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.
And the sons of Gomer Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.
Three names close out the family of Gomer, the eldest son of Japheth, and then Scripture moves on. Yet these grandsons of Noah turn up again centuries later in prophecy. And the shape of the list shows why God recorded the nations at all.
Japheth had seven sons, but the chapter stops to name grandchildren for only two of them. One writer points out which two, and what each stood for:
Only two of Japheth's sons have their descendants listed — Gomer, the head of the Celts, and Javan, from whom came the Greek and Italian peoples.
The selection is not random. These two branches account for the peoples who would matter most in the history that follows:
These were respectively the families which peopled Asia Minor, and Armenia on the east, and the sons of Javan whom we cannot fail to identify with the Greek or Hellenic families, extending to Spain, France, Italy and Sicily, the isles or maritime coasts of the nations.
Ashkenaz is more than a bare name in Scripture. One writer starts from a later mention of him and works out where all three sons lived:
Jeremiah brings in Ashkenaz as one of three kingdoms called out together with Ararat and Minni against Babylon, when the kings of the Medes also played their decisive part. Ararat and Minni were parts of Armenia, which here as elsewhere comes under Togarmah. So there seems no sound reason to doubt that Ashkenaz and Riphath held the peninsula of Asia Minor at that time. They took their place with Cyrus, the leader of these peoples, during that famous struggle. But this in no way weakens the general fact that Gomer pushed west into Europe, granting that at least Togarmah settled in Armenia.
A reference work agrees. Togarmah's descendants "probably settled in Armenia," a land known for its trade in horses and mules (Morrish Bible Dictionary).
Riphath is the hardest of the three. Some readers claim that Gomer means France and that Togarmah means the countries by the Baltic Sea. One writer answers them by weighing only what the text supplies:
Scripture says nothing about where Riphath lived. But Jeremiah 51:27 makes it certain that Ashkenaz belongs among the Asiatic kingdoms, and probably in the district between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea… It is a fair and interesting subject to discuss. Still, it is better to hear and weigh the evidence of Scripture before we come to conclusions.
Commentators differ on where Ashkenaz went later. Some trace him into Germany; others hold back. The same writer also rejects the popular idea that Riphath settled in Britain:
Jewish teachers say that Ashkenaz later moved into the part of Europe afterwards called Germany… But the evidence is far from clear, though all agree that the Germanic peoples descend from Japheth and from Gomer… There is far less ground for applying Riphath to Great Britain, as some have done… But there is no good reason to doubt that those we call Germans came from Gomer, just as the Celts did.
Two of these three names come back in Ezekiel's picture of a last invasion of the land of Israel. A quiet line in a family list turns into a roll-call of armies:
Ezekiel 38 beyond doubt unveils the judgment of Russia at the end of this age. It lets us see its supporters forced to follow it and to share the general ruin. Among the peoples of the north are Gomer and all his hordes, and the house of Togarmah from the far north with all his. The southern peoples of Persia, Cush, and Phut come under the same influence.
The link between Togarmah and Armenia is not only a scholar's guess. The people themselves have claimed it:
"The house of Togarmah" from the northern parts I suppose to be the Armenian people, as they say of themselves. They will follow Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal — that is, the last head of the Russian Empire.
Names and migrations are not the point of the chapter. When God scattered mankind at Babel, He was working to a purpose fixed long before Israel existed as a nation:
At the time of the scattering at Babel, God caused the various peoples to drop down just where His ways would need them when Israel came into view. So God Himself settled the first map of the world, with the land and people of Israel as His centre.
No nation could have kept this knowledge on its own. How the peoples of the earth began, "not one of these nations can tell." Yet "here it is written with simple and calm dignity by the instrument God chose for the purpose" (William Kelly).
- Selection — Of Japheth's seven sons, only Gomer and Javan have children named here. The record keeps what serves God's later story, not what feeds curiosity.
- Settlement — Commentators place Togarmah in Armenia, and Ashkenaz and Riphath in Asia Minor. Gomer's line pushed west into Europe.
- Silence — Scripture says nothing about where Riphath settled. Weigh the evidence first, and treat ideas about Britain or Germany as guesses, not doctrine.
- Sequel — Gomer and Togarmah return in Ezekiel 38. They are allies dragged into ruin with the northern power that attacks the land of Israel.
- Centre — God dropped the nations into place around one small land. So this short family list is the first map of the world, drawn with Israel at the middle.