Jan 10. 2012 - Genesis 10

This is the account of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s sons…

Transition time. Buckle up for some genealogy truth about to hit you in the face.

Ok, ok, it’s a lot of names and stuff. Surely it can’t be that important, and there’s no way you could ever actually understand it, or really care, right? Well for starters, the most obvious thing that I come across when looking at this section is the apparent randomness with which people are listed. It seems to me that certain people get their sons listed, while others just get ignored. So why are only some lines done? What about Magog, Tubal, Put, Elam, etc.? Did they not have any sons? Is this actually a complete list? I don’t know, but that just doesn’t seem right to me. So what’s going on?

v.5: …peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language

v.20: These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages

v.31: These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages

So, we can see that apparently this list is sorted at least somewhat by separate clans and languages. However(spoiler alert!), in 11:1 we see that: “Now the whole world had one language…” Thus, we can tell that the incident at Babel actually occurs somewhere within this genealogy, and at that point, people are pretty much separated all throughout the world.

Scott’s speculation: So, if people are moving away, before or after Babel, it’s possible that some of them didn’t keep records as studiously, or they were lost, or never consolidated with the others. Thus, this list could simply be all the records that actually still exist in this master copy of these few generations.

Anyways, we can see Shem’s line developing, which will be important to trace though plenty of important people all the way down to Jesus. Although, with everything else included, it doesn’t appear that any special attention is given to this particular line, but rather that this is simply a complete-as-possible record of the nations developing after the flood. This is particularly apparent in that the list isn’t just of sons, but refers to the people groups that will come of them. For example: Maizraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, etc.

Also, there’s this guy Nimrod. “He was a mighty hunter before the LORD.” Apparently he’s important enough to get his own little section. Also, instead of just sons, he has a list of kingdoms and cities that he founded and/or built. Anyways, the first kingdom mentioned is Babylon, or Babel, if your translation lists it that way. And of course, something is about to go down in said city. It’s not clear if Nimrod was in charge of a certain tower getting built or not, but it’s definitely a possibility. I mean, he was a mighty hunter, right? Sounds like somebody that could definitely attract some followers.