Genesis 10:2

2. Gomer The word occurs elsewhere in the Scriptures only in Ezekiel 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.

Magog The name probably means “the place,” (or region,) of Gog, and appears in Ezekiel 38:2; Ezekiel 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 2 Kings 17:6; Esther 1:3; Esther 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 Zechariah 9:13; Daniel 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, (Ezekiel 27:13; Ezekiel 32:26; Ezekiel 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 . Ezekiel 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.)