Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
The table of the nations
Genesis 10:1-32
1 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. · WEB
Seventy names map the known world onto one family tree, and the point of the list is that there is only one.
A chapter of names is easy to skip and this one is doing something no other ancient document attempts. It takes the peoples of the known world — from the Aegean to the Persian Gulf, from Asia Minor to the Nile — and sets them out as one family, descended from three brothers who came off a ship.
The arrangement is geographical and moves in an arc. Japheth's line runs north and west into Asia Minor and the coastlands; Ham's runs south and west into Egypt, Africa, and the Canaanite seaboard; Shem's runs east into Mesopotamia and Arabia. The list is not a ranking, and the order is reversed at once when the narrative resumes, since it is Shem's line that chapter eleven follows.
The recurring formula is the interesting part: everyone after his language, after their families, in their nations. It appears at the close of each section, and it presupposes the scattering that the next chapter narrates. The table is arranged by subject rather than by chronology, and it is placed first because it shows the outcome — a world of nations and languages — before the account explains how that came about.
One figure gets a paragraph instead of a line. Nimrod began to be a mighty one on the earth and was a mighty hunter before Yahweh, and his kingdom began at Babel, in the land of Shinar, before extending into Assyria and building Nineveh . He is the first person in Scripture described as building an empire, and the two cities associated with him — Babel and Nineveh — become the two great oppressors of Israel in the prophets. A reader coming to Genesis from the rest of the Old Testament finds both capitals named on the first page of world history, in the family of the son who was not blessed.
Canaan's borders are traced with unusual care, from Sidon down the coast and inland toward the cities of the plain. That precision is for readers who are going to that country.
And there is one line that seems to belong to a different kind of book: Eber's son was named Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. The verb is the ordinary one for splitting, and the note is dropped in and left. Given the chapter's own vocabulary about languages, families and nations, the plainest reading is the division the next chapter describes.
What the table establishes is stated in its final line: The nations divided from these on the earth after the flood. Every nation in it has one origin. Whatever else follows in Scripture about a chosen people, it comes after a chapter in which the whole human race is one family, and the New Testament argues from precisely this — that God made from one blood every nation of men Acts 17:26.
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