Genesis Deeper ㊲ By Their Families, Languages, and Nations · Why Does the Bible Include a Record Full of Names? (Genesis 10:1~32)
This series takes one Bible passage at a time and looks at it a little more closely. The images are free to use in worship, in class, and on social media.
Now this is the history of the generations of the sons of Noah and of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. … Of these were the islands of the nations divided in their lands, everyone after his language, after their families, in their nations. … These are the sons of Ham, after their families, according to their languages, in their lands and their nations. … These are the sons of Shem, by their families, according to their languages, lands, and nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah, by their generations, according to their nations. The nations divided from these in the earth after the flood.
Genesis 10:1, 5, 20, 31~32 (World English Bible) · passage Genesis 10:1~32
1. After the Flood, a Chapter Full of Names
When Noah and his sons came out of the ship (the ark), God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth” (9:1). Then the text tells us, “These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, the whole earth was populated” (9:19). Genesis 10, today’s chapter, writes down the people who spread out in that way, one name at a time.
The first verse of chapter 10 ends with the words ‘Sons were born to them after the flood.’ The last verse, verse 32, also ends with the nations being divided in the earth ‘after the flood.’ The earth had been emptied by the flood, and now it is being filled with people again. The chapter wraps that story in the words ‘after the flood’ at its beginning and at its end.
But when you open this chapter, names catch your eye before any story does. First the sons of Japheth, then the sons of Ham, then the sons of Shem: Gomer, Magog, Cush, Mizraim, Canaan, Elam, Aram, Joktan, and many more, one after another. Apart from a short story about a mighty man named Nimrod (verses 8~12), almost all of it is a list of who was whose son.
If you count the names listed as descendants under Noah’s three sons, there are fourteen on Japheth’s side, thirty on Ham’s side, and twenty six on Shem’s side. That makes seventy in all. Names of lands and cities are not part of this count. A name like ‘the Philistines,’ which is not called anyone’s son but is only said to have come from a certain family (verse 14), is not counted either. When the same name appears again in a different family, it is counted again. As you read through these seventy names, a question comes up. Why is this family record, full of nothing but names, in the Bible at all?
2. A Chapter We Want to Skip
Family records like this are where people reading the Bible from the beginning often stop. One unfamiliar name follows another, and there is hardly any event to hold on to. For readers who have been following the story of Noah and the ship, chapter 10 feels as if the story suddenly turned into a long list of names. That is why many people skip this chapter and move on to the story of the tower of Babel in chapter 11.
Even if we do not skip it, something still bothers us. Most of these names seem to have nothing to do with us today. Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, has not even appeared yet. So did the Bible wander off onto a side road for a while in this chapter? Is it just an old list of peoples that has nothing to do with God’s story?
The text has left signs so that we will not read the chapter that way. Each time the list for one of the three families ends, it adds almost the same words, three times in all. Then, in the last verse, verse 32, it gathers all those names under one word. That word appears again two chapters later, at the very place where God calls Abram (Abram is Abraham’s original name; in chapter 17 God changes it to Abraham).
3. Going Deeper · Writing Down the Names That Would Be Blessed
Here is the answer first. Genesis 10 gathers the peoples who spread over the whole earth after the flood into the family record of one household, Noah’s, and writes them down one name at a time. And the word ‘families’ used here for those peoples appears again in chapter 12, when God tells Abram, ‘All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.’ Before God called one man, he first wrote down the names of the peoples that blessing would reach.
First, let us look at the words that repeat. Verse 5, where the list of Japheth’s sons ends, verse 20, where the list of Ham’s sons ends, and verse 31, where the list of Shem’s sons ends, all close with almost the same words. Verse 31 says, ‘by their families, according to their languages, lands, and nations.’ Verse 5 puts them in a different order: lands first, then language, families, and nations. Even so, all three places name the same four things. A family here means a large clan, a group of households that comes from one ancestor. A language is the speech people use. A land is the place where they live. A nation is the people they form together.
Each time the text finishes the list for one of the three families, it stops to name these four things. It records, one after another, that people speak different languages, live in different lands, and form different nations. It does not hide this, and it does not treat it as a problem.
But the last verse, verse 32, gathers all these different households into one line. “These are the families of the sons of Noah…” Their languages, lands, and nations differ, but they are all families of the sons of Noah. Every people whose name appears in this chapter goes back to one of Noah’s three sons. The households that became great nations and the small households that left nothing behind but a name are written into one family record in the same way.
Now let us move two chapters ahead. In chapter 12, God calls Abram and says this:
“…All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” (12:3)
The word ‘families’ here is the same word in Hebrew as the ‘families’ of chapter 10 (the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew). The World English Bible translates both with the same English word, so you can see the link for yourself. Chapter 10, verse 32 says ‘the families of the sons of Noah,’ and chapter 12, verse 3 says ‘all the families of the earth.’ When God spoke to Abram of ‘all the families,’ he did not mean some vague crowd. He meant the very families written down name by name earlier in chapter 10.
So chapter 10 is not a side road. Before God called one man, Abram, God first wrote into the Bible the names of the peoples who would be blessed through Abram. Calling one man did not mean pushing the other peoples aside. On the contrary, chapter 12, verse 3 says that ‘all the families of the earth’ will be blessed through Abram.
4. Word Study · Mishpachah · Goy · Lashon
Here are three Hebrew words from today’s passage.
① family · mishpachah (מִשְׁפָּחָה). It means a clan, a large extended family that comes from one ancestor. In chapter 10 it appears in five verses: 5, 18, 20, 31, and 32. The World English Bible translates it as ‘families’ every time. In all of Genesis, the first place this word appears is, surprisingly, not about people but about animals. When the animals left the ship, the text says that every animal, ‘after their families, went out of the ship’ (8:19). That ‘families’ is this word. Just as the animals came out of the ship family by family, in chapter 10 people spread over the earth family by family. And in chapter 12, verse 3, this word becomes ‘all the families of the earth’ who will be blessed.
② nation · goy (גּוֹי). It means ‘nation’ or ‘people.’ The first place this word appears in Genesis is chapter 10, verse 5. It appears six times in chapter 10 alone, and the World English Bible translates it as ‘nations.’ After chapter 10, the next place this word appears is chapter 12, verse 2.
“I will make of you a great nation…” (12:2)
The ‘great nation’ that would come from Abram is the same word, goy. Beside the many nations written in chapter 10, God says he will raise up one more. Because it is called by the same word, that nation takes its place among the nations of chapter 10.
③ language · lashon (לָשׁוֹן). Its basic meaning is ‘tongue,’ and it refers to the ‘language’ a tongue speaks. In all of Genesis, this word appears with the meaning ‘language’ only in three verses of chapter 10 (verses 5, 20, and 31). In the very next chapter, 11:1 says, “The whole earth was of one language…” In the World English Bible it is the same word, ‘language,’ as in chapter 10, but in Hebrew it is a different word (safah, whose basic meaning is ‘lip’). Chapter 10 uses lashon three times to describe people living with their own different languages. In this chapter, different languages are not written down as a problem. Like families, lands, and nations, they are written down as one part of what makes a people. And all these families who speak different languages are included in ‘all the families of the earth’ in chapter 12, verse 3.
5. One More Thing · Israel Is Not on This List
As mentioned briefly earlier, neither Israel nor Abraham is on this long list yet. Let us look at this a little more closely. Among Shem’s descendants, Peleg, whose father was Eber, does appear, but the text does not follow Peleg’s family any further (verse 25). Peleg’s family continues separately in ‘the generations of Shem’ that begins in chapter 11, verse 10, and at the end of that line Abram is born (11:26).
Instead of Peleg’s family, chapter 10 writes down all thirteen sons of Peleg’s brother Joktan without leaving out a single one (verses 26~29). It is a family that does not lead to Abraham, yet every name is kept. Names that come up again later in Israel’s story are here too: Mizraim (Egypt), Canaan, the Philistines, and Asshur (Assyria). These are peoples Israel would at times clash with. In this chapter, all of them are written as descendants of Noah, side by side with Israel’s ancestors in one family record.
From chapter 12 on, God’s story narrows to the one household of Abraham. But before it narrows, the text spreads out the households of the whole world in one chapter, even Joktan’s family, which does not lead to Abraham. Then in chapter 12, where God calls Abram, verse 3 brings this wide picture back with the words ‘all the families of the earth.’ From the very beginning, the story of Abraham’s one household carries the families of the whole earth within it.
6. For Us Today
This passage leaves us with one message. Genesis 10 wrote down even the names of unfamiliar peoples, one by one, as families of the sons of Noah, and the blessing God means to give is aimed at all of those families.
As the text writes down the seventy names of Noah’s descendants, it gives a long explanation for none of them except Nimrod. It says almost nothing about what these people achieved. It simply writes down their names. Even a person who left nothing behind but a name receives a line in this chapter.
We often lump people together into groups. We call the new neighbors ‘those people next door,’ a coworker with a different accent ‘someone from over there,’ and a person from another country simply ‘a foreigner.’ There are also many people we see every day without knowing their names: the cashier at the corner store, the security guard at the front desk of our building, the parent of a child in another class at our child’s school. At such times, part of us may think, ‘That person has nothing to do with me.’
Genesis 10, too, has many names that seem to have nothing to do with Israel’s story. Yet the text did not leave those names out or put them on a separate list. In this chapter they are not ‘those people over there.’ They are families of the sons of Noah.
And God did not forget those families. Two chapters later, when he called Abram, God said that ‘all the families of the earth’ would be blessed. The people whose names we do not know, the people whose language and hometown are different from ours, are also among ‘all the families of the earth.’ To them, we too may be strangers whose names they do not know. Even if we are strangers to each other, within the promise given to Abram we all stand in the same place.
If there is someone you see every day but whose name you have never learned, today might be a good day to ask for that person’s name and call them by it. Once you know someone’s name, that person begins to look less like ‘someone over there’ and more like one particular person. Just as Genesis 10 wrote down seventy names one by one, may today be a day of writing the names of the people around you, one by one, on your heart.
“God, you remember the families of the whole earth by name. Keep us from lumping people together as ‘those people over there,’ and help us see each one as a person with a name of their own. Help us remember that the blessing you promised Abraham is aimed at all the families of the earth. As we call the people we meet today by name, let this be a day of sharing that blessing together. Amen.”
🕊 How to Use This in Ministry
Opening Question
Ask, “Who can name every friend in our class without leaving anyone out?” and let a few children try. Then say, “Today we are reading a chapter in the Bible with seventy names of Noah’s descendants. Why do you think God wrote down so many names?” and move into the passage.
Activity
Draw a large tree on the board. Write ‘Noah’ on the trunk and ‘Japheth,’ ‘Ham,’ and ‘Shem’ on three big branches. After reading 10:1 and 10:32 together, give each child a paper leaf card. Have each child choose one name from chapter 10 that is listed as someone’s son (not a land or a city) and write it on the leaf. The children find in the text whose descendant that name is and stick it on the right branch (verses 2~5 are Japheth’s descendants, verses 6~20 are Ham’s, and verses 21~31 are Shem’s). Have tape or glue ready ahead of time. When all the leaves are on, read 12:3, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you,” together, and write ‘A blessing for all the families’ at the top of the tree. Finally, show the picture ‘by their families, according to their languages, lands, and nations’ from today’s images and ask, “How do the three villages in the picture look different from each other? And whose descendants does the Bible say the people of those villages all were?”
Application
Give each child two more small leaf cards. On one, have them write their own name and stick it, not on a branch, but around the words ‘A blessing for all the families’ at the top of the tree. On the other, have them think of one friend or neighbor whose name they do not know yet, write who that person is (for example, the grandmother next door or a child in the next class), and under it write, “This week I will ask your name and call you by it.” They take that card home. If a child asks, “Which branch am I on?” answer, “Our names are not in chapter 10, but we are included in ‘all the families of the earth’ in 12:3.” Before the group ends, greet one another by calling each other’s names.
🖼️ Today’s Four Images · Press and hold or right-click to save
the generations of the sons of Noah and of Shem, Ham, and Japheth |
Sons were born to them after the flood |
by their families, according to their languages, lands, and nations |
the islands of the nations divided in their lands |
📄 Image license CC0 (public domain) · Free to use, modify, and redistribute without attribution.
🤖 These images were created with AI (Grok).
📖 Genesis Deeper ㉜ Multiply on the Earth · God’s call to multiply on the day the flood ended, a call that chapter 10 shows coming true name by name
Origin Bible · Mission Zedero
Contact joypej@gmail.com
✍️ This article was written with the help of AI and reviewed by a person.
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