Genesis 10 - Introduction

X.
THE ETHNOLOGICAL TABLE (Genesis 10:1 to Genesis 11:9).

These are the generations (the tôldôth) of the sons of Noah. — The importance of this “table of the nations” can scarcely be over-estimated; and while numerous exceptions were taken only a few years ago to many of its details, the vast increase of human knowledge in recent times has proved not merely its general credibility, but the truth of such startling facts as the possession by the race of Ham not only of the Arabian peninsula, but of the country on the Tigris and Euphrates. Its position is very remarkable. It stands at the end of grand traditional records of the mighty past, but belongs to a period long subsequent, giving us a picture of the division of the world at a time when nations and kingdoms had become settled, and their boundaries fixed; and it couples this with the confusion of tongues, difference of language being the great factor in this breaking up of the human race. Now, it is important to remember that it is not a genealogical table. It concerns peoples, and not individuals, and no names are mentioned which were not represented by political organisations. Generally even the names are not those of men, but of tribes or nations. We must also bear in mind that it works backwards, and not forwards. Taking the nations at some particular time, it groups them together, and classifies them according to the line to which they belonged.

As regards the order, it begins with Japheth, the youngest son — for never was there a translation more opposed to the undeviating rule of such sentences than that of our version in Genesis 10:21. “Shem... the brother of Japheth the elder,” instead of “Shem, the elder brother of Japheth.” But Japheth is here placed first because so little was known of the nations sprung from him. It gives, moreover, the mere first division into main lines, and then, in spite of the grand future that awaited his descendants, it dismisses them in brief haste to their homes on the Black and Mediterranean seas. It next takes Ham. Now, Ham was to the family of Noah what Cain was to that of Adam: first in all worldly accomplishments, last in all the gifts of piety. Settling upon the Nile, the Tigris, and Euphrates, his progeny raised up mighty cities, while the Japhethites were wandering in barbarous hordes over Europe, and the Shemites were pasturing their cattle upon the chalk-downs of Syria; whence, nevertheless, they soon came to do battle with the Hamites for the possession of Mesopotamia. Of the Hamites, it brings the history down to the time of their settlement in Canaan, but as it mentions Sodom and Gomorrah as still standing, the document must be prior to the time of the destruction of those cities, eighteen centuries and more before I Christ; while, as it describes the Canaanites as even then in possession of Palestine, and as formed into tribes in much the same way as just before the time of Moses, it is evident that a much longer period must have elapsed between the flood and the birth of Abraham than is supposed in the ordinary chronology put in the margin of our Bibles. As the line of Shem was to be traced in subsequent tôldôth, it is not carried down so far as that of Ham, but stops at a great dividing line, at which the family breaks up into the race of Joktan and that of Peleg. To the former it ascribes thirteen nations, while the race of Peleg is left for future histories. The names of the Joktanite tribes also indicate the lapse of a lengthened period of time, as they abound in Arabic peculiarities.