Genesis 10
Mankind's long march
This chapter completes the extended passage of time between the death of Noah and the beginning of his generational influence on the world. Frankly, it appears that at every new start by God there is a struggle, a shining revelation, the appearance of a new generation of righteous people, then a return to the humdrum lives of God-ignorance and sin.
Indeed, it is so. While reading this long list of begats and begottens we see the old aphorism: God has no grandchildren, only children. But it would be a mistake to assume that faith in God is ever entirely lost. Seeded throughout the story as it unfolds from Genesis up to Revelation are the unlikely coincidences of chance meetings where two God-fearers meet unexpectedly.
We will soon read on into the next great passage - the life of Abraham - that he meets a man whose story repeats in the New Testament: Melchizedek, literally king of righteousness. And he is also king of Jerusalem (Salem). And he is a priest of God. There is truly faith to be found, albeit in small doses but of great intensity. Later on we read of the great Exodus leader, Moses, whose father-in-law is a priest of Midian. Again, there are men (and women, for there is no righteous family without righteous parents) who maintain the great faith in God.
After the flood the lands around the fertile crescent are populated by the children of Noah. The lists which we are given are worth reading slowly. Indeed, if you ever feel the need to rush over a passage, don’t. For in doing this you can miss some real gems. One of these, I believe, is the knowledge that mankind’s rule as home sapiens sapiens has been a short one, peppered with what G.M.Hopkins called “man’s smudge and smell”,
"The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”
We read the names of Noah’s descendants, and remember their associations, for example,
Magog - the land of a people who sought to destroy Israel
Medes - the conquerors of Persia whose mark on history continues right down until the birth of the Church
Nineveh - the notoriously violent people that Jonah preached to
Pathros - the land of Upper Egypt where some Israelites fled to after the first destruction of Jerusalem
Sodom - the city of great sin which God destroyed, killing Lot’s wife
Jebusites - the people of Jerusalem, finally conquered by King David
However, as one Jewish commentator said, it is best not to spend too much time analysing these names in detail, seeking answers from numerology or other hidden meanings. In analysing these texts we are involved in a form of archaeology, reading this literally as ‘ancient words’. Much dust has accumulated over the milennia, and the distance from our times to the times of these people is so vast that our reading must proceed with care.
History is littered with the publication of reports which appear to find something which has been long hidden and only now has been revealed. Genuine occasions when this is true are surprisingly rare. It is OK to make suppositions and propose possibilities, but it is best not to draw solid conclusions based on very thin material. An English comedian joked about people digging through layers of soil, so exposing the places ‘where elephants once danced’!
It’s a classic academic dichotomy: you can never be absolutely sure, but there is no point in investigating without drawing a tentative conclusion. However, beware of the rash populism of saying a loud ‘100% Yes’ to any conclusion where the evidence falls well short of 50%. And there is also the problem of contrary evidence. Do you ignore it or discard it, hoping no-one will notice? Perhaps, but do so with honesty.
One of these interesting facts is that Nimrod (vv8-9) is a Hebrew word meaning ‘rebel’. This is captured and elaborated in a Hebrew scholarly midrash. But one rabbi, Abraham Ibn Ezra warns us, “Don’t look for a reason behind every name”! We read the names Mizraim and Ashkenaz in the list of post-flood peoples, yet these names have somewhat wandered during their times. Mizraim is Egypt, but which acts often as a marker for a group of states dominated by this land, including Canaan; despite Egypt being Hamite whereas Canaan was Shemite. Ashkenaz is a land beyond the Black Sea, also known as Scythia in the Book of Acts, and the name Ashkenazi came to be associated in the Middle Ages with the German peoples, and then to the Jewish diaspora peoples of central and eastern Europe, and was long used to classify the highly educated classes of Jewry, as opposed to the Spanish and African Sephardim Jews.
There are mythic structures hidden in all genealogies. As Christians we are well acquainted with the difficulties in resolving Matthew and Luke’s differing accounts of the genealogy of Christ. It’s a bit like trying to work out how the post-Joshua plan for allocating the land of Canaan to the Hebrew conquerors, tribe by tribe, either was meant to work out, or did work out. During the debate that led up to the Balfour Declaration (that Israel would again have a country in 1948) it was asked, ‘What borders?” to which the reply given was “from Dan to Beersheba”; a good biblical answer, except nobody knows now precisely where Dan was meant to be!
In my own country there are ancient tales about how the lost nation of Pictland was divided up by the first king, Cruithne, into pockets of land for each of his seven sons, Fib (Fife), Mar (Aberdeen), etc. One son, Foclach, was gifted the land of my birth and ancestry, ancient Caithness & Sutherland. I am proud of my Pictish ancestry, but no modern political Pictish nationalist would try and cut up Scotland according to this one ancient document.
To conclude this shorter analysis of Genesis 10 and it’s many names, you might be wondering why I made the sideways step to discuss my Pictish ancestry. Well, according to some scholars, the Picts may have come from modern day Kazakhstan. This would make them a branch of the Scythians, which Moses listed here as Ashkenaz. Perhaps I could update my Ancestry.com tree back now to,
“John, son of Ashkenaz, son of Gomer, son of Japeth, son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methusaleh, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalelel, son of Kenan, son of Enosh, son of Seth, son of Adam.”
This rank folly would serve as a stark reminder not to read too much into these genealogies. Put simply, they are not there for that purpose. As the Apostle John almost said,
‘Much more could be said and books could be written, but these are there in order that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, and knowing this, believe in him.’
Of course, Israel is not a normal country by any measure. It is difficult to apply general rules to such a specific case. Of the list of nations given in Genesis chapter 10, none still exists today, perhaps 3,500 years after the events being described. Even Israel is not here, for it was yet to exist as a people in this place. But, God was (and is) at work; a few short more generations were yet to pass before the time when Abraham, in obedience to God, first stepped foot on God’s land, carrying within him the promise and its seed.
Moses writes, “These are the descendants of Shem, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.” The people of Israel were then to be an Ark of the Covenant, a people of promise, until the final Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Theotokos, was to appear, and bear for us the Christ Child, God’s promised Messiah, Jesus. That we too should now bear Christ within us, each a holy Christotokos, in our own time and to our own people.