatre of life under parallel advantages and disadvantages. The elder was of ordinary mind, liked by the world for his frank, openhanded spirit, but entirely void of energy, fixedness of purpose and forethought. The younger resolutely set himself to establish a name and a fame, and he succeeded. The difficulties which seemed to the elder colossal and insurmountable became steps of a staircase up which the younger climbed.
(3) Nimrod, a man of immense ambition, and endured with a resolute mind firm as iron, soon began to tower above his fellows. In Carlyle’s sense, he became the architect of circumstance—building upon the foundation of pride a huge fabric of power, which held in awe his foes, and secured the admiration of his friends. Yet of him and others we may ask—
“Where are the heroes of the ages past?
Where the brave chieftains, where the mighty ones
Who flourished in the infancy of days?
All to the grave gone down.”—White.
Church and World! Gen_10:2-31. From the very first we seem to have two divisions of men. These the Judge is marking off, as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats. Before the Deluge, we had the distinct divisions of men in the persons of Cain and Seth—Lamech and Enoch. We may call these the Church and the World. The Church is that body which is chosen and separated by God
(1) to testify to things unseen, to the existence of God—His love—power—judgment; and
(2) to teach men that the world which is passeth away. The World is that spirit which loves nothing, and looks for nothing save that which is now. It cares not for God, neither has God in all its thoughts. It recognises only things which are visible, and esteems the invisible as empty shadow and dreamland. Under its deadly prince, it is ever against the Church,
“Weaving its snares, and plying arts to draw
From God’s allegiance all the sons of men,
And so to reign without a rival there—
The whole round earth its theme for ever.”
Gomer! Gen_10:2. Japhet’s eldest son seems to have gone to the shores around the Sea of Azof, especially the peninsula. His children were called Cimmerians, and the name of the Crimea is a relic. That place was thought then to be next door to the infernal regions. It was supposed that the people could not see much of the sun because of the clouds and mists of their savage country. Here Gomer’s children dwelt until the Scythians drove them west. They took possession of Denmark, and the northern coast of Germany and Belgium, until, in the time of the Romans, they were known as the Cimbri. They crossed over into Britain, but were driven to the north and west, i.e., Wales and Scotland. Here came the truth of Christ to them.
“And then, o’er all the trouble of their day,
A downy veil of tranquil stillness stole,
And with TRUTH’S arm beneath their head they feel
It is GOD’S heart on which they rest so safe.”—Williams.
Magog! Gen_10:2.
(1) The children of Magog were the wild hordes of men who inhabited Northern Asia; beginning at the east of the Caspian Sea, and spreading north and north-east into the cold and savage regions of those parts. They were the Scythians, a terrible and fierce people. They were said to be the inventors of the bow and arrow, and they were great at the use of them on horseback. Just prior to the time of Ezekiel, the Scythians—or children of Magog—were driven out by another tribe. Going southward, they spread terror everywhere.
(2) Ezekiel took them as a type of the foes of the church. In his awful predictions of Gog and Magog he foretells with what an overthrow the Lord would destroy them. In the latter days the Church should suffer terribly from their cruel, fierce incursions. Magog thus typifies the great adversaries of the Church at the dawn and dusk of the Millennial eventide. Two woeful invasions is that Church to know; but the authors of each of them are to experience a corresponding woeful overthrow, when nearer and nearer still
“The rush of flaming millions, and the tramp
Like as of fiery chivalry. But, hark!
A voice; it is the shout of God. Behold!
A light; it is the glory of the Lord.”—Bickersteth.
Madai! Gen_10:2. The father of the Medes—among the bitterest enemies of Assyria. They lived on the other side of the Zagros range, which separated them from the Assyrians. A hardy race of tribes, governed by sheikhs. They were united by Cyaxares the Great into one kingdom. He then conquered Assyria; so that the children of Madai became the third great Eastern empire. The northern part was, and still is, a fine fertile country, with a temperate climate. It grows all kinds of corn, wine, silk, and delicious fruits. Tabreez is a beautiful place—a forest of orchards. Farther south there is a lovely mountainous country, where everything grows—cotton, Indian corn, tobacco, wheat, wine, and every variety of fruit. These sweet glimpses of Nature’s beauty and fruitfulness send us
(1) back to the time when all the earth was fair, and
(2) forward to the time when the earth shall be again an Eden.
“And Nature haste her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring!
When vines a shadow to our race shall yield,
When the same hand that sowed shall reap the field,
When leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.”—Pope.
Hamites! Gen_10:6-14. The Cushites were in Ethiopia—the children of Mizraim in Egypt—the descendants of Phut also in Egypt and Ethiopia—and the offspring of Canaan in Syria. All these became great nations. They established themselves in great power. They had arts and accomplishments superior to other peoples at that day. Homes of civilisation grew up from a Hamite stock in many a place. They were merchants and builders, and people of great ability in forming and establishing empire. Wherever they were they left traces of themselves. Very massive pieces of architecture, which once must have belonged to a magnificent nation; a peculiar mixture of language; and a native religion in part, at least, of low creature-worship—all these are before us. On our Thames Embankment rises a monument of the race of Ham, in the shape of Cleopatra’s Needle; while towering amid nature’s desolation in Egypt are the pyramids—those silent records—
“Those deathless monuments which alone do show
What, and how great, the Mizraite empire was.”
Human Helplessness! Gen_10:8-14.
(1) Kingsley says, that men in the mass are the tools of circumstance. They are thistle-down on the breeze—straw on the river. Their course is shaped for them by the currents and eddies of the stream of life. This was not what man was meant to be; and in proportion as he approaches the Divine ideal does he cease to be the mere tool of circumstance. In proportion as he recovers his humanity—both physically and psychically—in proportion does he rise above circumstance, moulding and fashioning circumstance to suit his purpose.
(2) This explains the rise of such men from among the mass as Nimrod, Cæsar, and Napoleon, in the sphere of ambition and conquest. And the same key unlocks many a cabinet in the halls of science and art—learning and commerce. This power Divine grace lays hold upon—refines and sanctifies it, so that the Christian becomes a marked man among his fellows—eminent not for conquest over others so much as over himself, and distinguished by the loftiest of all ambitions to become conformed to the image of God. With such, ambition becomes a virtue: and at last around his brow shall shine
“In heaven from glory’s source the purest beam,
Whose aspect here, with beauty most divine,
Reflects the image of the Good Supreme.”—Mant.
Nimrod-Myths! Gen_10:9.
(1) By the Greek mythologists Orion was supposed to be a celebrated hunter, superior to the rest of mankind in strength and stature, whose mighty deeds entitled him after death to the honours of an apotheosis. The Orientals imagined him to be a huge giant who, Titan-like, had warred against God, and was therefore bound in chains to the firmament of heaven. Some authors have conjectured that this notion is the origin of the history of Nimrod, who, according to Jewish tradition, instigated the descendants of Noah to build the Tower of Babel.
(2) In the cuneiform tablets or Chaldean legends, deciphered by Smith, there are some curious details about him. These details are loaded with miraculous and impossible stories, from which it is impossible to separate the historical matter. He is reported to have been a Babylonian chief, celebrated for his prowess. He was also a mighty hunter and ruler of men, who delivered the city of Erech, when the chief of a neighbouring race came down with a force of men and ships against it. He afterwards ruled over it.
“Here Nimrod, his empire raised supreme,
And empire out of ruined empire built;
His greater than the last, and worse by far.”
Supremacy! Gen_10:9.
1. Nimrod exalts himself to lord it over brethren; for of those over whom he ruled all had sprung—and within a few generations—from one common father. Little is told us of the second form of apostasy; but that little is enough, and indeed, the steps by which lordship over brethren is reached are not many. Jukes asserts that his very name (Rebel) points out the character of those actings, by which the family and patriarchial government instituted by God was changed into a kingdom ruled by violence. There appears to be two steps here:
(1) Nimrod becomes a mighty one, then
(2) he becomes a mighty hunter of beasts and men.
2. It was so in Israel, when that people desired a king. Saul became a mighty one; then followed the natural sequence in the descent of evil, and he became a mighty hunter. Nimrod again appeared after the resurrection of Christ. Rome began to be mighty—like Nimrod and Saul to grow up tall and towering trunks above its fellow-churches. Then as the trunk spreads forth its branches over smaller surrounding trees, Rome became a mighty hunter. Spiritual dominion became a spirit of domination—hunting souls—imposing a grievous yoke upon them. See Revelation 13 : where the arch-adversary is represented as building for his harlot bride a mystical metropolis—
“The haunt of devils, Babylon the Great,
Whence in her pride and pomp she might allure
The nations, as the peerless queen of heaven,
Mother and mistress of all lands.—Bickersteth.
Erech! Gen_10:10.
(1) Wurka is a vast mound, now called “Assagah,” or the place of pebbles. It was probably a city consecrated to the moon, i.e., a kind of necropolis. Great numbers of tombs and coffins have been found here. The arrow-headed account of the Flood, recently discovered and translated by Smith, was a copy of an original inscription at this place. Thus the existence of this city thousands of years ago is established by the discovery of tiles or slabs in its neighbourhood at this date, recording the fact of the Flood in Genesis 9.
(2) As of Nineveh, so may we not Say of Erech, that it remained quiet in its sepulchre, till an age like the present, when the reality of its evidence to the truth of revelation could be properly attested. He who is nature’s Creator and Preserver has kept Erech and other ruins hermetically sealed to give evidence to the truth of His Word in an age when that evidence cannot be lost, and when that Word in its truth is called in question. So great is His power, wisdom, and goodness!
“Some are filled with fairy pictures,
Half imagined and half seen;
Radiant faces, fretted towers,
Sunset colours, starry flowers,
Wondrous arabesques between.”—Havergal.
Nimrod Memorials! Gen_10:10. Nimrod’s name still lives in the mouths of the Arabs. A traveller says, “I shall not soon forget when I first heard his name from one of them. We were going down the Tigris on a raft. Towards evening—one pleasant evening in spring—we came near an immense heap of ruins on the eastern bank of the river. It was all green then, as the Assyrian ruins are after the great rains. The mound and meadows around this ruin were all fresh and green, and full of flowers of every colour. The ruins looked very like a natural hill, but for the pieces of pottery, and brick, and alabaster half hid among the grass. The river was swollen from the rain, and rushed along rather furiously. A sort of dam—a large piece of mason work—stretched across it. Over this, and around, the waters whirled and eddied, and made a tolerably large cataract. We went over safely with a dash. My Arab boatman then went through his religious exclamations, which the danger had called up; after which he told me that the dam had been built by Nimrod, and that it was the remains of a causeway which he had to enable him to pass from his city to a palace on the opposite bank.”
“Ah! who that walks where men of ancient days
Have wrought, with godlike arm, the deeds of praise,
Feels not the spirit of the place control,
Or rouse and agitate his labouring soul?”—Wordsworth.
World-Powers! Gen_10:10.
(1) As the Apostle stands on the sands of Patmos—the waves of the Ægean sea rolling at his feet—he sees emerging from the bosom of the deep a hideous monster—somewhat akin to, yet differing from the great red dragon. This new fiendish incarnation, Macduff notes, has seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. These heads and horns are the well known symbols of world power—indicating a mighty hunter, a Nimrod.
(2) Presently, another beast rises from the earth—a giant deceiver, and exacting homage from them which dwell on the earth. The previous monster of the sea was the representative of brute force; this monster of the land is that of moral despotism. Its weapons are moral and spiritual. Its subject and crouching victims are the depraved intellect—the enslaved conscience—the fettered will of nations and men. Material and moral, physical and psychichal antitypes of Nimrod.
“Couching its fell designs in lamblike guise,
It sent through earth its legionary spirits,
And led the shepherds of the silly sheep
Blindfold, and blinding others, to adore
The beast, whose deadly wound was healed.”
Asshur! Gen_10:11-12, etc. Heeren in his “Handbook” of the History of States remarks that history proper—i.e., the history of States first dawns upon us in the Genesis 10. In Gen_10:11, etc., we are told that Asshur, having previously dwelt in Babylon, went out before the Cushites, and founded the great Assyrian cities. This leads us to infer that the Assyrians, having been originally inhabitants of the low country, emigrated northwards, leaving their previous seats to a people of a different origin. And thus we are drawn to conclude
(1) that Babylon was built before Nineveh;
(2) that Babylon did not, as Diodorus asserts, owe its origin to the conquest of the country by an Assyrian princess; but that
(3) the early Babylonians were an entirely distinct race from the Assyrians; and that
(4) a Babylonian kingdom flourished before there was any independent Assyria. It is interesting to notice, as Loftus points out, that the spread of Asshur’s race—after leaving Babylonia—is northwards stage by stage, Asshur, Calah, Nineveh. The Book of Nahum is assuredly prophetic of the destruction of Nineveh. According to him, Nineveh was not only to be destroyed by an overflowing flood, but the fire also was to devour it. Heathen history—ignorant of holy prophecy—declares such was the case. Lately, the buried arts of the Assyrian have been recovered from beneath the dust; as may be learned from Layard’s Nineveh. It discloses that God is the Lord of Hosts, and that all the vain glories of the proudest mortals perish at His word.
“Cities have been, and vanished, fanes have sunk,
Heaped into shapeless ruin, sands o’erspread
Fields that were Eden.”—Percival.
Divine Methods! Gen_10:21.
(1) In Cana, the governor of the feast addressing the bridegroom admits that it is man’s ordinary course to bring forth the best wine, and afterwards that which is of inferior quality. That admission is true, if we are to accept the records of universal history down to our own days. Man invariably puts the best fruit uppermost—brings the best robe forth at the beginning.
(2) God acts otherwise. It is His ordinary way to keep the best to the last. Hence in Genesis, chaps 4 and 5, we have first Cain’s line, then that of Seth. Again in Genesis, Genesis 25, we have the descendants of Ishmael, and then those of Isaac. Yet again in Genesis, chaps. 36 and 37, we have the detail first of Esau’s family, and afterwards that of Jacob’s. And so here, the Holy Spirit gives us first the families of Japhet and of Ham, then that of Shem. This is explained in Deuteronomy 32, 8, “The Lord’s portion is His people.”
“Holy, Father, we poor lambkins
Out of bitter woe do bleat;
Strong men drive us o’er the mountains,
Sharpest stones do pierce our feet.”—Sadie.
Study of Humanity! Gen_10:32.
(1) It has been noticed that the more extensive our acquaintance becomes with other countries, the more numerous do we find the features which they possess in common with our own. We find the representative forms of life and dead matter which they possess to be in common with each other. In foreign countries what strikes the traveller most at first sight is—not the strange, but—the familiar look of the general landscape. And when the naturalist begins to investigate he finds that the longer and deeper his researches, the more and more numerous and striking are the resemblances of those forms of life to those in his own country.
(2) This similarity is not confined to the different regions of our earth alone. Science is showing to us, more and more every day, that the substances of the stars are identical with those of our globe. Pritchard, in reference to spectrum analysis, says that it has not yet discovered in the remotest stellar ray a single new or unknown element. The meteors which fall are of the same constituents as our earth. ’Tis distance only that makes them stars.
(3) It is precisely the same with the study of man. The more the different human races are studied the more numerous and striking are the similarities of each and all, one to the other. So far from careful investigation and prolonged study contributing to widen the narrow spaces between the different races, they only reveal more connecting links than were supposed to exist between the offspring of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and show us
“How God wrought with the whole—wrought most with what
To man seemed weakest means, and brought result
Of good from good and evil both.”—Pollok.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 This is the summing up of the Scriptural account…
Gen 10:32
This is the summing up of the Scriptural account of the second spreading of the human race through the earth, after it had been laid bare by the Deluge, just as the fourth and fifth chapters of Genesis give the history of the first increase from Adam and his sons. But there is this remarkable difference between the two: the first is manifestly a history of families; this is a history of nations.
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I. Notice first the degree in which the original features of the founders of a race reproduce themselves in their descendants so as to become the distinct and manifest types of national life. The few words wherein, according to the wont of patriarchal times, Noah, as the firstborn priest of his own family, pronounces on his sons his blessing and his curse, sketch in outline the leading characteristics of all their after progeny.
II. We may observe also adumbrations of a mode of dealing with men which seems to imply that in His bestowal of spiritual gifts God deals with them after some similar law. We have seen this already in the descent of spiritual blessings along the line of the pious firstborn of Noah; and the same may be traced again: (1) in the blessing bestowed upon the race of Abraham; and (2) in the transference to the devouter Jacob and his seed of the blessing which was set at nought by the profane firstborn of Isaac.
S. Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 176.
References: Gen 10.—Expositor, 2nd series, vol. 1., p. 275, vol. vi., pp. 356, 357. Gen 10:1-5.—Parker, vol. i., p. 172. Gen 10:8-10.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xvi., p. 31. Gen 10:10, Gen 10:11.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vii., p. 317.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Nations descended from Noah
The Nations descended from Noah
This section gives the origins and situations of the nations of the world, as their relationships were conceived by the early Hebrews. Before passing to the history of the chosen race, the author traces the ties by which the rest of mankind are united with his own people, and shows the position of Israel among the nations. Each nation is regarded as a unity, and is summed up in the person of its supposed ancestor. The nations being treated as individuals, it follows that their mutual relations are put in terms borrowed from family life; Gomer is the 'son' of Japheth, and so on. But this relationship is not to be understood literally. The names are in many cases plainly national (the Jebusite, the Canaanite, etc.). Others are well-known names of countries (Mizraim or Egypt, Asshur, etc.), and nearly all appear elsewhere in OT. in a geographical sense (see especially Ezekiel 27 and Eze_38:1-13). We may therefore consider that the arrangement is determined chiefly by geographical considerations, nations in proximity to each other being regarded as related. Thus the races assigned to Japheth (Gen_10:2-5) are all in the N., those to Ham in the S. (Gen_10:6-20), whilst Shem's descendants (Gen_10:21-31) are in the centre. These come last because it is this line which is followed out in the sequel. The classification of the nations is a rough and approximate one, made in far distant days when the science of ethnology was unknown. The limitations of the Hebrew author's knowledge of the extent of the world are also apparent. The nations mentioned are mainly those which were grouped round the Mediterranean Sea, and are generally known as Caucasian, no reference being made to Negro, Mongolian or Indian races. But it may be truly said that the list upon the whole proves itself to be an excellent historico-geographical monument of an age from which we no longer have other comprehensive sources of information. While the groundwork of the section is from the Priestly document, this has been combined with extracts from the Primitive document (Gen_10:8-19, Gen_10:21, Gen_10:24-30), which do not perfectly harmonise with it. Thus Sheba (Gen_10:28) and Havilah (Gen_10:29) are descendants of Shem, while in Gen_10:7 they are Cushites, descended from Ham. The identification of the following names is uncertain: Abimael, Almodad, Anamim, Casluhim, Diklah, Gether, Hadoram, Hui, Jerah, Lud, Ludim, Mash, Obal, Resen, Sabtechah, Salah. The notes on the names follow the groupings of the text.
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2-5. The sons of Japheth. These are nations mostly N. or W. of Palestine.
Gomer] the Cimmerians, near the Crimea. Ashkenaz] perhaps, Phrygia. Riphath] perhaps Paphlagonia on S. borders of the Black Sea. Togarmah] Armenia. Magog] supposed to be Scythians, cp. Eze_38:2, where they are associated with Gomer. Madai] the Medes. Javan] Ionian Greece. Elishah] some coast or island in the Greek seas (Eze_27:7): Crete, Cyprus, and Greece (Hellas) have been suggested. Tarshish] Though often mentioned in OT., the identity is quite uncertain. Suggestions are either Tarsus in Cilicia, Tartessus in S. Spain, or the Etruscans of Italy. Kittim] Citium, the modern Larnaca in Cyprus. Dodanim] (in 1Ch_1:7; Rodanim) Rhodes. Tubal] the Tibareni; Meshech] the Moschi, both SE. of the Black Sea. Tiras] uncertain. Perhaps the Turusha, a seafaring people mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions, or the Tyrseni, a people dwelling on the shores of the Ægean Sea.
5. It is likely that this v. in its complete form ran: 'Of these were the coasts and islands of the peoples divided. These are the sons of Japheth, in their lands, each according to his language, after their families, in their peoples.' Cp. Gen_10:20, Gen_10:31.
6, 7, 13-19 The sons of Ham.
6. Ham] a name for Egypt. The 'sons of Ham' means the nations connected with Egypt geographically or politically. They were all S. of Palestine. Cush] Ethiopia or Nubia, S. of Egypt. Phut] probably the 'Punt' of Egyptian inscriptions, on the E. African coast.
7. Seba.. Havilah.. Sabtah.. Raamah.. Sheba.. Dedan..] all countries bordering on the African or Arabian coasts of the Red Sea.
8-12. This paragraph interrupts the connexion. Before and after it are simple genealogies. The Cush of Gen_10:8 is thought to be distinct from the African Cush of Gen_10:7, and to stand for the Kashshu or Cossæi, who were the dominating power in Babylonia between the 16th and 13th centuries b.c.
8. Begat] was the progenitor of.
Nimrod] the one personal figure of the chapter. Here his name is proverbial as that of a mighty hunter (Gen_10:9). He founds both Babylonian and Assyrian civilisation (Gen_10:10-12). There is no trace of Nimrod as an historical character on the monuments, and it has been suggested that the name (as if from marad, 'to rebel') was a deliberate mutilation and corruption of that of Merodach, the god of Babylon, made by one who wished to deny his divine character. If this was the case, the heathen deity who caught Tiamat in his net has been transformed in the Bible story into a mere human huntsman, a creature of the true God (cp. before Jehovah, Gen_10:9), and the ancient cities that boasted of their divine origin are traced to a human founder.
10. Babel] Babylon. Erech] Warka, on the left bank of the Euphrates. Accad] the ancient name of N. Babylonia; also a city, the capital of Sargon I, the earliest historical ruler of all Babylonia. Calneh] probably the same as Nippur, the modern Niffier, recently excavated by the Pennsylvanian expedition. Shinar] an ancient name for S. Babylonia.
11. Out of that land went forth Asshur] RV 'out of that land he (Nimrod) went forth into Assyria.' This v. correctly indicates that Assyria owed its civilisation to Babylonia: it was also politically dependent until the 10th cent. b.c. Nineveh] the modern Kouyunjik on the Tigris, the ancient capital of Assyria. Its ruins have been excavated in recent years, and numbers of tablets, inscriptions, and carvings collected from its palaces. The city Rehoboth] RV 'Rehoboth-ir' ('broad spaces of the city'): probably a suburb of Nineveh. Calah] the modern Nimrûd, 20 m. S. from Kouyunjik. Resen] not known.
The same is the (RV) great city] i.e. Nineveh and the other three together formed the 'great city.'
13, 14. The descendants of Mizraim.
Mizraim] the Hebrew name for Egypt. The plural form is supposed to indicate Upper and Lower Egypt. Lehabim] Libya, W. of Egypt. Naphtuhim] perhaps N. of Lower Egypt. Pathrusim] S. or Upper Egypt. The clause 'Whence went forth the Philistines' (RV) should be placed after Caphtorim, or people of Crete, with whom the Philistines are elsewhere said to be connected (Jer_47:4; Amo_9:7). They settled on the SW. coast of Canaan, and gave the name Palestine to the country.
15-19. Canaan] Phœnicia and Palestine. The Canaanites were a Semitic race, speaking a language near akin to Hebrew. They are here assigned to Ham, perhaps contemptuously, or possibly because Palestine was a province of Egypt previous to the exodus. Sidon] the Phœnician seaport. Heth] The Hittites are now well known from Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions to have been a powerful nation to the N. of Palestine, with Carchemish on the Euphrates and Kadesh on the Orontes as their chief cities. An offshoot of the nation is found at Hebron: cp. Gen_23:3; Gen_25:10. The Jebusite] the tribe in and around Jerusalem: cp. Jos_15:8, Jos_15:63; 2Sa_5:6-9. The Amorite] one of the most powerful Palestinian tribes. In Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions they are called the Amurru, and “Amorite” seems to have been a general term for the old inhabitants of Canaan: see on 2Sa_12:5. According to Num_13:29 they dwelt chiefly in the mountainous districts. Sihon and Og were Amorite kings. The Girgashite] perhaps connected with Gergesa, near the Sea of Galilee. The Hivite] a petty tribe of Central Palestine. The Arkite] the tribe connected with the Phœnician city of Arka, 12 m. N. of Tripolis. The Sinite] probably connected with a city called Sin, near Lebanon. The Arvadite] Arvad was a city built on an island off the Phœnician coast (now Ruwad). The Zemarite] Sinsyra, S. of Arvad. The Hamathite] Hamath was a city on the Orontes. The 'entering in of Hamath 'was the northern limit of Palestine. Most of these tribes were afterwards driven out by the conquering Israelites.
19. The border of the Canaanite] from Zidon in the north, to Gaza, a Philistine city in the direction of Gerar. The other cities mentioned in Num_13:19 were probably, but not certainly, at the S. end of the Dead Sea.
21-31. The sons of Shem. The nations connected racially or geographically with the Hebrews.
Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber] Attention is thus called to Shem as the ancestor of the Hebrews ('children of Eber'). The Amarna tablets speak of a tribe called the Habiri invading Canaan in the days of Joshua, and many scholars identify them with the Hebrews. The brother of Japheth the elder] RV 'the elder brother of Japheth.' This is mentioned to show that though Shem is put last, he was not the youngest.
22. Elam] NE. of Babylonia. Its capital was Susa. Asshur] Assyria. Arphaxad] RV 'Arpachshad': uncertain. Some connect it with the Kasdim or Chaldeans who lived on the Persian Gulf and became rulers of Babylonia. Lud], uncertain, possibly Lydia in Asia Minor. Aram] Syria, NE. of Palestine. Damascus was a Syrian kingdom. The Jews in later times spoke Aramaic.
23. Uz] probably near Edom, see Job_1:1.
25. Peleg] 'divided.' In his days was the earth divided] alluding perhaps to the dispersion of man described in Genesis 11.
26-30. The sons of Joktan represent various Arabian tribes.
Hazarmaveth] Hadramaut in S. Arabia. Uzal] the capital of Yemen. Sheba and Havilah] See prefatory remark and on Gen_10:7. Ophir] a famous region, the locality of which is still in dispute. Some place it in E. Africa in Mashonaland, where remarkable remains of ancient mining works have been found, some in India, and some in S. Arabia. Mesha] NE. Arabia. Sephar] SW. Arabia. Unto Sephar, etc.] RM 'toward Sephar, the hill country of the East.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv2, 5, 11, 12 1 Gomer 2 Magog 3 Madai 4 Javan 5…
1 Gomer 2 Magog 3 Madai 4 Javan 5 Tubal 6 Meshech 7 Tiras
1 Progenitor of the ancient Cimerians and Cimbri, from whom are descended the Celtic family.
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2 From Magog are descended the ancient Scythians, or Tartars, whose descendants predominate in the modern Russia. Eze 38:2; Eze 39:6; Rev 20:8.
3 Progenitor of the ancient Medes.
4 Progenitor of those who peopled Greece, Syria, etc.
5 Tubal’s descendants peopled the region south of the black Sea, from whence they spread north and south. It is probable that Tobolsk perpetuates the tribal name. A branch of this race peopled Spain.
6 Progenitor of a race mentioned in connection with Tubal, Magog, and other northern nations. Broadly speaking, Russia, excluding the conquests of Peter the Great and his successors, is the modern land of Magog, Tubal, and Meshech.
7 Progenitor of the Thracians.
From these seven sons of Japheth are descended the goyim, or Gentile, nations, trans. "heathen" 148 times in the A.V. The name implies nothing concerning religion, meaning simply, non-Israelite, or "foreigner."
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTER 10 Shem, Ham, and Japheth and Their Seed
V. THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH
CHAPTER 10 Shem, Ham, and Japheth and Their Seed
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1. The sons of Japheth (Gen 10:2-5)
2. The sons of Ham (Gen 10:6-20)
3. The sons of Shem (Gen 10:21-32)
Here we have the beginning of the nations. God knows them and keeps track of the nations of the earth. The order of the sons of Noah is here changed. Japheth comes first. Ham’s place is unchanged. Shem comes last. This order is given in view of Noah’s prophecy. Among the descendants of Ham we find Nimrod, a mighty hunter. His name means “Let us rebel.” Here also we find Babel mentioned for the first time. Babylon has for its founder “a mighty one in the earth-a mighty hunter.” Mentioned here for the first time Babylon is seen springing from the race which is under a curse, and having for its founder a mighty one in the earth, a second Cain. We have here the birth of Babylon, while the entire Bible, from now on to the eighteenth chapter of the “book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ,” gives us its development, its Satanic opposition to all that is from above, and its final great fall and destruction. Babylon! what a sinister word! Both city and system, such as is seen in its finality in Rev. 17 and 18, are Satan’s stronghold.
It would be interesting to follow all these names and trace them in the Scriptures and in history. But this we cannot do.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 15, 21 The Sons of Japheth
The Sons of Japheth
v. 1. Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and unto them were sons born after the Flood.
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v. 2. The sons of Japheth, who in this chronological table is named first, as the oldest, while in the other table Shem is mentioned first, as the progenitor of the children of Israel: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Yeshech, and Tiras. The descendants of these men have been identified respectively, and with some show of probability, as the Cimmerians of Asia Minor, with whom the Cymry of Wales and Brittany and the Cimbri of ancient Germany are related, as the Scythians of Southern Russia, as the Medes south of the Caspian Sea, as the Graeco-Italian family of nations, and as the Iberians, Georgians, and Armenians of Asia Minor.
v. 3. And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah, whose descendants were probably the Askanians in Northern Phrygia, the Celts, or Gauls, and the major part of the Armenian nation.
v. 4. And the sons of Javan: Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim, from whom the Aeolians of Greece (Thessaly), the ancient Spanish nations, the Cyprians and the Carians, and the Dardanians, or Trojans, are possibly descended.
v. 5. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. From the Japhetites there have descended and then have separated themselves the nations along the Mediterranean Sea, each one according to its own language, according to its generations in its nations.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 15, 19, 21, 24, 26, 30 These were the descendants of the sons of Noah
These were the descendants of the sons of Noah
"This is the account of Noah's sons." This sentence introduces the account of Noah's descendants in Genesis 10:1-11:9.
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translationWords
descend
Noah
Shem
Ham
Japheth
flood
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30 10:1–11:9 The fifth account (10:1) in Genesis (see study…
10:1–11:9 The fifth account (10:1) in Genesis (see study note on 2:4) unites the Table of Nations (10:2-32) and the Babel story (11:1-9) around the theme of scattering the nations (10:5, 18; 11:4, 8-9). The Table of Nations precedes the Babel story even though the Babel incident caused the geopolitical situation reflected in the Table of Nations. By reversing the order, Genesis links the repopulation of the earth with the blessing conferred upon Noah and his sons (see 9:1 and study note) and shows that Abram’s call (12:1-3) was God’s solution to the problem of human estrangement from God as reflected in the Babel story (11:1-9).
10:1 Many children were born . . . after the great flood: This fulfilled the renewed creation mandate (9:1, 9; cp. 1:28).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.