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Genesis 10: What the Passage Says

57 claims across 32 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Genesis 10 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter lists the descendants of Noah's three sons after the flood: Japheth, Ham, and Shem. Each list names peoples and places, with their languages, families, lands, and nations. Two short accounts break into the lists: Nimrod, a mighty hunter whose kingdom began in Shinar, and Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided. The chapter closes by saying that from these families the nations of the earth spread out after the flood.

Claim by Claim

  1. 10:1
    • These are the generations of the sons of Noah.
    • Noah's sons were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
    • Sons were born to Shem, Ham, and Japheth after the flood.
  2. 10:2
    • The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras.
  3. 10:3
    • The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.
  4. 10:4
    • The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.
  5. 10:5
    • From these the coastland peoples spread out into their lands.
    • Each was separated according to his language.
    • They were divided according to their families.
    • They were divided within their nations.
  6. 10:6
    • The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.
  7. 10:7
    • The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca.
    • The sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.
  8. 10:8
    • Cush fathered Nimrod.
    • Nimrod was the first to become a mighty one on the earth.
  9. 10:9
    • Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the LORD.
    • Because of this it is said, 'Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.'
  10. 10:10
    • The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh.
    • These cities were in the land of Shinar.
  11. 10:11
    • Out of that land Asshur went forth, or alternatively Nimrod went out from that land into Asshur; the text is ambiguous as to the subject.
    • Nineveh was built.
    • Rehoboth-Ir was built.
    • Calah was built.
  12. 10:12
    • Resen was built between Nineveh and Calah.
    • It is the great city, though the text leaves ambiguous which city is meant.
  13. 10:13
    • Mizraim fathered the Ludim, the Anamim, the Lehabim, and the Naphtuhim.
  14. 10:14
    • Mizraim fathered the Pathrusim, the Casluhim, and the Caphtorim.
    • The Philistines came out from the Casluhim.
  15. 10:15
    • Canaan fathered Sidon, his firstborn.
    • Canaan fathered Heth.
  16. 10:16
    • Canaan fathered the Jebusite, the Amorite, and the Girgashite.
  17. 10:17
    • Canaan fathered the Hivite, the Arkite, and the Sinite.
  18. 10:18
    • Canaan fathered the Arvadite, the Zemarite, and the Hamathite.
    • Afterward the families of the Canaanite spread abroad.
  19. 10:19
    • The border of the Canaanite ran from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza.
    • The border ran toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.
  20. 10:20
    • These are the sons of Ham, listed by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
  21. 10:21
    • Children were born to Shem also.
    • Shem was the father of all the children of Eber.
    • Shem was the brother of Japheth; the text is ambiguous as to whether Shem or Japheth is the elder.
  22. 10:22
    • The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.
  23. 10:23
    • The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash.
  24. 10:24
    • Arphaxad fathered Shelah.
    • Shelah fathered Eber.
  25. 10:25
    • Two sons were born to Eber.
    • The name of one was Peleg.
    • In Peleg's days the earth was divided.
    • His brother's name was Joktan.
  26. 10:26
    • Joktan fathered Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, and Jerah.
  27. 10:27
    • Joktan fathered Hadoram, Uzal, and Diklah.
  28. 10:28
    • Joktan fathered Obal, Abimael, and Sheba.
  29. 10:29
    • Joktan fathered Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab.
    • All these were the sons of Joktan.
  30. 10:30
    • Their dwelling place extended from Mesha toward Sephar, the mountain of the east.
  31. 10:31
    • These are the sons of Shem, listed by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
  32. 10:32
    • These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations and their nations.
    • From these the nations were divided in the earth after the flood.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1
"Generations" here translates a Hebrew word (toledoth) used throughout Genesis as a section heading. It does not mean "lifespans" but "the account of what came from" a person, his descendants and what became of them. Most of the names that follow are simultaneously persons and the peoples or cities named after them; several are grammatically plural or gentilic ("the Jebusite," "the Ludim"), so the list reads as a map of the known world as much as a family tree.
10:2
These names are associated with peoples living north and west of Israel, in Anatolia, the Aegean and the lands beyond. Gomer is usually connected with the Cimmerians, Madai with the Medes (in what is now Iran), Javan with the Ionians, that is, the Greeks, and Tubal and Meshech with peoples of eastern Asia Minor known from Assyrian records. Magog and Tiras are not securely identified.
10:3
Ashkenaz is generally linked to the Scythians, a horse-riding people north of the Black Sea; Togarmah to a district of eastern Asia Minor named in Hittite and Assyrian texts. (The much later use of "Ashkenaz" for German-speaking Jewry is a medieval development, not the sense here.)
10:4
These are Greek and Mediterranean seafaring connections. Kittim refers to Cyprus, especially the city of Kition; Tarshish to a distant port reached by ship, variously placed in Spain, Sardinia or Cilicia, and used in the Bible as a byword for the far west. "Dodanim" appears in some ancient copies as "Rodanim," that is, Rhodes; the Hebrew letters for D and R look nearly identical, and the two readings cannot be decided between.
10:5
The King James "isles of the Gentiles" translates a Hebrew word meaning coasts and islands, the Mediterranean seaboard and its offshore lands, reached by ship rather than by road. "Gentiles" here carries only its old sense of "nations" or "peoples"; the later meaning of "non-Jews" is not in view. "Tongue" means language.
10:6
Ham's line covers the south and the lands nearest Egypt. Cush is the region south of Egypt, roughly modern Nubia and Sudan. Mizraim is the ordinary Hebrew name for Egypt; its form is a grammatical dual, often taken to reflect Egypt's two halves, upper and lower. Phut (Put) is a North African region, usually placed in or near Libya. Canaan is the land along the eastern Mediterranean coast that Israel later occupied.
10:7
These are trading peoples of Arabia and the Red Sea coasts. Sheba, in southwest Arabia (modern Yemen), and Dedan, an oasis in northwest Arabia, both stood on the incense and spice routes; Havilah is a gold-bearing region of Arabia. Note that Sheba and Havilah appear again in verses 28–29 under Shem, a duplication the chapter leaves standing.
10:8
"A mighty one" translates gibbor, a word for a warrior or a man of outstanding strength and standing. "Began to be" suggests being the first of his kind, the first ruler to build power on this scale. Nimrod is not identified with any king known from Mesopotamian records, though the name has been compared to several.
10:9
"Before the LORD" is deliberately open in Hebrew. It can mean simply "in the LORD's sight," hence outstandingly or by any reckoning, or it can carry the sense of standing over against God, in defiance. Ancient and modern readers have taken it both ways. The last clause quotes a proverb that evidently circulated about him; "hunter" in the ancient Near East was also royal language, since kings advertised their lion hunts as proof of fitness to rule.
10:10
Babel is the same Hebrew word as Babylon; the King James keeps the older spelling here and in chapter 11. Erech is Uruk and Accad is Akkad, two of the great cities of southern Mesopotamia. Shinar is the biblical name for the plain of southern Mesopotamia, the region of Sumer and Babylonia, in what is now Iraq. Calneh is unidentified, and some read the Hebrew word not as a place name but as "all of them."
10:11
The Hebrew can be read two ways, and translations divide: either "Asshur" is a person who left Shinar and founded these cities, as the King James takes it, or the words mean "he", Nimrod, "went out into Asshur," that is, Assyria. Nineveh and Calah (modern Nimrud) were the great Assyrian capitals on the Tigris. "Rehoboth" means "broad places" and may be a city name or a description of a district of Nineveh.
10:12
"The same is a great city" is ambiguous in the Hebrew: it may describe Resen, or Calah, or the whole cluster of settlements taken together as one great urban sprawl.
10:13
These names are Hebrew plurals, so they denote peoples rather than individual men, "the Ludim" means the Ludites and so on. They are groups associated with Egypt and its neighbors; most cannot now be located with confidence.
10:14
Pathrusim refers to Upper Egypt (Pathros, the southern Nile valley). Caphtor is generally identified with Crete and the Aegean world. The parenthesis about the Philistines sits after Casluhim in the Hebrew, but elsewhere the Bible says the Philistines came from Caphtor, so many take the note as belonging to the following name. The Philistines were the people who later occupied the coastal cities of southwest Canaan, including Gaza and Ashdod.
10:15
Sidon was the great Phoenician port on the coast of modern Lebanon. Heth is the ancestral name behind the "children of Heth" or Hittites who appear later in Genesis living in Canaan; whether they are connected to the Hittite empire of Anatolia known from other ancient records is disputed.
10:16
These are the resident peoples of Canaan whom Israel later encountered. The Jebusites held Jerusalem before David took it; the Amorites were a widespread Semitic-speaking population known across Mesopotamia and Syria; the Girgashites are named in Canaanite lists but otherwise little known.
10:17
The Arkites and Sinites are named from towns on the Phoenician coast and its hinterland, north of Sidon.
10:18
Arvad was an island city off the Syrian coast, Zemar a coastal town near it, and Hamath a major city on the Orontes river in Syria, so this part of the list runs northward along the Levantine seaboard.
10:19
The border is described the way a traveler would experience it, "as thou comest" meaning "in the direction you go." It runs from Sidon in the north down the coast past Gerar to Gaza, then inland and south toward the cities of the Dead Sea plain. Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim are the cities destroyed in Genesis 19; Lasha is unidentified.
10:21
The Hebrew is ambiguous about who was the elder: it can mean "the brother of Japheth, the elder," making Japheth the older, or "the elder brother of Japheth," making Shem so. Both readings are ancient. Eber matters because his name shares its consonants with the word "Hebrew," and the line to Abraham runs through him.
10:22
Shem's line covers the east and northeast. Elam lay east of Mesopotamia, in what is now southwestern Iran; Asshur is Assyria, on the upper Tigris; Aram is the Aramean territory of Syria; Lud is often connected with Lydia in western Asia Minor. Arphaxad, the ancestor of Abraham's line, has no secure identification.
10:23
Uz is named elsewhere as the homeland of Job. The others are Aramean groups of Syria and the northern desert; "Mash" appears in some copies as Meshech.
10:24
"Begat" is simply the older English for "fathered." In these lists it need not always mean an immediate son, a name can stand for a descendant several steps removed.
10:25
The name Peleg sounds like the Hebrew verb palag, "to divide" or "to split," so the verse explains the name by an event. What the division was is left open: it may point to the scattering of peoples at Babel in the next chapter, or to some division of territory, or, on another old suggestion, to the cutting of irrigation channels.
10:26
Joktan's sons are peoples of the Arabian peninsula. Hazarmaveth is Hadramaut, a region of southern Arabia (modern Yemen); Sheleph and Almodad correspond to tribal or district names known from South Arabian inscriptions.
10:27
Uzal is often identified with a site in Yemen, later associated with the city of Sanaa; Hadoram and Diklah are South Arabian names, the latter perhaps meaning "palm grove."
10:29
Ophir was famous later as the source of the finest gold, reached by sea; its location, somewhere on the Arabian or East African coast, was already uncertain in antiquity.
10:30
Mesha and Sephar cannot now be located; the phrase simply fixes the range of Joktan's territory between two points. "A mount of the east" means the eastern hill country.
10:32
The chapter counts seventy peoples in all, a round and complete number in Hebrew usage. It is the world as it was known to the writer's audience, arranged as a family, with no mention of peoples of the far east or the Americas because they lay outside that horizon.

Read Genesis 10