Gen. 10:24-32

The final part of Genesis 10 covers the children of Arphaxad, Shem's oldest child. There are a few things to consider with this genealogy.

This is mostly a description of where the children of Shem's oldest son Arphaxad and others wound up, except for one thing.

Worthy of note is that Peleg is born and it is not long after that the Earth was divided. This could have two meanings. One could be the separation of the large continent into separate continents. However, we showed that if that happened, it was almost surely during the Flood. The other of course is that the events of chapter 11 with the Tower of Babel occurred during his lifetime.

One wonders what 'in his days' might mean, but it is mostly considered that this is when he came to maturity. When he was the leader of those who would become God's chosen people. Of course, Shem was still alive at this point. Even Noah was. But as people aged much more quickly than before the Flood, it fell to on the younger generation much earlier to take the lead.

The earth was divided time as we shall see later, because people were uniting for a false unity. Unity and peace are not good when those things are used to try to go against God's plan. Remember, God's Way is easy. His burden is light. We humans just want our own way so much.

The only other thing to note here is that the people scattered rather quickly. For several hundred years after the earth was divided they wandered. Some information in Michael Oatd's book Life in the Great Ice Age shows how they could have easily covered all the earth.

Essentially, he notes that during the Ice Age, right after the Flood, there were land bridges between Spain and Morocco and between Russia and Alaska. The former would have been used by Japheth's descendants after they went into Europe and found it too cold and filled with glaciers.

It should also be noted that not every area was inhabited right away. Even secular scientists agree that Southern Africa was not inhabited by many people before several hundred years before Christ, which gives these people almost 2,000 years to make it down there. Madagascar was not inhabited till a few centuries after Christ, Iceland and New Zealand till centuries after that. It's possible that New Zealand was not inhabited till a little after 1000 A.D..

So, you can see how these things happened so easily. I could also mention how God's word was corrupted so quickly, but I will save that for some notes on Emperor worship when I mention Babel. Because, the situation in China is a telling example of how people, doing things their own way and not God's, can make things so bad.

 Because they took Emperor worship to such a level that only the elite were allowed to know of God. And yet, the Chinese language that developed contained symbols of knowledge of God that exist to this day, such as the symbol for "boat" containing the symbol for "vessel" and "eight" - the number of people saved in the Ark.

Gen. 10:21-23

Here, we see the sons of Shem discussed. There are several things worthy to note here.

God mentions these people last, even though they wind up being the ones who see God's chosen people come out of them; indeed, even the one from whom His people come is listed third. There are many lasts which shall be first and firsts which shall be last, Jesus reminds us. There is no importance to things like birth order to God, since He looks upon the heart.

"Wait," some might say, "wasn't it important to the Jewish people?" Only in two ways which are not connected to the way God sees us. The first is because the culture developed that way. We have seen before how we must follow God's Word and not the ways of man. Down through history, all the way back to Biblical times, we see the traditions of fallen man leading people away from God. Seeing oneself as important just because of birth or something that person has done leads easily to false pride, and God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. The second reason is connected to the first, and is the reason the first developed. The promised Messiah was supposed to come any time, and nobody knew exactly how or when. So, the first boy born was automatically seen as very important.

However, remember that King David of Israel, a man after God's own heart - the man who God promised that his seed would reign forever through the Messiah someday - was the last born in his family.

Speaking of lasts, one other interesting point - usually these genealogies only mention the people from among the firstborn, but here the last is mentioned. Birth order and other reasons God might have had for naming certain ones have both been discussed previously. However, one particular name stands out to me, at least, though it may escape the notice of some.

Uz is named - the land of Uz is where Job came from. We don't know if Uz named this area himself or if his descendants did. If his descendants did it's not necessarily wrong as long as one doesn't go overboard; America has a state and Federal District named after its first president, for instance, adn the man wanted nothing named after himself in his own lifetime. George Washington was a very humble man. And, Americans don't bow down to him or anything. A similar president with much named after him after his death - Abraham Lincoln - became known for freeing the slaves. Yet, according to one biography of him, after Richmond was captured near the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln toured the area and a former slave bowed down to him. Lincoln very quickly corrected him, "Never bow down to a man, it is not proper." And, the man then stood.

Job is considered by some accoutns the first book of the Bible to be written. It's possible Job lived at the time of Abraham, though that of Jacob may be a little more likely, siply based ont he life span of Job.

Well, if this land of Uz is named after this grandson of Shem, and people multiplied in thos early days after the Flood at about the same rate as before(notice that life spans go down, but people are still living several hundred years at first, meaning they could hve dozens of children), then it is possible that a large number of people could have inhabited that area. It would have been several hundred years after the Flood, after all.

The world was about to change drastically, however - even more so than it had changed from before the Flood.