Methuselah lived to be nine hundred and sixty nine (vs. 27), and Noah lived to be rune hundred and fifty (ch. 9:29). But all of that changed after the flood. For the next several generations they still lived to be very old by our standards, but the life expectancy of each generation dropped rapidly. Genesis chapter eleven gives the ages of the first several generations after the flood. If those life spans which are listed are typical of those which are not listed, and we have no reason to believe they were any different, then, one strange fact becomes evident: for the next eight generations after the flood, the life expectancy of each generation was falling so rapidly, that it was the rule, rather than the exception, for the parents to outlive their children. And not only that, it was the rule for the grandparents to outlive their grandchildren, and for the great-grandparents to outlive their great-grandchildren, and so on. That went on for eight generations or more.
Let us take just a moment to see how that worked out. Genesis chapter eleven records that "Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood" (vs- 10). He lived "after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years" (vs 11). So Arphaxad died 502 years (2 years plus 500 years) after the flood. "Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah" (vs. 12) 37 years (2 years plus 35 years) after the flood. Salah lived another 403 years (vs. 15). He died 440 years after the flood (2 years plus 35 years plus 403 years). So he died 62 years before Ws father. The eleventh chapter of Genesis has all the numbers. You can work out the arithmetic for yourselves, but here is a listing of the date of the death of each of the patriarchs up until the tune of Abraham.
Shem died 502 years after the flood. Arphaxad died 440 years after the flood. Salah died 470 years after the flood. Eber died 531 years after the flood. Peleg died 340 years after the flood. Reu died 370 years after the flood. Serug died 393 years after the flood. Nahor died 241 years after the flood. Terah died 426 years after the flood. Abraham died 527 years after the flood. Except for Eber, Shem outlived all Ws descendants for the next eight generations. Abraham was the first to outlive Shem, and he only outlived him by 25 years.
The point is this: those first several generations after the flood lived to be very old, and it was not uncommon for a man to outlive his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren. They outlived the next several generations, and the enormous difference in age between themselves and their surviving descendants set them apart. They were unique in all of history. They stood all alone at the heads of their respective family clans.
In the years after the flood, they fanned out, and establishedhomes in the vast empty places of the earth, and they repopulated the earth with their offspring. Those various families became great nations, and each of those sixteen grandsons of Noah stood at the head of the vast populations of their respective areas. Several things happened. The people in the various areas called themselves by the name of the one man who was their common ancestor. Since he was the patriarch of the entire population of that region, it was only natural that they should carry his name. They also called their land by his name. They usually named their major city and the major river in that region after him.
The names of the sixteen grandsons of Noah were fixed on the various lands, and nations, and cities, and rivers, and for thousands of years those names have stood. Many of them stand until this present day. Their exact names, often unchanged in any way, have been so firmly fixed on the pages of history that they can never be erased.
God has given us clear and indisputable proof that the Bible record of the earliest days of mankind is accurate. He has left us all the evidence we need to rout those who have imagined that the Bible is a collection of myths and legends. It is impossible to imagine any way those names could have been any more firmly preserved than they have been.
Sometimes the various nations fell off into ancestor worship, and if they did, it was very natural for them to name their god after the man who was the ancestor of all of them. After all, if they were involved in ancestor worship, what could be more natural than for them to call their god by the name of their common ancestor. Human nature being what it is, it is not difficult to imagine how ancestor worship gained a hold over them. As we have seen, those first generations after the flood lived to be very old. If a man outlived all his children, his grandchildren, his great- grandchildren, and so on, for several generations, it is easy to see that Ws descendants might get the idea that he was never going to die. And if they ever got that idea, it is also easy to see how they might imagine that he was really a god. Actually, they did not name their god after him, they simply claimed him for their god. The evidence is clear that many of the pagan gods were actually men whom their worshippers imagined to be gods. We shall see that the names of many of the pagan gods are traceable to the grandsons of Noah.
More than that, for over four thousand years the names of those various ancient nations have been preserved in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew names for those ancient nations corresponds exactly with the names of those sixteen grandsons of Noah. We cannot fail to see divine providence in the preservation of the Hebrew language. After all, what other language ever gained such prominence as a spoken language, then virtually died, and was centuries later revived as a spoken language.
We cannot imagine any more forceful, and any more conclusive, way in which the existence and identity of those men could have been established. Their names were attached to theirdescendants, to the land in which they lived, to the major cities and rivers of their various homelands, and sometimes even to the false gods which their descendants later came to worship. We shall see that those names continued for thousands of years, usually with very little change. And by divine providence, the identity of those men and their descendants was nailed down in the Hebrew language, and preserved for all ages.
In Genesis chapter ten, God gives us the names of those men, and he gives us clues as to where they lived and raised their families, and what became of their descendants. God has provided that chapter as a kind of index chapter for the very purpose of nailing down the identity of those men and the nations which sprang from them. He systematically and laboriously cataloged every one of them. In the next few pages we hope to examine those names one by one and discover some of the information that is available. We will only take time for the briefest glance at each one, but we believe the information provided will be sufficient.
Gen. 10:1,2, "Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Ham, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and ****n, and Tubal, and Meshesh, and Tiras."
Noah had three sons, Ham, Ham and Japheth. This chapter deals with them in reverse order. It saves Ham till last; so we will do the same. We hope to show, both from the Bible record, and from history, that after the flood the family of Noah came down off Mount Ararat and Japheth and his descendants spread out to the North and West. They occupied the continent of Europe and the Northwestern part of Asia.
The first name mentioned is Gomer. He was Noah's grandson by Japheth. It is a fairly easy matter to trace the travels of Gomer and his descendants, both from the Bible and from secular history. Ezekiel locates the early descendants of Gomer.
He tells us that, along with Togarmah, Gomer lived in the northquarters (Ezek. 38:6). If you will plot a line almost due North from Israel, you will find yourself in an area which in New Testament times was called Galatia. Paul wrote one of Ms epistles to the churches of Galatia. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who live dduring the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, records that those people who were called Galatians, or Galls, in his day were previously called Gomerites (Josephus 1:6:1). The area is now in central Turkey. History records that the Galatians, or Galls, migrated westward to what is now called France. For many centuries France was called Gaul, after the Galls, the descendants of Gomer. Many of the Gomerites migrated farther to what is now called Wales. The Welsh historian Davis records that the Welsh people believe that the descendants of Gomer "landed on the Isle of Britain from France, about three hundred years after the flood" (pg 5). He also records that the Welsh language is called Gomeraeg (after their ancestor Gomer). The Welsh people still sometimes refer to themselves as the sons of Gomer. John Gill records that the Welsh people in his day were called Cumero (Gomerites). So for four thousand years the name of Gomer has been firmly fixed in the traditional name of the Welsh people and in the traditional name of their language.
It is an interesting study to trace the migration of the descendants of Gomer by their language. The traditional name of the ancient Welsh language is Gomeraeg (from Gomer). It is a branch of the Indo-European languages known as Celtic or Keltic. Encyclopedia Britannica says that the Celtic group of languages reached from Galatia on the East to Gaul and Iberia (Spain) and Wales on the West. Classical Gomeraeg was a highly developed, fully inflected language. By inflected we mean that their word endings and their pronunciation changed according to the way theywere used. It was very much like classical Greek, which you may recall, had ten different ways to spell every noun, and thirty ways to spell every adjective, depending on how they were used. Modern Welsh has lost all the inflected endings. The point we are getting to is that the ancient Welsh were a highly intelligent people. They had a language which rivaled the language of the Greek philosophers. They were not a bunch of savages running around m the forest, hiding behind trees. They were an intelligent people who knew where they came from. In the same way that, for thousands of years, the Jewish people have properly claimed to be the offspring of Abraham, the Welsh people have claimed to be the offspring of Gomer. The evidence is too plain to be ignored.
The Welsh are not the only descendants of Gomer. The text goes on to tell us that the sons of Gomer were "Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah" (vs. 3). Not all of the family of Gomer reached Wales. There were members of their clan scattered all along the way. Some of the descendants of Togarmah and Ashkenaz settled fairly close to the foot of Mount Ararat.
Encyclopedia Britannica says that the Armenians claim to be descended from Togarmah and Ashkenaz. They are careful not to mention who Togarmah and Ashkenaz were. That would be too much for them to admit; but the evidence is too clear for them to deny, so they do provide the information without comment.- Armenia is the large area spreading out to the South and West of Mount Ararat. So to this very day the Armenians claim these two grandsons of Noah as their ancestors. Ancient Armenia reached into Turkey. The name Turkey probably comes from Togarmah- Again not all of the descendants of Ashkenaz settled in Armenia, Some of them migrated to Germany. Ashkenaz is the Hebrew word for Germany.
The next name mentioned is Magog. Magog is the Hebrew name for Russia (not Russia as we have come to know it, that is, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but the older, smaller, country of Russia). According to Ezekiel, Magog lived in the North parts (Ezek. 38:15, 39:2). If you travel due North from Israel, past Turkey, and across the Black Sea, you will arrive in the Russian Ukraine. According to Encyclopedia Britanica, the ancient name for the Ukraine is Scythia. Josephus records that those whom he called Magogites the Greeks called Scythians (1:6:1). Scythe is another name for a sickle. If anyone were required to associate some modern nation with the sign of the scythe, or sickle, the association would not be hard to make. We are all very well acquainted with the sign of the hammer and sickle. That modern Russian logo clearly identifies modern Russia with ancient Scythia, the ancient Magogites.
The next son of Japheth is Madai. Along with Shem's son Elam, Madai is the ancestor of our modern day Iranians. Josephus goes on to explain that the descendants of Madai were caged Medes by the Greeks. Every time the Medes are mentioned in the Bible the word is translated from the Hebrew word Madai. The Iranians are largely a combined race of people. They are a combination of the descendants of Madai and the descendants of Elam. After the time of Cyrus, who is supposed to have combined the Medes and the Persians (Elamites) into one kingdom, the Medes are always (except for one instance) mentioned along with the Persians. They became one kingdom and were thus governed by one law ("the law of the Medes and the Persians" Dan. 6:8,12,15). In later History they were simply called Persians. Since 1935 they have insisted on being called Iran.
The name of Japheth's next son ****n is the Hebrew word for Greece. Greece, Grecia, or Grecians appears five times in the Old Testament and it is always translated from the Hebrew word ****n. Daniel refers to Alexander the Great and calls him "the king of Grecia" (Dan. 8:21), literally "the king of ****n." Verse four goes on to name the sons of ****n, "Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim," all of which have connections with the Greek people. The Elysians, an ancient Greek people, obviously received their name from Elishah. Hellas, an ancient name for Greece, probably comes from the name Elishah. Eleusis, the ancient city where the Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated, also is traceable to Elishah.
Tarshish, or Tarsus, was located in the region of Cilicia. The entire region of Cilicia was originally called Tarsus. You may recall that Tarsus was the hometown of Paid ("Saul of Tarsus"). Encyclopedia Britannica says that Kittim is the Biblical name for Cyprus. The last son of ****n mentioned was Dodanim. The Greeks worshipped Jupiter under the name of Jupiter Dodanaeus, obviously a reference to tills son of ****n. His oracle was at Dodena.
Next is Tubal. Tubal is the hardest of all Noah's grandsons to identify. Ezekiel mentions him along with Gog and Meshech (Ezek. 39:1). Since they lived to the North of Israel, it is probable that Tubal did too. The Spanish people claim to be descended from Tubal, and their ancient name Iberia is claimed to be derived from Tubal. Several other ancient people are claimed as the descendants of Tubal, but none of the arguments is convincing, and since we cannot come up with any convincing evidence, it is probably best to leave it at that.
Meshech, the name of Japheth's fifth son is the ancient name for Moscow. Moscow is both the name of the capital of Russia, and the name of the region that surrounds the city. Until this very day, one section, the Meschera Lowland, still carries the name of Meshech, unchanged by the ages.
According to Josephus, the descendants of Tiras were called Thirasians. The Greeks changed their name to Thracians. The Greeks had a habit of changing the names of other people. You may remember that it was the Greeks who changed the name of Canaan to Palestine. Thrace reached from Macedonia on the South to the Danube River on the North to the Black Sea on the East.
It took in much of what is now Yugoslavia. World Book Encyclopedia says that the people of Thrace were a savage Indo- European people, who loved warfare and looting. Mars the god of war, who was worshipped by the Romans, was earlier called Theresa or Tiras. This grandson of Noah was obviously the original for that pagan deity. So from their earliest history the Thracians worshipped their ancestor Tiras as Mars, the god of war. It is a fact of nature that there are ethnic differences that attach to different races of people. For instance, by and large, the Jewish people have always been more successful business men than their Gentile counterparts. Germans are generally better mathematicians. America would have had a much harder time putting a man on the moon had it not been for a German scientist by the name of Werner von Braun. Negroes have a natural sense of rhythm that others do not have. For better or worse, those characteristics belong to those people. All of this brings us back to the descendants of Tiras. The descendants of those savage Indo- European people, who were long ago caged Thracians, go to make up much of what is now modern day Yugoslavia. That explains a lot about what is going in that land today. Serbs and Croats and Bosnians seem to be killing each other for the fun of it, and the outside world does not seem to be able to do anything about it. From time immemorial their ancestors worshipped Tiras, or Mars the god of war. Encyclopedia says that they were "a savage Indo- European people who loved warfare and looting." That is a characteristic which attaches to the descendants of Tiras, and you can be sure that it is going to take more than a few United Nations advisors to get them to change their ways.
Next we come to the sons of Ham. Verse 6, "And the sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan." The descendants of Ham live primarily in Southwest Asia and Africa. The Bible often refers to Africa as the land of Ham (Psa. 105:23,27; 106:22).
The first mentioned is Cush. Cush is the Hebrew word for Ethiopia. Without exception the word Ethiopia in the Bible is always translated from the word Cush. The Ethiopians are descended from this grandson of Noah. Josephus says that the Ethiopians "are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Chusites" (1:6:2).
Ham's next son was Mizraim. Mizraim is the Hebrew word for Egypt. The name Egypt appears hundreds of times in the Old Testament, and with only one exception it is always translated from the word Mizraim. You do not even need a lexicon to discover that fact. In Genesis chapter fifty, when the Egyptians accompanied the body of Jacob back to Canaan, the Cananites observed the mourning of the Egyptians, and called the place Abel Mizraim. Gen. 50:11, "And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond Jordan."
Phut, The name of Ham's next son is the Hebrew name for Libya. It is translated that way three times in the Old Testament. The ancient river Phut was in Libya. By Daniel's day the name had been changed to Libya (Dan. 11:43). Josephus says, "Phut also was the founder of Libyia, and called the inhabitants Phutites, from himself' (1:6:2)
Canaan, the name of Ham's last son is the Hebrew name for Palestine. The Greeks changed the name to Palestine, during the time of Alexander the Great.
It is our purpose only to trace the sixteen grandsons of Noah, and not to spend time looking at their respective sons, but since we have spent some time with the sons of Gomer and ****n, perhaps, we should look very briefly at a few of the grandsons of Ham. We do not wish to labor the question. The descendants of several of the grandsons of Ham are very easy for even the most casual Bible to identify, and for that reason, we will only notice the connections in passing. There is Philistim, obviously the ancestor of the Philistines, and Sidon, the founder of the ancient city that bears his name, Heth, the patriarch of the ancient Hittite empire, the Jebusite (Jebus was the ancient name of the city of Jerusalem), and the Amorite, the Girgasite, the Hivite, the Arkite, and the Sinite, ancient people who lived in the land of Canaan. The most prominent grandson of Ham was Nimrod, the founder of Babel (Babylon), Erech, and Accad and Calneh. Nimrod figured very prominently in the early days of paganism, and there is no other name that is so clearly traceable in the history of the various forms of the pagan religion. His city, Babylon, is synonymous with idolatry. But there is too much to be said about Nimrod to get started in this little book. Hopefully we shall take some time on
that subject later.
Last we come to the sons of Shem. Verse 22, "The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram."
