And these are the generations of the sons of Noah Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and to them were sons born after the flood.
Genesis 10 opens a fresh section of the book, and names Noah's three sons as the heads of the whole human family after the flood. Why does the list stand here, and why are the names in this order?
The verse opens with a phrase Genesis uses again and again: These are the generations of... Each time, it starts a new section. One writer lists them in order:
Genesis 2:4 — Genesis 4:26, Generations of heavens and earth. Genesis 5:1 — Genesis 6:8, Generations of Adam. Genesis 6:9 — Genesis 9:29, Generations of Noah. Genesis 10:1 — Genesis 11:9, Generations of sons of Noah. Genesis 11:10 — Genesis 11:26, Generations of Shem.
The words "after the flood" matter. They mark the start of something the earlier world never had:
This chapter is full, instructive, and interesting, and Genesis 11:1-9 that follows it has its own special importance. The chapter describes something new among mankind: its many nations spread out in their lands, each with its own language. Before the flood no such distinctions existed. However large the population was, they were not grouped like this, and they were not marked off from one another... God had not yet set up any government, there was no division into nations, and there was no difference of language.
Where did the different races come from? History cannot say:
In the Bible there is no more important chapter than Genesis 10 for how God arranged languages, families, and nations. This is the only place that tells us how the different races arose, and where they came from. Who else could have told us how and when the earth was divided this way?... All men who are worth listening to are convinced of this: these three great lines are clearly separate, and just as clearly they came from one common origin. Scripture says there was only one such root.
Genesis has already used this pattern once: a fall, and then a family list.
This is the right place for such a statement. It comes after Noah's fall and its striking results. In the same way, the family line of Adam's sons came in Genesis 5 after his sin, and the line of Cain led on to the picture God gives us of the world before the flood. Noah lived on for centuries, but the history never mentions him again, just as Adam drops out of sight after his sin... It was well ordered that none of Noah's sons had children until they came out of the ark. So too Adam became a father only after the fall, when God sent him out of paradise.
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Other Bible lists give these three names in the same order. There is a reason for that order:
Genesis 6:10 gives the names of Noah's sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Genesis 10:1 and 1 Chronicles 1:4 give the same names in the same order. Yet Genesis 9:24 and 10:21 show us that the true order of their birth was Japheth, Shem and Ham. But God in His sovereignty chose Shem, so his name comes first.
The next chapter does not carry the story forward. It goes back and explains this one:
Chapters 10 and 11 give us the history of the world after the flood — how it was peopled and set in order... Chapter 10 gives the facts. Chapter 11 shows how they came about, in judgment. The two chapters are not to be read as following one after the other in time. The division into nations and languages came after men tried, in their pride, to hold together at Babel. Then, last of all, we are given the family Jehovah owned, so that we can trace in it the line down to the one who carried the promise.
These names do not stay in the past. They come back in prophecy:
It looks like nothing more than a list of generations — fathers, sons, and so on. What can be interesting about that? But God does not give history the way men give it... The names of the nations listed here are found all through the Bible, and each keeps its character through its whole history, right to the end. In Ezekiel, and especially in Ezekiel 38 and 39, many of these names come up in connection with the very last days.
- New start. "After the flood" marks a world with something new: nations, separate lands, and separate languages.
- New heading. The verse begins one of Genesis's "generations" sections, running from 10:1 to 11:9.
- New order. Shem stands first in the list not by birth but by God's choice; Japheth was in fact the eldest.
- Hidden cause. Chapter 10 records the division. Chapter 11 gives the reason: human pride at Babel, judged and scattered.
- Long reach. This list is the only account of where the nations came from. The same names return in prophecy about the last days.
The sons of Japheth Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
Genesis 10 turns from the story of Noah to a list of names, and verse 2 opens it with the seven sons of Noah's son Japheth. The order surprises anyone who has read the earlier chapters. These names became whole nations, and some of them reappear at the end of the Bible's story.
Up to this point Scripture has always named Shem first. Here the order changes, and one writer explains it by birth.
Notice that the order of Noah's sons is now changed. Japheth has the first place when we come to the survey of family lines. We learn why when we arrive at the line of Shem (v. 21). For spiritual reasons Shem had always held that place of honour up to now, and Ham was otherwise put before Japheth.
The same writer draws out the principle elsewhere: a place in a list is not always a place in the family.
Genesis 10:2, compared with verse 21, plainly shows that Japheth was the eldest, and Ham probably the youngest (Genesis 9:24). Both Shem and Noah owe their place of precedence not to birth, but to the honour God set on them.
The list looks dry. One writer rates it among the most important chapters in the Bible.
No chapter in the Bible matters more than Genesis 10 for the providential arrangement of tongues, families, and nations. This chapter alone gives the rise of the different races, with their sources. Who else could have told us how and when the earth was so divided? This is the divine account of the races. Here man is at sea. But where he does arrive at conclusions, this at least is the common consent, as far as I know, of all who have given their minds to the study: there are three, and only three, divisions into which nations properly diverge… More than that: those worth hearing are just as sure that these three lines had one common origin. Scripture says there was only one such root.
These names stand for whole peoples, not private people. One survey maps them in a sentence:
Of Japheth — the Celtic family (Gomer), the tribes to the north of the Caucasus (Magog), Medes, Greeks, Tibareni, Moschi and Thracians — generally the Indo-Europeans.
Three of the names carry an echo still audible on a modern map.
Magog (compare Ezekiel 38:2) is quite as certainly identified with the land we call Russia. To these we must add Meshech and Tubal, races long known as Moschi and Tibareni: these are the Muskai and the Tuplai of the Assyrian inscriptions, who find their representatives in Moscow and Tobolsk. This is the Slavic branch.
Scholars found late what this verse said from the start.
It became evident that Sanskrit, old as it may be, is no more the parent of these tongues than Greek. They were all sisters, derived from a language earlier than any of them. That they had a common source in the east was for the learned a recent discovery. But our verse tells us with full authority that Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras were sons of Japheth. So they were all linked together — distinct in dialect, but of common origin.
One name stays open:
There remains only Tiras. From the likeness of the name, most have believed it stands for the Thracians… Still the question cannot be said to be settled, like all the others that come before it.
Read verse 2 beside the prophets and the list stops being ancient history. One writer traces most of these names into a future conflict.
Of the sons of Japheth we get Gomer, Magog, Tubal and Meshech under the same names in Ezekiel 38 as followers of Gog. You will also find Persia there, which was united to Media (Madai)… so only Javan and Tiras remain to be accounted for.
Why does God record the spread of peoples at all? One writer answers from Deuteronomy 32.
"When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." Israel was, and shall yet be, God's earthly centre. It is a fact of the deepest interest that from the very outset, as we see in Genesis 10, the Creator and Governor of the world formed the nations and fixed their bounds according to His own sovereign will. He did it with direct reference to Abraham's descendants, and to that narrow strip of land they are to possess.
(The writer uses an older translation; the ESV reads "according to the number of the sons of God.")
- Order — Japheth stands first because he was the eldest; before this Scripture named Shem first for honour, not birth.
- Origin — one chapter alone tells us how the nations began, and it traces every people back to one root.
- Identity — Gomer, Magog, Madai and Javan are the Celts, Russia, the Medes and the Greeks. Tubal and Meshech live on in Tobolsk and Moscow. Only Tiras stays uncertain.
- Unity — scholars found late that these languages share one lost parent; this verse said so from the start.
- End — these same names reappear in Ezekiel 38 under Gog, and God drew this map of the nations all along with Israel at its centre.