PvBibleAlive.com Parkview Baptist Church 3430 South Meridian Wichita, Kansas 67217
Genesis 10-11
Hey Everyone, welcome to PvBibleAlive. I’m Bruce Hays, the pastor of Parkview Baptist Church, and this is our continuing study in the Bible book of Genesis. We have left the story of Noah, and we are now in two transitional chapters. Chapters 10 and 11 link the story of Noah and the flood, and the story of the father of Israel; Abraham.
But chapters 10 and 11 do something else for us as well. They chronicle for us the origins of racism. It is in chapters 10 and 11 of Genesis that we see the beginning of races of people, the tower of Babel that divided people by language, and the separation of the races. So why did that separation happen? Some might blame God because He caused the division of languages.
But the truth is that humanity is racist because humanity is sinful. Mankind has a natural bent toward sin. And if you remember our study in the previous chapters, you know that part of the effect of sins curse was the desire for dominance that replaced a loving cooperation in the partnership of Adam and Eve.
In other words, instead of working together, their relationship became a competition for who’s going to be the boss. And they passed that sin attribute down to their offspring. Humankind has always been in competition, has always sought to dominate.
Men and women, adults and children, one race over another; throughout history it’s always been me against you, us against them.
And race, language, and geographic location are simply a convenient means of labeling who “them” is.
So this chapter describes for us that beginning.
And I want to begin today by simply reading the first 5 verses of chapter 10.
10 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
2 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
3 And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.
4 And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.
5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
Now, after reading that, an immediate question comes to my mind. It is a question that I’ve heard, and been asked through my 56 years in the Church. It is, “Why is this here?” Chapter 10 and 11 are comprised almost entirely of genealogies. Somebody begat somebody else, and they begat someone else. We’ve already gotten a taste for this in chapter 5 with the genealogy of Adam. And genealogies are going to pop up intermittently throughout the Old Testament.
I still hear this question about “why this is here,” most often because many Christians, including my wife and I, make it a goal to read through the Bible every year. And inevitably you get to these lists of names, and get bogged down, or decide to skip them entirely. They don’t seem to impart any spiritual enrichment to the reader. So, why is it here? Well, let me give you a few reasons.
1. The genealogies place these events in a real history.
When you read these genealogies, whether you believe the Bible or not, you get the sense that somebody was recording the names of real people and their ancestors.
You see, some people want to deny that these things in the Bible ever really happened. The don’t believe God, nor His creating the first man and woman. They don’t believe there was a flood over the entire earth. But these genealogies, containing names which can be found in the histories of other cultures, forces them to lend some credibility to the story.
2. The genealogies connect one event to another.
As I said earlier, these genealogies take us from Adam to Noah, and then from Noah to Abraham. And thus demonstrate how God continued to preserve a remnant of His people, even in a corrupt world. And having a genealogy, especially with ages listed, gives us a sense of the time that transpired between each event.
3. The genealogies introduce people who will be key parts of the stories that follow.
If you take the time to read these genealogies, and maybe just read someone’s Bible study notes about them, you can learn a great deal about the people who lived in that time, an about people who will come after. They are the genealogies of all mankind. This is the history of mankind. Where we came from.
And the most important reason for the genealogies, is,
4. The genealogies connect the dots leading to Jesus Christ.
The main message of the Bible, is God’s provision of a Savior in His Son. The Old Testament is full of prophecies and promises of the Savior. The New Testament is full of the fulfillment of those promises. And let me say something here. God’s promises have always been very down-to-earth, for lack of a better term. God promised the world a Savior who would literally be nailed to a cross. It wasn’t some allegorical concept about His death. It was a promise of real nails, real blood, real torment.
And the same is true of other prophecies. Jesus would be a real human man, not some angelic being who floats down from the sky. He is called the Second Adam. In other words, He will undo the curse of the first Adam. He would be born of a woman, just like other men are. So, if He is to be the Second Adam, a man, He has to be a descendant of the first Adam. The gospel of Luke, chapter 3, has a genealogical record that traces Jesus’ lineage back to Adam, Thus connecting the dots between the first and Second Adams.
Prophecy tells us that the promised Savior would not only be a man, but would be born out of the nation of Israel. He would be a Jew. So, the genealogies of Luke 3, and Matthew 1, trace Jesus’ heritage to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers of the Jewish nation.
Prophecy tells us, that this Promised Savior would be in the lineage of Judah and King David. He will be “the King of the Jews” so He has to have royal credentials. And Matthew and Luke’s genealogies trace Jesus lineage to David and Judah.
Now, here’s the point. If we didn’t have these genealogies in the Old Testament, we couldn’t trace Jesus’ lineage back to David, then Judah, then Abraham, then Adam. So, we couldn’t demonstrate that the prophecies of the Old Testament were fulfilled. And more importantly, the Jewish people, who lived when Jesus lived, would not have been able to trace Jesus heritage, and see that Jesus met all the prophesied qualifications for being their promised King and Savior of the world.
So, though these genealogies seem tedious to read, they serve an invaluable purpose.
So let’s just look at them a little bit.
10 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
Now right off the bat, let me remind you of three things. First, the only remaining people left on the earth, after the flood are Noah, and his 3 sons, and their wives. So all of humanity descends from these 8 people; really from 6 people, Shem, Ham and Japheth, because Noah and his wife have no more children after the flood.
And the second thing that I need to remind you, is that all races come from these 6 people. You might wonder how that could happen. Let’s get really basic here. If Noah was Caucasian, wouldn’t all three of his children be Caucasian? So how did all the races descend from Noah and his sons.
Well first, who says Noah was Caucasian? He may have been a mixed race. He is descended from Adam, from whom came all the races, so who knows what race he is, and therefore what race his sons are. And second, we don’t know what races the wives of these four men came from. The Bible doesn’t indicate that people began to divide by race until after the flood.
So everyone before the flood was likely of mixed race.
And the third thing. Remember that Noah blessed Shem and Japheth, and cursed Ham. Now, we’re going to revisit that in a moment, because people have used that as a justification for racism, and slavery. But back to verse 2.
2 The sons of Japheth (the youngest by most accounts); Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
3 And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.
4 And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.
5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
Now, what can we learn from those names, other than critiquing my ability to pronounce them? I’ve read commentaries on this passage, and the ones that follow that take every name here and tell you the subsequent history and people who descended from each. And it is very interesting. But I’m not going to do that. There are two reasons why I’m not going to do that. First reason, if you want to research that, the information is out there, and I don’t have the time to adequately research it myself here. And the second reason, If I did break down the origin the ancestry of each of these names, I would have to rely heavily on someone else’s research. And frankly, because some, in the past have used these passages to justify racism, I don’t know who to trust. So I’m going to give you an overview, and leave the deeper research to you.
So, generally speaking, those descended from Japheth are said to be of European heritage. Since the ark landed in eastern Turkey, all the descendants of Noah’s sons would have migrated from there. To get more specific; Japheth had 7 sons; Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. Some of those sons are said to have eventually migrated to what we know as Europe, others to Russia, others to Medo-Persia which today is India.
Now how did anyone come up with that? Well, I’m not an expert in this area, but those conclusions are drawn from a couple of things. First, a linguistic scholar can look at these names, and draw some conclusions from them. And second, they can trace the history of that name, or similar ones through Biblical and world history. Some of these names are associated with city-states that are mentioned later in Scripture.
Let me give you an example. Meshech, who is listed second from the last, as one of Japheth’s sons, is referenced some 2000 years later in Ezekiel 38:2.
Ezekiel 38:2 King James Version (KJV)
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
Where was the land of Meshech? Well according to Wikipedia, and we know that they are always right, Meshech and Tubal were 7th century kingdoms in Asia Minor. So there is a linguistic connection between the names of two of Noah’s grandsons and two kingdoms later mentioned in Ezekial. We can also find a relationship between Indian and western European languages.
That’s how you establish what these people became, and where they ended up living in the world. So we could do some work with linguistics and history, and possibly discover where some of Noah’s ancestors migrated.
These people spread across Europe, and became a great people. They became what Noah spoke of them in chapter 9.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
So what about the descendants of Ham.
6 And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.
Now remember that Noah cursed Canaan, the son of Ham, who did something in Genesis 9 to shame his father. Now this is the curse of Ham;
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
So here is where some have used the Bible to justify the slavery of an entire race of people. If you look at who the descendants of Ham are, you find them settling primarily in Africa. Cush, another son of Ham, is also the name used for the nation of Ethiopia in Africa. And so is born the notion that Africans are the descendants of Ham, and therefore cursed with being the lowest of servants to the rest of mankind.
But there are at least a couple of problems with that interpretation. First, remember that Noah only cursed one of Ham’s son with being a “servant of servants.” He cursed Canaan. So even if all of these sons of Ham migrated to Africa, and were the ancestors of modern day Africans, the curse wasn’t on them, it was on Ham’s youngest son Canaan.
The second problem with connecting this “curse of slavery” to modern Africans, or darker skinned people is in the identification of the descendants of Canaan, the one who was actually cursed by Noah.
Now who are the descendants of Canaan? They are listed in this genealogy.
15 And Canaan begat Sidon his first born, and Heth,
16 And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite,
17 And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite,
18 And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad.
19 And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.
Who are these people? Because, if you are going to say that any people inherited the curse against Canaan, it would be these people. They are the descendants of Canaan who Noah directly cursed. Well these people generally lived in and around what became the nation of Israel. As verse 19 just said,
19 And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.
They are the people that Israel conquers when they come back from the 400 years of Egyptian slavery. They are not Africans.
The third problem is in carrying that curse forward in time 4000 years. Even if you could determine that the line of Canaan would carry this curse forever, by the time we get to modern history, these tribes of people, the descendants of Canaan, the Jebusite, Amorite, Girgasite, Hivite, Arkite, Sinite, Arvadite, Zemarite, Hamathite, can’t even be identified. They have disappeared from history. What happened?
Well if you read the Biblical record, many of them were killed under the conquest of Israel. Others became a part of Israel, and still others fled to other regions. So, as a people, they were decimated. Descendants may still exist, but they have disappeared as a distinctive race. So, obviously, you can’t connect this vanished group of people to the Africans who were taken into slavery.
Now I hope that is settled.
Now there is another interesting portion of Ham’s genealogy that we need to make note of. Verse 7 and following
7 And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtechah: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.
Remember that Cush is later connected, as a people, to Ethiopia. These sons of Cush are identified later with Arabia, the Sudan and Ethiopia. So they are in Northern Africa, and Saudi Arabia.
But this passage also mentions one other son of Cush. His name was Nimrod.
8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.
Now at first glance, it appears that Nimrod was a good guy. He is a “mighty hunter before the Lord.” He is a mighty one in the earth. But, on closer examination, you discover some things. First, the name Nimrod is very close to the Hebrew word for “rebellion.” And some interpret, “before the Lord” to being “against the Lord.” That coupled with the fact that many of the kingdoms that come from his line, later were Israel’s enemies, makes us believe that Nimrod was not a God-fearing man.
10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Babylon), and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
11 Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh (later capital of Assyria), and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,
12 And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.
13 And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,
14 And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,(the Philistines)) and Caphtorim.
In addition to all that, I read a book years ago, entitled “The Two Babylons,” written by Alexander Hislop, in 1853, that postulated that Cush founded a religion, that Nimrod propagated, elements of which can still be found today in Roman Catholicism, and other ancient religions.
Some of the elements of that cult were a “mother-son” worship, a priesthood, confession, penance, and so on. As Hislop describes it, because Nimrod was propagating a false religion, he was put to death by none other than Shem. But after his death, his mother/consort, declared him to be a god, and herself a goddess, and continued the cult underground.
And the basis for his hypothesis is that this person, Nimrod, lived around the time of the tower of Babel. Now we will get to the Tower of Babel shortly. But, according to the Biblical record, at the building of the Tower, all of mankind spoke one language. But building the tower was a rebellion against God, so God dispersed mankind by striking them with multiple languages, thus destroying their ability to communicate and unify around their Godless cause.
And once the language groups dispersed from the region of Babel, they went to new regions, and took their old religion with them. So that is why you find “mother-son” religions in cultures all over the world. We find it in Roman Catholicism, the Isis/Osiris myth of Egypt, in the Hindu mother and child deities, and in India with Isi and Iswara and in Japan. These mother son deities can be found in all over the world in the study of ancient peoples. So Hislop postulates that their origin was here at the Tower of Babel, with Nimrod, and his mother. Others have also proposed that Nimrod was a hunter of men, not animals, and that he built his kingdom by war and conquest.
Now, let me be clear. All we know from Scripture is that Nimrod was a mighty one, a mighty hunter, and that he built cities and some kind of kingdom. But we get no indication in these verses that he, or anyone around him was concerned with following or obeying God. Verse 20 concludes this section with,
20 These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.
Now the last genealogy to consider is that of Shem, the oldest and most blessed of the brothers. Noah says of him,
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
So Shem is to be the head over his two brothers. Japheth is to live in Shem’s tents, and Canaan, Ham’s son will be his servant.
So who are the people who descended from Shem. Well verse 21 gives us a couple clues.
21 Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.
First off, it is believed that the name “Shem” may have been the basis for our word “Semite” or “Semitic.” Now “anti-semitism” has come to mean those who are antagonistic toward Jewish people. But “Semites” is a broader classification of people that includes Arabs as well as Jews.
And we get a second clue from the name of Shem’s son “Eber.” Some propose that from this name came the name for Jewish people; Hebrews.
So who are these people, and where did these descendants of Shem settle?
22 The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.
23 And the children of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash.
24 And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber.
25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.
What does it mean, “Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided?” Well I’ve heard two answers regarding this. Here’s the one that I give greatest credence. During Peleg’s lifetime, the division of languages, under the Tower of Babel, took place. All it does is gives us a timetable for when these things happened.
26 And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah,
27 And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah,
28 And Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba,
29 And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were the sons of Joktan.
30 And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the east.
31 These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.
Well to summarize, Shem had 5 sons. The Elamites lived in Southeast Mesopotamia, Asshur was the progenitor of the Assyrians. Aram gave us the Arameans who also lived in Mesopotamia. And Lud gave us other Semitic people living in the Middle-East. The most important of the sons of Shem would be Arphaxad from whom came Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, the Jewish people.
32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.
Now all of chapter 10 is a set-up for chapter 11. So, I’m just going to read this story and commentate as we go along.
11 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
As I stated earlier, after the flood everyone spoke the same language. That would seem to be an obvious conclusion, since they all came from the same 8 people who survived the flood. But if you study linguistics, this doesn’t make sense. And here’s why. We can trace some modern languages to a common origin, for example Spanish and Portuguese both come from a West Iberian language. You can listen and read both and see some common words, or parts of words. In the same way, there is a common ancestor between English and Spanish, it just goes further back in history.
But there are some languages that are so different from each other, that we can find nothing in common between them. A Germanic language like English has very little in common with one of the Sinitic languages like Mandarin Chinese.
So it doesn’t make sense that these languages came from a common family. And those purporting that human beings evolved haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer. Some have proposed that language began by the imitation of animal sounds, or the grunts and groans that came naturally from primitive man. But neither of these theories account for the diversity of words, and complexity of languages, and their differences found in the world today.
But the Bible gives the answer. And the answer is found in the following narrative;
2 And it came to pass, as they (the descendants of Noah) journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
After the flood, as you can imagine, the first family grew into a clan, the clan grew to a tribe, and the tribe became a city-state, or a group of cities. But, as the population grew,
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
So, they find a spot, a plain, a huge valley in the land of Shinar. Now, where is the land of Shinar? It is the region of Mesopotamia. The region of the later kingdom of Babylon. Today, the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon are in Iraq, 59 miles south of Bagdad. So the plain of Shinar would be there. And in that plain, this early population decided to build a city and a tower. Now the ruins of Babylon, are an early archeological parallel to the history of the Bible. The Bible describes an ancient people who started building a city and a tower. The ruins and history of the ancient city of Babylon contain a ziggurat, a kind of step pyramid, near the city. It appears that after God confused the languages, while they were building the tower and the city, many of the break-off language groups left and migrated to other parts of the world. But some part of them stayed, and eventually finished the city, and topped off whatever portion of the tower they had, and possibly made it a temple.
So here, the people say, we want to build a city, and a tower. Why did they want to do this? They state a three-fold purpose. First, they didn’t want the people to be scattered across the face of the earth. Second, they wanted to make a name for themselves. Third, the tower was to reach to heaven. Now, on the surface, none of this seems that bad, or evil. So it seems a little odd when we read the next verses.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Of course, the implication is that they were doing something wrong, or against God, in that plain. So God dispersed them to prevent the continued sin. But what was the sin?
There have been a number of proposed answers to that question. Some say that the sin was that they disobeyed God’s command to fill the earth. God commanded Noah, after the flood, to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
Others say that the sin was the sin of pride. They were building a city for themselves, to make a name for themselves. They weren’t honoring God. This was an early humanism. A belief that human fulfillment is the complete purpose of humanity. Working for our own pleasure and advancement.
Others contend that the tower, “to reach heaven” was an early temple. That it was possibly a temple to a false god, or for a false religion. And if you consider what we know about ziggurats, and the development of religion at that time, that could be true.
I personally believe that all of those things may be the reason why God dispersed these people. They weren’t spreading across the earth. They were uniting around a prideful humanistic philosophy. And they may have been setting up a false religious system. So that is why God says,
Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
So God supernaturally confuses their language. The word “Babel” in Hebrew means confusion. So what actually happened here? Did every individual person in the population suddenly begin speaking and understanding a different language. No. I think the evidence from linguistics, archeology and the text indicates that God gave different languages to different people groups in that plain.
Now I can’t be dogmatic here. But knowing that God instituted marriage, and the family unit, I can’t imagine that He would have given a man a different language than his wife, or his children.
In fact, I would almost bet that the mixing up of languages happened in the middle of the night. Why? Because everyone would be at home with their families and clans, sleeping.
We know that there is a close correlation between languages and physical attributes. So I imagine that God kept people groups together, and gave them all the same language. So how many languages are we talking about here? Well, if you look at the origins of all the world languages today, you find that they can all be traced back to some common origins.
I am no language expert, but God could have simply divided the people into large language groups; an Indo-European language group, a Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Japanic, Niger-Congo, Dravidian, Turkic, Koreanic, Kra-Di, and Uralic groups. That’s 11 groups. Where did I get those names? They are the names of language families. They are the modern names given to what could be the root language of other related languages. Let me give you an example. In the Indo-European group are multiple languages that we are familiar with; English, German, Spanish, Dutch, etc. They are related to each other. In other words, they have common elements, grammar and syntax, that tell us that they could have developed from a common language.
So that originally, at the Tower of Babel, one ethnic, or culture group was given that first Indo-European language. And each of those 11 groups I mentioned before would be given the original ancestral language.
So, if this giving of languages happened in the middle of the night. Then, the father wakes in the morning, eats breakfast with the family, all of whom are still speaking the same language as he is. He walks down the street on their block on the way to work on the tower. All his neighbors who are his clan, also speak the same language, and the men of those clans join him on his trek to work. But the closer they get to the work site, the more they encounter people, speaking strange languages. Some of those from one tribe are speaking Japanic, others Uralic, etc. And they don’t understand each other, and they don’t understand his clan.
Once he arrives at the work site, it is in chaos. Although his clan can communicate, the work has come to a halt, because of all the workers are speaking 11 different languages, from Asian and African type, to Hungarian and Turkish type.
Now, I could develop the story further, but as days, and weeks pass, each of these people groups figure out that there is no value in staying around this plain. In fact, some natural conflicts ensue, which can’t be resolved because of the language barrier. So the Indo-European clan decides to migrate west, the Niger-Congo goes southwest, and so on.
Now obviously, God could have divided the people into more than 11 languages. But I just wanted to give you an idea about how this could have happened.
Genesis continues…
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
So that’s the Biblical story of how mankind ended up with multiple languages. From those first languages, the peoples spread over the earth. And as their clans separated further around the globe, people within the language groups developed language differences, just because of geographic separation.
Now this chapter concludes with Shem’s genealogy. This genealogy is the Godly line that connects Noah to Abraham. I’ve already talked about some of the names mentioned here, so we won’t do a lot of commentary on the remaining verses. Let’s just see if I can pronounce these names.
10 These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:
11 And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
Now, I’m going to abridge the remaining names. They all follow the same pattern as Shem. It tells how old the person was when they had a son who carried on the Godly line. The son is not necessarily the oldest. Then it tells how they had other children and how old they were when they died. So here’s the abridgement. Verse 12
12 Arphaxad lived 403 years after having Salah and his siblings.
14 Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: Salah lived 403 years after having Eber and his siblings.
16Eber lived 430 years after having Peleg and his siblings.
18 Peleg lived 209 years after having Reu and his siblings.
21Reu lived 403 years after having Serug and his siblings.
23Serug lived 200 years after having Nahor and his siblings.
26Nahor lived 119 years after having Terah and his siblings.
27Terah lived 205 years after having Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
Now Genesis introduces characters who will be a part of the story of Israel over the next few chapters.
28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30 But Sarai (Abram’s wife) was barren; she had no child.
31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Well that concludes chapter 11 of Genesis. The next chapter begins the story of the patriarch of Israel; Abraham.
But this is the beginning of the story of how the earth began to be divided by race. And as people groups spread across the globe, the sinful inclination to seek dominance over others caused hostility between those races. What was once harmony in the Garden of Eden has become suspicion and racism.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, Thank you for Your Word. Even for these chapters full of genealogies, you teach us to look to the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray for your continued blessing on the study of Scripture. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.