The Families of the Nations

The fourth toledot heading, after 2:4, 5:1 and 6:9. The sons are named Shem, Ham, Japheth, but the chapter treats them in reverse, Japheth first and Shem last. Genesis habitually clears the side branches before the line it will follow, as it will with Ishmael before Isaac and Esau before Jacob.

Seven sons, and several names can be traced in Assyrian records: Gomer the Gimirrai or Cimmerians, Madai the Medes, Tubal and Meshech the Tabal and Mushku of Anatolia. Javan is Ionia, and became the Hebrew word for Greece (Daniel 8:21). Magog returns in Ezekiel 38:2 with “Gog, the land of Magog”.

Ashkenaz appears in Jeremiah 51:27 beside Ararat as a kingdom of the north, probably the Scythians; in medieval Hebrew the name came to mean Germany, hence Ashkenazi. Togarmah trades horses and mules at Tyre in Ezekiel 27:14. Riphath is spelled Diphath in 1 Chronicles 1:6, the Hebrew letters r and d being easily confused.

The sons of Javan are the sea peoples of the west. Tarshish is the far port Jonah sails for; Kittim is Kition on Cyprus, and later a name for any western power, the “ships of Chittim” of Daniel 11:30. For Dodanim, 1 Chronicles 1:7 and the Greek read Rodanim, the people of Rhodes.

The branch summaries for Ham and Shem open “These are the sons of”; this one does not, and many scholars think the phrase dropped out of the text early. “Gentiles” is goyim, nations, a plain word with no slight in it: God will promise to make Abram himself a great goy in 12:2.

Cush is the land south of Egypt that the King James often calls Ethiopia; Mizraim is Egypt itself, a dual form often explained as Upper and Lower Egypt; Phut is probably Libya. Canaan stands beside them, perhaps because Egypt ruled Canaan for centuries, which is an inference about the grouping, not something Genesis states.

Havilah is the name of the gold country of 2:11. Sheba and Dedan, the trading peoples of Arabia, turn up again as grandsons of Abraham by Keturah in 25:3. The same peoples can hang from more than one branch, because the list follows connections of trade and territory as well as birth.

The formula changes from “the sons of” to “begat”, and one man is singled out. Nimrod’s name sounds like the Hebrew for “we will rebel”, which Jewish tradition made much of; that is a play on sound, not a meaning Genesis gives. Cush here may be a different Cush, the Kassites of Mesopotamia, as some scholars propose.

“Wherefore it is said” quotes a proverb that was current in Israel: a great hunter was “like Nimrod”. Genesis does the same in 22:14, “as it is said to this day”. The hunting is the only skill named, and hunting was the sport of Assyrian kings, carved on their palace walls.

This is the first “kingdom” in Scripture. Erech is Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh, and Accad is Akkad, the capital of Sargon; Calneh has never been located, and some re-read the consonants as “all of them”. Shinar is southern Mesopotamia, where Nebuchadnezzar will take the temple vessels in Daniel 1:2.

Nineveh becomes the capital of Assyria and the city of Jonah. Calah is the site now called Nimrud, a name given it long after, in memory of Nimrod. Rehoboth-Ir means “broad places of a city”, perhaps a quarter of Nineveh rather than a town of its own. Micah 5:6 calls Assyria “the land of Nimrod”.

Resen has not been found. The Hebrew leaves open whether “the same is a great city” is Resen or the whole cluster of Nineveh and its neighbours taken together. The Book of Jonah uses the same phrase, “that great city”, for Nineveh (1:2, 3:3).

Every name here ends in -im, a plural of peoples: these “sons” are nations, not men. Lehabim may be the Libyans. Naphtuhim has been explained as the Egyptian for “those of Ptah”, the people of Memphis and the Delta, a proposal rather than a certainty.

Pathrusim are the people of Pathros, Egyptian for “the Southland”, Upper Egypt (Jeremiah 44:1). Amos 9:7 and Jeremiah 47:4 say the Philistines came from Caphtor, which is usually taken as Crete, so many think the parenthesis belongs after Caphtorim rather than Casluhim.

Sidon, the Phoenician port, is the firstborn, and it is the only city of Canaan named as a son. Heth is the ancestor of the Hittites, the “children of Heth” from whom Abraham buys the cave at Machpelah in chapter 23, the one piece of Canaan he ever owns.

The list switches from names to peoples: “the Jebusite” with the article. The Jebusites held Jerusalem, called Jebus in Judges 19:10, until David took it. Amorite is from Akkadian Amurru, “westerner”, and in 15:16 their iniquity is “not yet full”. The Girgasites are hardly mentioned outside lists.

The Hivites are the people of Shechem in 34:2 and of Gibeon in Joshua 9:7. The Arkites and Sinites never appear in Israel’s later history at all; their towns, Irqata and Siyannu, sit on the Lebanese and Syrian coast and are known from letters found at Amarna in Egypt.

Arvad is an island city off Syria, whose oarsmen row for Tyre in Ezekiel 27:8. Zemar is Sumur, on the same coast. Hamath, on the Orontes, marks the northern limit of the land in Numbers 34:8. “Spread abroad” is puts, the very verb of Babel’s scattering in 11:4, 8 and 9.

The border is given as directions to a traveller: “as thou comest”, “as thou goest”. It runs down the coast from Sidon to Gerar and Gaza, then east to the four cities of the plain. Gerar is where Abraham will live in chapter 20. Lasha is unknown; Jerome placed it at the hot springs of Callirrhoe by the Dead Sea.

Ham’s branch is the longest in the chapter, about thirty names, and it holds nearly every people Israel will have to reckon with: Egypt, the Philistines, the peoples of Canaan and the cities of Babylonia.

Shem is introduced as the father of the children of Eber, his great-grandson, a name that stands behind the word Hebrew; Abram is called “Abram the Hebrew” in 14:13. The Hebrew can make either Shem or Japheth “the elder”; the King James takes it as Japheth.

Elam lay east of Babylon around Susa, and its language was not Semitic at all, which shows the list tracing descent and territory rather than speech. Asshur appears as a son of Shem though verse 11 set Asshur in Nimrod’s land. Aram is Syria, and Deuteronomy 26:5 will say “a Syrian ready to perish was my father”.

Uz is the land where Job lives (Job 1:1); the name recurs for a son of Nahor in 22:21. Hul, Gether and Mash are otherwise unknown. 1 Chronicles 1:17 lists all four as sons of Shem directly, and spells the last Meshech.

The Greek Old Testament puts a Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah, and Luke 3:36 follows the Greek, so Luke’s line has one more name than Genesis. Eber means the region beyond, the far side, as in Joshua 24:2, “on the other side of the flood”, the Euphrates.

Peleg means division, and “divided” is niphlegah, the same root. As a noun peleg also means a channel of water, the “rivers of water” of Psalm 1:3, which has led some to think of the canals that parcelled Mesopotamian land. Joktan’s line is listed here in full and never mentioned again.

Hazarmaveth, “court of death” by its sound, is Hadhramaut, a region of southern Arabia that still carries the name. Sheleph has been matched with a Yemeni tribe. Jerah is the Hebrew word for moon. Joktan’s thirteen sons place Shem’s kin down the length of Arabia.

Uzal is traditionally identified with Sana’a in Yemen, whose ancient name was Azal. Diklah is the Aramaic and Arabic word for a date palm, fitting a people of the oases. Hadoram is known only from this list and 1 Chronicles 1:21.

Sheba appears for the second time in the chapter, here among Shem’s descendants. Saba in southern Arabia is the likeliest home of the queen who visits Solomon in 1 Kings 10. Abimael means “my father is God”, in a form found in south Arabian names. Obal is written Ebal in 1 Chronicles 1:22.

Ophir is the gold country to which Solomon’s ships sail in 1 Kings 9:28, and a second Havilah stands beside it. Jobab is also the name of a king of Edom in 36:33, and the Greek appendix to the Book of Job identifies Job with a Jobab.

Sephar is often identified with Zafar, the ancient capital of the Himyarites in Yemen; Mesha may be Massa in northern Arabia. The “mount of the east” is the hill country of the east, and the verse draws a line from one end of Arabia to the other.

Shem’s summary is laid out in exactly the words used for Japheth and Ham: families, tongues, lands, nations. Nothing marks it out, though Abram will come from it. The chosen line is not flagged in the table; chapter 11 will pick it out by following it.

Jewish tradition counted about seventy names here and spoke of seventy nations. Deuteronomy 32:8 says God set the bounds of the peoples “according to the number of the children of Israel”, and Jacob’s house goes down to Egypt seventy strong (46:27). “Divided” is parad, the parting of the rivers in 2:10.