Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TABLE OF NATIONS

Following the narrative of the Flood in Gen. 6–9, a schematic representation describing the expansion of humankind from the family of Noah to many families and their dispersion into many lands (10:1-32). In its present setting, it depicts the outworking of the divine blessing pronounced at creation and repeated after the Flood, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28; 9:1, 7). In contrast to the incident at Babel in Gen. 11, , the Table of Nations accounts for the diversification of human language and the spreading out of peoples on the earth as a process of genealogical expansion rather than as the result of divine intervention and judgment.

The Table takes the form of a segmented genealogy in which descendants branch out in each successive generation (compare the linear genealogy of Shem in Gen. 11:10-26, where one featured individual is named in each generation). It is organized with summarizing statements at the end of each of the lines of descent from Noah’s three sons, Japheth, Ham, and Shem (“These are the descendants of PN in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations”; Gen. 10:5, 20, 31). It concludes with a comprehensive summary in Gen. 10:32. The emphasis in these summaries on “lands, languages, and nations” is an important clue to the nature of this genealogy, which engages in ethnography by political geography rather than by ethnic origins. The geographical range reaches from northern Africa and Ethiopia in the south to the Caucasus Mountains in the north, and from Iran in the east to the Aegean in the west (and perhaps as far as Spain).

The descendants of Japheth (Gen. 10:2-4) extend above the northern reaches of the entire Fertile Crescent and westward above the Mediterranean Sea. The line of Ham (Gen. 10:6-20) extends from the south and west (North Africa and Ethiopia) to the north and east (Mesopotamia). The descendants of Shem (from which “Semite” is derived; Gen. 10:21-31) stand roughly between the other two, stretching from Anatolia in the west toward the south into Arabia and east to Elam.

Although portions of the Table may derive from as early as the 10th century b.c.e. (the time of Solomon), other parts seem to reflect familiarity with geo-political circumstances in the 7th century and priestly redaction in the 5th century.

Jeffrey S. Rogers

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TABLE OF NATIONS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)