Genesis 10

“These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” The chapter traces the peoples descended from each. Japheth’s sons and grandsons spread into the coastlands, “each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations.” Ham’s line includes Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. From Cush comes Nimrod, the first mighty man on earth, “a mighty hunter before the LORD,” whose kingdom begins with Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh in Shinar and spreads to Assyria, where he builds Nineveh. Egypt’s line includes the people from whom the Philistines came, and Canaan’s sons include Sidon, Heth, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and others whose territory runs from Sidon toward Gaza and toward Sodom and Gomorrah. Shem, “the father of all the children of Eber,” has descendants including Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram; in the days of Eber’s son Peleg “the earth was divided.” The chapter closes: from these “the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.”

This chapter is a map of the world drawn as a family tree. Every nation of the Old Testament, the friends and the enemies of Israel alike, is placed under one family, descended from Noah, and all of them under the one God who made them. The table comes before the story of Babel in chapter 11, which explains how the languages divided, and before the call of Abram in chapter 12, through whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The nations listed here are the field God means to bless. At Pentecost, people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) heard the gospel in their own languages, and at the end John sees “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9).