-- And Mizraim begot the Ludim, and the Anamim, and the Lehabim, and the Naphtuhim,
Genesis 10:13 belongs to the list of nations that spread out after the flood. It traces four peoples back to one father, Egypt, and the strange names raise one question: why did God record them at all?
Some translations keep the father's Hebrew name here. The ESV calls him Egypt. Both are right: the man and the country share one name.
Son of Ham, and the name of his descendants and also of the land they held. The meaning of the name is much disputed. The Hebrew word is really Mitzraim. The Authorised Version leaves it untranslated only in Genesis 10:6, 13 and 1 Chronicles 1:8, 11; everywhere else it says Egypt. The word has a dual form, caused, it has been thought, by the division of that land into Upper and Lower Egypt. Matzor, of which Mitzraim is the dual form, occurs many times, and the Authorised Version translates it in different ways: "besieged places," "defence," and "fortress." But it is a proper name, and it refers to Egypt.
The double name also pictures the land itself: two thin strips of life held between deserts.
The name for Egypt in Scripture is Mizraim. It means "double straitness," or "double strip," and that describes exactly what Egypt is. Egypt is a little strip of country on each side of the great river that flows through it. It owes its existence to that river alone. The desert on each side hems it in and blows its sand over the land from every direction. Each year the river floods, lays its load of earth on top, and renews the soil. So a constant conflict between life and death goes on here, as it does in the world at large.
The first name in the verse turns up again later in the chapter, as a son of Shem. Geography keeps the two apart.
Shem also had a son called Lud (verse 22). He was the ancestor of the well-known Lydian race in western Asia Minor. It is important to keep him apart from those descended from Mizraim, who spread out west of the Nile. They were archers, as we learn from Isaiah 66:19 and Jeremiah 46:9, where Scripture appears to list the African peoples and describe them that way.
Nothing about the second name survives outside two lists in the Bible. That silence is what makes God's record valuable.
We next hear of the Anamim, of whom nothing more is said in the Bible than in the two genealogical lists. Comparing the names that follow, we may perhaps gather that they were a race which settled in the Delta of Egypt. But we must admit that no reliable trace of them is known, either in the ancient geographers or in the monuments deciphered so far. Here we have the unfailing record of God. He alone saw the end from the beginning, and He was pleased to tell us truth that would otherwise go unnoticed. A day of judgment for the inhabited earth is approaching, and it will prove that these races are not extinct.
The third and fourth names belong together, west of the Nile.
The Lehabim, also called Lubim in 2 Chronicles 12:3 and 16:8, together with the people called Phut, or Put, answer to the ancient Libyans. But the ordinary use of "Libya" in old times is vague. It stretches far and wide over almost all Africa west of the Nile… The Naphtuhim come at once after the Lehabim. They are the same as the Lebu or Rebu of the Egyptian inscriptions, as Mr. R. S. Poole has shown — the Libyans proper.
A chapter of names looks like the least rewarding page in the Bible. The value shows up later, when the same names reappear in the prophets.
Genesis 10 is a chapter that few would read with interest. It seems to be just a list of generations, of fathers, sons, and so on. What can be interesting about that? But God does not give us history the way men give it… The names of the nations listed here run all through the Bible. They also carry characters that they keep through the whole of history, right to the end. In Ezekiel, above all in chapters 38 and 39, many of these names appear again in connection with the very last days before the millennium.
- One name. Mizraim is both a son of Ham and the standard Hebrew word for Egypt, so this verse is Egypt's own family tree.
- A name that describes. "Double straitness" fits the land: two narrow strips of life along a river, hemmed in by desert.
- A name repeated. The Ludim here are African, west of the Nile. Do not confuse them with Lud, the son of Shem, in verse 22.
- A name only God kept. No monument or ancient writer remembers the Anamim. Only God's record keeps them.
- Names with a future. These peoples keep their character right through Scripture. They surface again in prophecy, and that is why this list is history worth reading.
and the Pathrusim, and the Casluhim, out of whom came the Philistines, and the Caphtorim.
This verse ends the list of peoples who came from Mizraim, the Hebrew name for Egypt. Tucked inside it is the line that tells us where the Philistines came from — and why they were never Canaanites.
Every clan in this verse comes from Mizraim, and that name belongs to a country as well.
Son of Ham, and the name of his descendants and also of the country they held. The Hebrew word is really Mitzraim. Older translations leave it untranslated only in Genesis 10:6, 13; 1 Chronicles 1:8, 11. Everywhere else they translate it Egypt.
The Pathrusim are named after Pathros, and the prophets hint at where it lay.
From Isaiah 11:11, Pathros, as distinguished from Egypt, would seem to be the upper part of the land. Ezekiel 29:14 and 30:13-18 are thought to apply to the Thebaid the ruin that the prophet said would come on the whole land.
The verse credits the Philistines to the Casluhim, while later Scriptures tie them to Caphtor. Commentators have weighed how the two fit together.
There remain the "Casluhim (from whom the Philistines came), and Caphtorim." There is little doubt that these races lived in the Delta before the Philistines moved to the Shephelah, the lowland of Canaan. Some suggest the two names have been swapped here. Deuteronomy 2:23, Jeremiah 47:4 and Amos 9:7 all connect the Philistine settlers with the Caphtorim. Pusey, commenting on the last of these Scriptures, leans to the conclusion that the same tribe moved into Palestine more than once. The Danes and Saxons came into England in the same way, and all merged under one common name. The first migration may have been from the Casluhim. The second came later, but mattered most, and it came from the Caphtorim. A third, of Kerethim (probably from Crete), came in the time of the judges and added only a little to their strength (1 Samuel 30:14-16). From these last, the Cherethites and Pelethites served as bodyguards of King David.
Where the Philistines came from and where they lived are two different places.
The Philistines were not Canaanites, although sons of Ham. They sprang, according to Genesis 10:14, from Mizraim, to whom the land of Egypt gave its own name. Yet we always find them in the land of Canaan, on the lowland of the south-west coast. Their outlook was toward Egypt, and they had the freest and most open contact with it (see Exodus 13:17).
The Philistines came into Canaan by a short desert road. God kept Israel off that road, and one writer draws out why.
Genesis 10 shows how the nations were divided. The descendants of Ham were Cush (the Ethiopian) and Mizraim (Egypt, of which this is the Hebrew name). Then in verses 13 and 14, "from Mizraim … came the Philistines." Here is the root, and there the branch, set out for us... they had crossed the desert by what is called "the way of the land of the Philistines." God would not lead Israel this way when they left Egypt (Exodus 13:17), "although that was near." It was in fact a short cut across the desert into the land of Canaan. It was not the true path for the redeemed. That path ran through the Red Sea and the Jordan, through death and resurrection. Only that way could Israel enter the land in a divine way and take it.
The two names in this verse carry a meaning of their own.
They come from the Caphtorim, and that word means as though they were openers; and from the Casluhim, as if forgiven — though not truly forgiven. So you have make-believe teaching, and a make-believe nearness to God, when after all there is nothing of the kind.
Some of these clans have left no trace in history outside the Bible. Kelly takes that silence as proof of whose record this is.
We have to admit that no reliable trace of them survives, either in the ancient geographers or in the monuments deciphered so far. Here we have the unfailing record of God, who alone saw the end from the beginning and has chosen to tell us the truth we would otherwise miss. A day of judgment on the whole inhabited earth is coming, and it will prove that these races are not extinct.
- Root. Mizraim is the Hebrew name for Egypt; every clan in this verse, Philistines included, is Egyptian stock descended from Ham.
- Branch. The verse traces the Philistines to the Casluhim, while Deuteronomy, Jeremiah and Amos point to Caphtor. More than one migration of the same people explains both.
- Short cut. They reached Canaan by the coast road, never through the Red Sea or the Jordan — a picture of religion without death and resurrection.
- Outlook. Egyptian by descent, they settled on the lowest edge of Canaan, with their eyes still turned back toward Egypt.
- Record. Some of these clans left no trace in history; the chapter is God's own account of the nations, and those nations are not extinct.