Genesis 10

Generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, 10-11:9.

Under this head our author records, first, the genealogy of nations which sprang from Noah as a second root of the human race, (Genesis 10:1-32,) and next, the confusion of their languages, (Genesis 11:1-9. )

GENEALOGY OF NATIONS, 1-32.

This chapter furnishes the most ancient and most valuable ethnological document in the world. Knobel says, “Progressive investigation will ever more and more confirm the credibility of this, our oldest description of the races of men. It is a priceless fragment of ancient history.” It is the great purpose of the inspired author to trace the history of redemption, which he knew, from the promise given to Abraham, would embrace all nations. While, therefore, his chief attention is given to the chosen family, as the channel of this salvation, he here points out their relationship to all the known nations of the earth, representing humanity as a trunk dividing into three great branches, and sprouting into the manifold peoples existing at the time. The great truth proclaimed by Paul to the haughty Athenians, that God hath made of one blood all nations of men, and that all men are essentially equal before him a truth very unpalatable to the most advanced heathen nations, and unimagined by the most profound heathen thinkers, like Plato and Aristotle, yet a truth which lies at the roots of all true education, civilization, and religion this truth was firmly grasped as fundamental by the writer of this chapter. See here the marvellous guidance of inspiration! No Hebrew prejudice, deep as we know it to have been, was allowed to tinge this ancient page. The children of Eber are but a twig on the mighty tree.

This description of the nations bears the clear marks of an antiquity far higher than Moses. Probably he received it from a writer of the time of Abraham. Tyre, which was a “strong city” at the time of the conquest of Canaan, was not yet founded, or it would certainly have been mentioned with Sidon. Sodom and Gomorrah were yet standing, (Genesis 10:19,) but they were destroyed in the time of Abraham. The whole style of the document indicates that at the time of its original composition the Hebrew people had as yet no distinct existence. (Furst.) The original authorship of this venerable chapter was not only pre-Mosaic, but pre-Hebraic; but, under inspired guidance, it is interwoven by Moses into his work to map out the dispersion of the nations, as described in the next chapter. Probably the original author obtained his knowledge of these nations from the Phenicians, who, even in the age of Abraham, had extended their commerce down the Red Sea, and along the coasts and through the islands of the Mediterranean, probably to the Atlantic.

Japheth, Shem, and Ham correspond, in a general way, to Europe, Asia, and Africa, respectively; to the white, brown, and black races of men, which are here all traced to a common ancestor, that they may hereafter be shown to be subjects of the same salvation. But it is only in a rough and general way that this distinction can be maintained, especially as the Hamitic Babylonians are found in Asia, and the Sidonians in Asia and Europe. The Japhetic family stretched from Armenia, east and south-east, into Media and Persia, west and north-west around the Black Sea, and along the northern shores of the Mediterranean; the Hamitic family skirted the south-eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and extended southward over the African peninsula; while the Shemitic occupied the intermediate territory the irregular parallelogram stretching south-east through Arabia, having the Tigris Valley and the Persian Gulf on the east, and the Red and Mediterranean Seas on the west.

In this very ancient record the words “father” and “son” are used not in a genealogical, but in an ethnic, sense, as (Genesis 10:4) Chittim and Dodanim, plural national names, as shown by the ending im, are called “sons;” that is, nations sprung from Javan, who (see note) represents a national Japhetic family. So Mizraim (a plural national name) is said to have begotten the Ludim, the Anamim, etc., (Genesis 10:13-14;) and in Genesis 10:16-17, etc., the Jebusite, Amorite, etc., are represented as begotten by Canaan. The greater part of the names were regarded by the writer as national and geographical, not as individual.

SONS OF JAPHETH, 2-5.