Tag: Genesis 10

Nations and Kingdoms

Posted on by jovial_cynic
If Genesis 10 was written and/or edited during the Babylonian exile, it should be understood a reminder. Everyone who read it would have looked back to how God weaved history to bring us to the present.

The text suggests God doesn’t merely follow individual lives, but also Nations.

This isn’t some new revelation. It’s just that “nations” and “kingdoms” are statements about human achievement. They’re the largest things humans can construct. The only thing bigger than a kingdom is a bigger kingdom.

And as the text goes on, nations and kingdoms become a central theme in Scripture.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Posted on by jovial_cynic
Genesis 10 is the “Table of Nations.” It outlines the descendants of the three sons of Noah.

While there isn’t much narrative in this text (though there is some!), what you should notice is that all of Genesis 10 is a fulfillment of God’s 3x blessing to Noah:

Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every crawling thing that crawls on the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 8:17 (NASB)

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
Genesis 9:1 (NASB)

As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.
Genesis 9:7 (NASB)

Generations

Posted on by jovial_cynic
Genesis is full of genealogies.

5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 10:32, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, etc, etc. SO MANY!

They appear linked to blessings. It shows the blessed ones receiving blessings: their offspring.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. On the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
Genesis 5:1 (NASB)

These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
Genesis 6:9 (NASB)

Now these are the records of the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and sons were born to them after the flood.
Genesis 10:1 (NASB)

But the FIRST time this word “generations” (tôlḏôṯ) is used, it’s in an odd place, used in an odd way. It doesn’t appear to describe a blessed people at all.

It’s here, in Genesis 2:

[a] This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.
Genesis 2:4 (NASB)

The footnote for [a] says: “Literally: These are the generations”

It’s a “genealogy of the heavens and the earth.”

In the same way the blessing of a generation show the blessed (the parent) and the blessings (the children), perhaps we humans are meant to be a blessing to the heavens and earth God created.