Chapter 10
The Human Family.[a] 1 These are the descendants of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth, to whom sons were born after the flood.
2 The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meschech, and Tiras.
3 The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.
4 The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim, and the Rodanim.
5 From these came the peoples of the islands and their territories, each clan in the nations with their own language.
6 The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.
7 The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca.
The sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.
8 Cush gave birth to Nimrod. He was the first of the mighty ones upon the earth. 9 He was a great hunter before the Lord, for it is said, “Just like Nimrod, a great hunter before the Lord.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Asshur where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, which is the main city.
13 Mizraim gave birth to the Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, Casluhim, and Caphtorim (from whom came the Philistines).
15 Canaan gave birth to Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 17 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 18 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites.
Afterward the clans of the Canaanites spread outward. 19 The boundaries of the Canaanites stretch from Sidon in the area of Gerar up to Gaza, and then go toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, up to Lasha.
20 These were the sons of Ham according to their clans and their languages, in their various territories and according to their peoples.
21 Shem, the ancestor of all of the sons of Eber and the older brother of Japheth, also had children.
22 The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram.
23 The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash.
24 Arpachshad gave birth to Shelah, and Shelah gave birth to Eber. 25 Eber had two sons: one named Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided) and the other named Joktan.
26 Joktan gave birth to Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan.
30 They lived in the mountain region in the east, from Mesha on toward Sephar.
31 These were the sons of Shem according to their clans and their languages, in their various territories and according to their languages.
32 These were the families of the sons of Noah in their various generations and clans. These divided up to become all the nations on the earth after the flood.
Footnotes
- Genesis 10:1 For the ancient Semites, a person’s genealogy was not a strictly historical document, but a juridical one, meant to show the transmission of rights. For this reason, physical generation often serves as an image pointing to a legal generation, as, for example, adoption. The genealogical tree had, of course, to be composed of historical persons so as to determine a juridical succession.
The genealogy of peoples or cities is an image derived from the preceding and can signify ties of derivation or affinity between one people and another on the ethnic, geographical, historical, political, sociological, cultural, and other planes. Since the whole matter was flexible and since we are dealing only with an image, it is obvious that one and the same people could locate themselves, from different points of view, in various genealogical lineages, including some far removed from modern-day scientific genealogies.
On the basis of historical and geographical data, the Priestly tradition, here incorporating Yahwist features, in this chapter compiles a genealogical tree for peoples known in the second millennium B.C. The picture, in which an historical and religious intention is at work, asserts the substantial unity of the human race, which is divided into various peoples and languages. All human beings are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Creator God and heirs of his blessings, and all are meant to be saved.
Given its purpose, the picture does not provide a basis for resolving the anthropological question of monogenism or polygenism, nor the historical question of the extent of the flood. In this “list of peoples” the Semites come in last place because the writer takes them as his starting point for the continuation of his story, while from this point on the descendants of Japheth and Ham cease to be of direct concern to the biblical story.