Bible Commentaries
Genesis 10

Verses 1-9

XVI

ORIGIN OF NATIONS AND LANGUAGES

Genesis 10:1-11:9

Genesis, section six: "These are the generations of the sons of Noah."

1. Unity of stock and speech.

2. Attempt at centralization.

3. Confusion of tongues.

4. Consequent grouping into nations.

5. Assignment of their respective territories.

6. Dispersion to allotted homes.

The tenth chapter of Genesis, with the first nine verses of the eleventh chapter, constitutes our sixth division of the book, under the title: These are the generations of the sons of Noah. This section closes the Bible history of man as a race. Next to the account of the creation, and the fall of man, and of the flood, it is the most valuable gem of literature. Indeed the most forcible writers fall short of the reality in attempting to express the significance and value of this record. Some of them say that it is the most ancient and reliable account of the origin of nations. But this language implies that there are in the world’s literature parallel histories, though later and less reliable. But there is no other account. This history has no parallel. It is unique, without a model and without a shadow. It is both ancient and solitary. Moreover, to call it the ancient and solitary history of merely the origin of nations falls far below the facts. It not only cites the sires from whom all peoples have descended, but also tells us by whom, where, why, how, and when the people of one stock and tongue were parted into separate nations and divers tongues, and by whom and in what lifetime came the allotment, of their respective territories. It is therefore the foundation of ethnology, philology, and geography; the root of history, prophecy, and religion.

UNITY OF STOCK AND SPEECH
The whole of the tenth chapter, with the first nine verses of the eleventh, should be treated as one section. The tenth chapter cannot be understood without this paragraph of the eleventh chapter. The table of the nations comes first, and then follows the explanation of the division into nations. So that in order of time the nine verses of the eleventh chapter precede nearly all of the tenth chapter. We therefore take as our starting point a clause of the sixth verse of the eleventh chapter: "And Jehovah said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language." Their oneness of speech is expressed by two discriminating words: "And the whole land was of one lip, and one stock of words." "Stock of words" means the materials of languages. "Lip," one of the organs of articulation, denotes manner of speaking, or the use of the material. Family ties and common speech hold them together. Hence as they multiplied and began to move out for homes, the trend of the movement was in one direction only. A proverb of our day is, "Westward the march of Empire takes its way." It was not so in the beginning. The movement was toward the rising, not the setting sun. As the years roll by and the population rapidly increases, this eastward tide of emigration becomes as a mighty river in volume. But all migrations of men fall under some leadership. The most daring, capable and dominant spirit, by sheer force of character and qualities, naturally forges to the front and directs and controls the movement, and as power increases, his ambition soars. He begins to scheme and plan toward selfish ends. Our record names the man. Not without adequate design does the author in giving his tables of nations turn aside to sketch an episode when he comes to a certain man. "Ham begat Cush, and Gush begat Nimrod; and he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before Jehovah: . . . And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went forth into Assyria, and builded Nineveh and Calah (the same is the great city)." This descendant of Ham becomes a leader. His name signifies "The Rebel," or "we shall rebel." He makes himself a king. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel in the land of Shinar.

This episode of the tenth chapter connects with the migration eastward in the eleventh chapter: "And it came to pass, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said to one another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build us a city" (Genesis 11:2-4). In v. II we find that the city was Babel. Here, then, we find the man, the leader. He was a mighty hunter, this mighty man, as later (1 Samuel 24:11; Jeremiah 16:16), a hunter of men. The expression, "before the Lord," evidently means that he pushed his designs of whatever kind in open and brazen defiance of God’s sight and rule.

ATTEMPT AT CENTRALIZATION
There now comes into his mind this ambitious scheme, the establishment of a world empire. To accomplish this there must be a center of unity, a city, and to insure stability and to hedge against the natural and disintegrating fear of another deluge there must be a refuge. To induce submission on the part of his following they must be supplied with a motive: "let us make a name." This brings the situation into similarity with the conditions that preceded and necessitated the deluge as set forth in Genesis 6:4, the days of the giants and the mighty men, men of renown. This inordinate thirst for fame is idolatrv It is the most cruel of the passions. Everything beautiful, good, holy, and true goes down before it. As an illustration consider the ambition attributed to an ancient painter: "Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, among the Olythian captives Philip of Macedonia brought home to sell, bought one very old man. And when he had him at his house put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus whom he was then about to paint."

On this excerpt N. P. Willis writes his famous poem, "Parrhasius." According to the poet when the tortured victim asks for pity the painter replies:

I’d rack thee though I knew a thousand lives were perishing in thine

What were ten thousand to a fame like mine

Again, when the dying captive threatens him with the hereafter, the painter mocks him by denial of future existence:

Yet there’s a deathless name!

A spirit that the smouldering vault shall spurn,

And like a steadfast planet mount and burn –

And though its crown of flame

Consume my brain to ashes as it shone

By all the fiery stars I I’d bind it on!

Aye – though it bid me rifle

My heart’s last fount for its insatiate thirst –

Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first –

Though it should bid me stifle

The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,

And taunt its mother till my brain went wild –

All – I would do it all – Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot –

Thrust foully unto earth to be forgot!

Upon which the poet concludes:

How like a mounting devil in the heart

Rules the unreined ambition! Let it once

But play the monarch, and its haughty brow

Glows with beauty that bewilders thought

And unthrones peace forever. Putting on

The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns

The heart to ashes, and with not a spring

Left in the bosom for the spirit’s lip,

We look upon our splendour and forget

The thirst of which we perish!

We are thus prepared to understand the history: "And they said, Come, let us build a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:4).

All popular movements of this kind are directed by leaders who suggest the watchwords and crystallize the agitation into forms of their own choosing. The sin of the movement was manifold. It meant rebellion against God and ruin to the race. The divine plan was diffusion, and the command was to push out in all directions, not one; to occupy and subdue all the earth. But Nimrod’s plan was to keep the people all together under his leadership to serve his ends. The object is thus expressed: "Lest we be scattered." To this day tyrants pursue the same plan and put embargoes on outward movements. And to this day God’s providence has thwarted them by bringing about some discovery or attraction that draws out and diffuses population, relieving the congestion at, the crowded centers of life. A very interesting lesson of history is the study of the ways of Providence in sending out migrations of men to colonize the unoccupied parts of the earth. More wonderful and interesting is the way of that Providence in dispersing Christians that they may carry the gospel to all the world. The one thing that made Nimrod’s plan of centralization possible was the one language of the people. The audacity and rebellion of the plan provoked divine inquisition and judgment. To allow its successful execution would defeat every purpose of God concerning world occupation and bring about a corruption of the race equal to that of the antediluvians. A world crisis had arrived. The case called for heroic treatment and instant relief. What was the divine remedy?

CONFUSION OF TONGUES
"Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So Jehovah scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off building the city. Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because Jehovah did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did Jehovah scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth" (Genesis 11:7-9).

This is one of the mightiest and most far-reaching miracles of history. It transcends in importance all the plagues of Egypt. Indeed it finds no counterpart until the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Dr. Conant thus quotes from Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology:

Humanity cannot have left that condition, in which there was no distinction of peoples, but only of races, without a spiritual crisis, which must have been of the deepest significance, must have taken place in the basis of human consciousness itself. . . . For we cannot conceive of different peoples without different languages; and language is something spiritual. If difference of peoples is not something that was not from the first, but is something that has arisen, then must this also hold true of the different languages. . . . Here we fall in with the oldest account of the human race, the Mosaic writings; toward which so many are disinclined, only because they know not what to do with it, can neither understand nor use it. Genesis puts the rise of peoples in connection with the rise of different languages; but in such a way, that the confounding of the language is the cause, the rise of the peoples the effect.

To evade the significance of this miracle the higher critics resort to their usual refuge, the document hypothesis. They magnify the tenth chapter and disparage the first nine verses of the eleventh. The former, an Elohist document, is credible; the latter, a Jehovah document, is incredible. They claim that chapter 10 leaves us to suppose that the nations were distributed upon the face of the earth in obedience to the natural laws which govern colonization and migration, and that the present striking varieties in human languages are wholly the natural result of the dispersion of the nations. The tenth chapter does not leave us to any such suppositions, the episode of Nimrod, the references to Peleg, and the Genesis 10:5; Genesis 10:20; Genesis 10:31, summing up respectively the families of Japheth, Ham, and Shem, demand the explanation in the next chapter. When asked to account naturally for these striking and irreconcilable varieties in the few great parent languages, they reply: Philology has as yet nothing very definite to say as to the possibility of reducing to one the larger families of human speech. In fact, their oracle, philology, is not merely dubious – it is dumb. Dr. Conant well sums up all that philology can do with this problem:

The diversities in the languages of the earth present a problem which philosophy has in vain laboured to solve. Comparative philology has shown, however, that many different languages are grouped together by common affinities, as branches of the same family, all having the same original language for their common parent. Notwithstanding the great number and diversity of languages, they may all be traced to a very few original parent tongues. The difficulty lies in the essential and irreconcilable diversity between those several parent tongues, not the remotest affinities existing to indicate a common origin, or any historical relation; a problem for which speculative philosophy can find no solution.

They cannot account for it naturally, but deny the supernatural account, passing the matter by with a sneer, "Oh that account is found only in the Jehovah document." Or if they wish to be a little more respectful, they say, "The fact is that here, as elsewhere, the Jehovist aims not so much at presenting historical information as showing the ethical and religious significance of the leading points in history and the chief changes in man’s condition." How happens it that they have such an infallible knowledge of the aim of the Jehovist, and how can there be an ethical and religious significance of history, which is not history but falsehood? If the historical element of the first nine verses of the eleventh chapter be eliminated there is nothing of any kind left, out of which to construct ethics or religion. If the aim of the writer is not history, then words are not signs of ideas. It would be far manlier and more consistent to follow the more destructive higher critics and expunge what they call the Jehovistic record as spurious and unworthy, than to weakly hold on to it and discredit it. The following maxims of literary composition have long obtained:

Never introduce a god into the story unless there be an occasion for a god.

When introduced, let his speech and deeds be worthy of a god.

Let the result of his intervention be worthy of a god. Here was a worthy occasion. Race ruin was imminent and unavoidable by human means. Here was speech and deed worthy of divinity, and results too grand and far-reaching and beneficial to admit of human conception or execution. The author of the book follows his own appropriate method in the use of the divine means. When the divine being, invisible and unapproachable and unknowable, is the subject, the name is Elohim. Whenever it is God manifested particularly by interventions of mercy, it is Jehovah and Jehovah God.

CONSEQUENT GROUPINGS INTO NATIONS
The first effect of the confusion of tongues is the stopping of the work, from inability to comprehend each other. The consciousness that a supernatural power had intervened would necessarily fill them with dread, lest a greater evil befall them if they persisted in disobedience. Those who could best understand each other would naturally group themselves and form the nucleus of a separate nation. And this grouping also was naturally according to family origin, whether of Shem, Ham, or Japheth, thus accounting for the three great root languages whose barriers philology cannot pass. This harmonized also with…

ASSIGNMENT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE TERRITORIES
The proof of this divine allotment of territory is abundant in the lesson and elsewhere. In summing up the histories of the sons of Japheth the record says, "Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations." Similarly of Ham: "These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations." And of Shem: "These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." More particular is the testimony in Genesis 10:25: "And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan." This evidence not only establishes the fact of the division of territory, but shows that the event was so extraordinary and impressive as to give a name to a child born at the time, namely, Peleg, i.e., Division. It is not probable that they could agree among themselves as to the partition of territory. This question could be settled only by supreme authority. And to this fact testify the Scriptures. Paul said at Athens, "And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26). But the author of Genesis in another book puts the matter beyond controversy:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, When he separated the children of men, He set the bounds of the peoples According to the number of the children of Israel. – Deuteronomy 32:8

This allotment of territory, after the confusion of tongues was followed by an irresistible divine impulse that brought about…

DISPERSION TO ALLOTTED HOMES

They had said, "Lest we be scattered." When God acts the record says, "So Jehovah scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off building the city. Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because Jehovah did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did Jehovah scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth" (Genesis 11:8-9). It has been objected that the division of the land which gave rise to the naming of Peleg, came too early to be connected with the dispersion following the confusion of tongues. The objection is ill advised. The division and assignment of territory long preceded the dispersion. The very sin of the attempt at centralization consisted in its deliberate rebellion against this prior division. In the order of our chapter we have considered the division after the confusion of tongues, not because it was then ordained, but because it was then enforced. We are now prepared to take up chapter 10, and consider specially the parts of the earth occupied by the descendants of the several sons of Noah, which, however, is reserved for another chapter.

QUESTIONS
1. What can you Bay of the value of the tenth chapter of Genesis, (1) as literature; (2) as history; (3) as instruction?

2. In order of time, which comes first. Genesis 11:1-9, or the tenth chapter, and why this order?

3. What, then, was the starting point and what held the people together at this time?

4. As they multiplied, what was the trend of their movement and what modern proverb to the contrary?

5. Who became their leader, what was the meaning of his name, what great cities did he build and where?

6. What was the meaning of "a mighty hunter" and "before the Lord"?

7. What was his ambitious scheme, the essentials to its accomplishment and what was its motive?

8. Give an illustration of cruel, unbridled ambition.

9. What was the manifold sin of this movement and the divine remedy for it?

10. What was God’s plan of defeating such movements in modern times?

11. What was the counterpart of this mighty miracle?

12. What is Dr. Conant’s explanation of the rise of the different peoples?

13. How do the critics try to evade the significance of this miracle and what is this expositor’s reply?

14. According to Dr. Conant what has comparative philology shown with respect to the many different languages?

15. What is the position of the more respectful (mediating) critics and this expositor’s reply?

16. What three maxims of literary composition obtain and their application to the matter in hand?

17. What was the first effect of the confusion of tongues and how account for the three great root languages?

18. What is the Scripture proof of the divine allotment?

19. What brought about the dispersion, and how?

20. What objection is sometimes urged with respect to the dispersion, and the reply thereto?