[We are all descendants of Noah and his three sons. . . . think about the implications of that. If the Creator saw fit to start over and repopulate the earth with the only ‘righteous’ man worth saving in his generation, then what would be the proverbial fly in the ointment? Well as it turns out, one son, Ham.
From this chapter, try to figure out which of the three sons did you descend from. Does descending from Ham’s line mean anything at all? Is it even important to know? ‘Oy vey’ as the Jews would say! In terms of generational passing on of morals and ethics and righteousness, wrong and right choices — read Ezekiel 18.
General commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation by Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, additional commentary to be indicated by “EF.” Additional commentary is by “RA”/Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses.—Admin1.]
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Genesis/Bereshith 10
THE FAMILY OF THE NATIONS
This chapter traces the nations of the earth to the sons of Noah. The principal races and peoples known to the Israelites are arranged as if they were different branches of one great family. Thus, all the nations are represented as having sprung from the same ancestry. All men are therefore brothers. This sublime conception of the Unity of the Human Race logically follows from the belief in the Unity of God, and like it, forms one of the cornerstones of the edifice of Judaism. Polytheism could never rise to the idea of Humanity; heathen society ‘was vitiated by failure to recognize the moral obligation involved in our common humanity’ (Elmslie). There is, therefore, no parallel to this chapter in the literature of any other ancient people. It has been rightly called a Messianic document.
While the surpassing importance of this wonderful chapter is religious, ‘the so-called table of the nations remains, according to all results of archeological exploration, an ethnographic original document of the first rank which nothing can replace’ (Kautzsch). In all essential details, its trustworthiness has been strikingly vindicated by the new light from ancient monuments.
[EF] The Table of the Nations (10): Genesis, with its typically ancient Near Eastern emphasis on “begettings,” now traces the development of humanity from the sons of Noah. The key formula throughout is “their lands, their nations.” Commentators have noted numerical unity in the list, citing a total of seventy nations (once repetitions are omitted) laid out in multiples of seven. That number, as we have indicated, represents the concept of totality and perfection in the Bible. Thus the stage is set for the Babel story of the next chapter, with its condemnation of humanity’s attempt to forestall the divinely willed “scattering” into a well-ordered world.
Many of the names in this chapter have been identified, but some are still not known with certainty. Israel is conspicuous in its absence; despite the biblical narrative’s ability to trace Israel’s origins, those origins are meant to be seen not solely in biological terms but rather in terms of God’s choice. Similarly, Israel arises from women who begin as barren—-thus pointing to divine intervention in history, rather than the perfectly normal account that we have here.
1 Now these are the begetting of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Yefet. Sons were born to them after the Deluge.[RA] As elsewhere, genealogy adopted as a means of schematizing complex historical evolution, and thus the terms “father of” and “begot” are essentially metaphors for historical concatenation. The total number of figures in the Table of Nations (excluding Nimrod) comes to seventy, the biblical formulaic number for a sizeable and complete contingent of any sort. It should be observed that representing the origins of nations as a genealogical scheme preserves a thematic continuity with the divine injunction after creation to be fruitful and multiply and sets the stage for the history of the one people whose propagation is repeatedly promised but continually threatened.
In keeping with the universalist perspective of Genesis, the Table of Nations is a serious attempt unprecedented in the ancient Near East, to sketch a panorama of all known human cultures—from Greece and Crete in the west through Asia Minor and Iran and down through Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula to northwestern Africa. This chapter has been a happy hunting ground for scholars armed with the tools of archeology, and in fact an impressive proportion of these names have analogues in inscriptions and tablets in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. The Table mingles geographic, ethnic, and linguistic criteria for defining nations, and the list intersperses place-names and gentilic designations (the latter appearing first in plural forms and beginning with verse 16 in singular forms). Some analysts have argued for a splicing together of two different lists of nations. One may infer that the Table assumes a natural evolutionary explanation for the multiplicity of languages that does not involve an act of divine intervention of the sort that will be narrated in the next episode, the Tower of Babel.
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2 The Sons of Yefet are Gomer and Magog, Madai, Yavan and Tuval, Meshekh and Tiras.
Contains the names of peoples in Asia Minor.
Gomer. The Cimmerians, on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Magog. The Scythians, whose territory lay on the borders of the Caucasus.
Madai. The Medes.
Javan. The Greeks (Ionians: in the older language, Iawones).
[EF] Sons: Here, and later, it may mean “descendants.”
3 The Sons of Gomer are Ashkenaz, Rifat, and Togarma.
Ashkenaz. They lived in the neighborhood of Ararat, Armenia. In later Jewish literaature, Ashkenaz is used to denote Germany; hence, Ashkenazim, Jews hailing from Germanic countries.
Rpath and Togarmah. Peoples of Asia Minor.
4. The sons of Yauan: ‘Eliyshah, Tarshiysh, Kittiy, and Rodaniym,
Elishah. Most scholars see the word ‘Hellas’ in the name. Others identify it with Southern Italy, Sicily or Cyprus.
Tarshish. Frequently mentioned in the Bible as a flourishing and wealthy seaport. It is generally identified with Tartessus in ancient Spain.
Kittim. A race inhabiting part of the island of Cyprus, of Phoenician extraction.
Dodanim. In I Chron. I,4-25 (with which this chapter should be compared) it is written Rodanim, i.e. the inhabitants of the Rhodian islands in the Aegean Sea. Both forms are shortened forms as given in Targum Jonathan, and refer to Dardania in the region of Troy (Luzzatto).
5 From these the seacoast nations were divided by their lands, each one after its own tongue: according to their clans, by their nations.
of these. From these, i.e. the sons of Javan enumerated in the preceding verse.
divided. As separate countries, because of their distinctive populations.
after his tongue. The differentiation of language is accounted for in the next chapter. The Rabbis explain that the narratives in Scripture are not always in strict chronological order. Sometimes an event is anticipated, at other times it is told in connection with a later event.
[RA] the Sea Peoples. The probable reference is to the migrants from the Greek islands (“Javan” is Ion, or Greece) who established a foothold in the coastal region of Palestine during the 12th century B.C.E.
These are the sons of Japheth. These words do not occur in the Masoretic Text, but the scholarly consensus is that there is a scribal omission here, as this is part of the formula used in verse 20 and 31 to summarize the list of the descendants of each of Noah’s other two sons.
6 The Sons of Ham are Cush and Mitzrayim, Put and Canaan.
Ham. The most ancient name for Egypt was ‘Chem’, meaning ‘black’, alluding no doubt to the division into Upper and Lower Egypt.
Put. Lybia.
Canaan. The word is probably derived from a root meaning ‘to be low’ and Canaan was the term originally applied to the lowland of the coast of Phoenicia and the land of the Philistines. The name was afterwards extended to the whole of Western Palestine. According to this verse, Mizraim and Canaan were ‘brothers’; i.e. Palestine and Egypt were provinces of the same Empire. This was the case only in the time of the 19th Dynasty, the age of Moses (Sayce). It was quite untrue of the time of the Exile, when the alleged author of ‘P’ is said to have lived. The name ‘Persians’ does not occur in the chapter, because in the days of Moses these did not yet exist.
[EF] Mitzrayim: The biblical name for Egypt (the modern Egyptian name is Misr.)
7 The Sons of Cush are Seva and Havila, Savta, Ra’ma, and Saavtekha; the Sons of Ra’ma–Sheva and Dedan.
Tribes and places on the African coast of the Red Sea, or on the opposite shore of Arabia.
Sheba. A great commercial state in Southern Arabia. The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon (I Kings X).
8 Cush begot Nimrod; he was the first mighty man on earth.
Nimrod. Nimrod is a descendant of Ham. It is now established that the original founders of Babylonian civilization, the Sumerians, were a people of non-Semitic stock.
a mighty one. He acquired dominion and ascendancy by conquest and by the terror he inspired.
[EF] mighty man: Three times here; clearly Nimrod was well known as an ancient hero.
[RA] He was the first mighty man on earth. The Hebrew, which says literally, “he began to be a mighty man,” uses the same idiom that is invoked for Noah’s planting a vineyard. The implication, then, is that Nimrod, too, was the founder of an archetypal human occupation. The next verse suggests that this occupation is that of hunter, with his founding of a great Mesopotamian empire than introduced in verses 10-12 as an ancillary fact. Perhaps his prowess as hunter is put forth as evidence of the martial prowess that enabled him to conquer kingdoms, since the two skills are often associated in the ruling classes of older civilizations. Numerous Neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs depict royal lion hunts or royal bull hunts. Nimrod has been conjecturally identified with the 13th century B.C.E. Tukulti-Ninurta I, the first Assyrian conqueror of Babylonia.
9 He was a mighty hunter before YHWH, therefore the saying is: Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before YHWH.
a mighty hunter. lit. ‘a hero of the chase.’ The Assyrian monuments often depict monarchs and nobles in the act of hunting.
before the LORD. This phrase is an expression of emphasis, ‘a very great hunter’; Jonah III,3, ‘Nineveh was an exceeding great city.
wherefore it is said. A formula introducing a proverb; XXII,14, Num. XXI,14, etc. Nimrod’s exploits became proverbial.
10 His kingdom, at the beginning was Bavel, and Erekh, Accad and
beginning of his kingdom. When he commenced to reign, his dominion extended over the cities here enumerated.
Babel. Babylon; its building is described in the next chapter. It was the centre of the ancient Orient, and for many centuries, the mistress of the world.
Erech. The Babylonian city ‘Uruk’, now called ‘Warka’, on the left bank of the lower Euphrates.
Accad. Name of a city, Agade; also of the land of Accad, Northern Babylonia.
Shinar. A Heb. name for Babylonia; XIV,1,9; Joshua VII,21, etc. Some identify Shinar with ‘Sumir’, the land of the Sumerians (Delizsch, Jampel).
[RA] all of them. This translation adopts a commonly accepted emendation wekhulanah, instead of the Masoretic Text’s wekhalneh, ‘and Calneh.”
11 Calne, in the land of Shinar; from this land Ashur went forth and built Nineveh—along with
went forth Asshur. Archeology confirms the Biblical statement that the cities of Assyria owed their existence to the development of Babylonian power by conquest and colonization.
Nineveh. The capital of Assyria.
[EF] Calne: Some read cullana, “all of them.”
12 the city squares and Calah,/and Resen between Nineveh and Calah—that is the great city.
great city. i.e. Nineveh together with the other three places constituted one great city (Jonah III,3).
13 Mitzrayim begot the Ludites, the Anamites, the Lehavites,
Lehabim. The Lybians.
Naphtuhim. The dwellers of the Nile Delta.
14 the Naftuhites,/Patrusites, and the Casluhites, from where the Philistines come, and the Caftorites.
Pathrusim. The population of upper Egypt, Pathros.
whence went forth the Phiistines. A difficulty arises from the fact that in Deut. II,23, Amos IX,7, the Philistines are spoken of as coming from Caphtor, i.e. Crete. The explanation may be that there were two immigrations of Philistines, one by way of the Egyptian sea-coast and the other from Crete. They have given their name to the land, ‘Palestine.”
Caphtorim. The inhabitants of Crete.
15/16 Canaan begot Tzidon his firstborn and He,/along with the 17 Yevusite, the Amorite and the Girgashite, /the Hivvite, 18 the Arkite and the Sinite,/the Arvadite, the Tzemarite and the Hamatite. Afterward the Canaanite clans were scattered abroad.
Zidon his first born. ‘First-born,’ the oldest settlement of the Canaanites. Zidon, the capital of ancient Phoenicia, stands for the whole country.
Heth. The Hittites, a powerful and warlike nation who held sway in Syria and Asia Minor from 1800 to 900 B.C.E. Wonderful remains of their civilization have been unearthed since the beginning of this century, and their language is now deciphered.
Jebusite. This tribe dwelt in and around Jerusalem, which was originally known as Jebus.
Amorite. This term is sometimes used to denote all the inhabitants of Canaan before the coming of the Israelites, and sometimes one particular warlike tribe amongst the Canaanites.
Girgashite. One of the peoples driven from Canaan by the Israelites (XV,21).
The tribes mentioned in this and in the following verse lived in greater or less proximity to Mt. Lebanon.
Hamathite. Hamath, in Syria, was at one time the capital of a strong kingdom (Is. XXXVII,13).
spread abroad. They extended into the territory mentioned in the next verse.
19 And the Canaanite territory went from Tzidon, then as you come toward Gerar, as far as Gaza, then as you come toward Sedom and Amora, Adma, and Tzevoyim, a far as Lasha.
The border of the Canaanites was originally within the limits stated in this verse—from Zidon in the North to Gaza in the South, and from Sodom and Gomorrah in the South-east to Lasha in the North-east of Palestine.
20 These are the sons of Ham after their clans, after their tongues, by their lands, by their nations.
21 (Children) were born to Shem, the father of all the sons of Ever (and) Yefet’s older brother.
22-24. According to this genealogical table, Eber was the great-grandson of Shem; but he was the ancestor of Abram, who is called Ha-ibri (XIV,13). From “Eber’ is formed the word ‘Hebrew’, the name by which the Israelites were known to foreign peoples. Special stress is here laid on Eber because he is, through Abram, the ancestor of the people of Israel.
22 The Sons of Shem are Elam and Ashur, Arpakhshad, Lud, and Aram.
Elam. The name of a land and people beyond Babylonia and the Persian Gulf—the easternmost people with which the descendants of Shem were brought into contact. As the Elam of history is Aryan, the correctness of the Biblical view that Elam is a son of Shem was questioned. The French exploration at Susa, however, has shown that the oldest Elamite inscriptions are written in Babylonian, which proves that early Elam was peopled by Semites. Bible critics did not relish the idea of being robbed of one of their stock arguments against the trustworthiness of this chapter. But as they are forced to admit that the statement in regard to Elam is correct, they add: ‘The fact [that his statement is correct] is not one which the writer of the verse is very likely to have known’ (Driver). No clearer proof is needed of the negative dogmatism of Bible critics.
Asshur. Assyria, the most powerful of the Semitic peoples.
Arpachshad. Sayce explains the name as ‘the territory of the Chasd’ (Ur of the Casdim, i.e. Chaldeans).
Lud. The Lydians of Asia Minor.
Aram. The Aramean or Syrian people, whose territory included Mesopotamia (‘Aram of the two Rivers’). Both the Aramean people and language were destined to exert great influence in Jewish history.
23 The Sons of Aram are Utz and Hul, Geter and Mash.
Uz. The land where Job lived (Job,I). In Lam. IV,21, the Edomites are mentioned as dwelling in the land of Uz.
Hul, Gether, Mash. Unidentified localities in Syria.
24 Arpakhshad begot Shelah, Shelah begot Ever.
[RA] Eber. He is the eponymous father of the Hebrews, ‘ibrim. Whatever the actual original meanings of the names, there is a clear tendency in the Table to intimate exemplary meanings in the names of these mythic founders: elsewhere, “Eber” is explicitly linked with the term that means “from the other side” (of the river).
25 Two sons were born to Ever: the name of the first one was Peleg/Splitting, for in his days the earth-folk were split up, and his brother’s name was Yoktan.
divided. By ‘earth’ is meant the population of the earth. The allusion is probably to the scattering of the peoples described in the next chapter.
Peleg. In Assyrian, palgu means ‘canal’; and Sayce believes the ‘division of the land’ to refer to the introduction of a system of canals into Babylonia.
[RA] Peleg . . . in his days the earth split apart. The three consonants of the name Peleg, which as a common noun means “brook,” form the verbal root that means “to split.” It is a stronger verb than “divide,” the term used by most English translators. Rabbinic tradition construes the splitting here as a reference to the Tower of Babel, but it is at least as plausible to see it as an allusion to an entirely different epochal event of “division,” such as a cataclysmic earthquake.
26/27 Yoktan begot Almodad and Shelef, Hatzarmavet and Yera,/
Joktan. Regarded as the progenitor of the Southern Arabs.
Hazarmaveth. The land of Hadramaut, in Southern Arabia.
28/29 Hadoram, Uzal and Dikla,Oval, Avimael and Sheva,/ Ofir, Havila, and Yovav—all these are the Sons of Yoktan.
Ophir. Famed for its gold (I Kings IX,28 and XXII,49).
30 Now their settlements went from Mesha, then as you come toward Sefar, to the mountain-country of the east.
The identification of these Arabian landmarks is uncertain.
31 These are the Sons of Shem after their clans, after their tongues, by their lands, after their nations. From these the nations were divided on earth after the Deluge.
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[RA] branched out. Literally, the Hebrew verb means “separated.” The whole Table of Nations is devised to explain how the many separate nations came into being. The immediately following verse, which begins the tale of the Tower of Babel, announces a primeval unity of all people on earth. This seeming flat contradiction might reflect a characteristically biblical way of playing dialectically with alternative possibilities: humankind is many and divided, as a consequence of natural history; and, alternately, humankind was once one, as a consequence of having been made by the same Creator, but this God-given oneness was lost through man’s presumption in trying to overreach his place in the divine scheme.