(Genesis) Genesis 10:1-6 — J. Vernon McGee

Genesis 10 and the Origins of the Nations

Now, we come to chapter 10, and when we come to chapter 10, we are in this area here where we see the genealogies, actually the families, the origin of the nations of the world. Now this chapter 10 is far more important than the attention I'm going to give to it today.

The Ethnological Importance of Genesis 10

Now I regret that I can't give more attention to it, but we do have to cut corners in certain places, and very frankly, this is a chapter that will only interest certain folk who are interested in ethnology or anthropology and the story of man on the earth.

And I have before me a chart made by a man with his master's degree who has majored in ethnology, H .S. Miller, and it's a very complicated chart. It shows where all of the races of the world, the different nations came from.

You can find out here where you came from, and you may be sure that the sons of Japheth never are part of the Lost Tribes of Israel. They just don't get that way, and ethnology would never bear out that type of thing.

The Threefold Division Through Noah's Sons

That makes this a very interesting chapter, and by the way, this man who got his master's in this field used the 10th chapter of being basic to any study that there is a threefold division of the human family today, three major divisions in ethnology, and revealed in these three sons of Noah, Ham, Shem, and Japheth.

Now we have given to us here in this 10th chapter the genealogies of all three of them. You have Japheth in verses 2 and 5, and then we have those that are given of Ham, verses 6 through 20, and they were the ones outstanding at the very beginning, by the way.

And then you have the sons of Shem, verses 21 to 33, and you find that the same pattern that we've had so far is being followed, and it will be followed right through the Bible, for that matter. God gives the rejected line first, and a word concerning it, then He drops that subject not to be brought up again, by the way, and then He gives the accepted line, the line that's leading to Christ.

The Genealogy of Japheth

So you have here this threefold division of the human family. Let me read again. Now, these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, and under them were sons born after the flood. The three sons of Noah, and now the sons of Japheth.

We have Gomer, Magog, Madai, and all of that. Now in this chart that I have before me, if you wanted to follow through in that, you'd find out that the Scythians, the Slavs, Russians, Bulgarians, Bohemians, Polish, Slovaks, Crotians, all came from Magog, and then from Madai, the Indians came from there, and the Iranic races, Medes, Persians, Afghans, Kurds, and then from Javan, why we have the Greeks, Romans, and the Romance nations, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and so on.

Then you have coming from Tyrus, the Thracians, the Teutons, the Germans, and from them you have the East Germanic, and the European races, the North Germanic, or the Scandinavians, and the West Germanic, and from them the High German, the Low German, the Angles, and the Saxons, and the Jews, the Anglo-Saxon race, the English people.

The Limits of the Ethnological Chart

May I say to you, this is a tremendously interesting chart, and I wish that it was possible for us to send it out, but we have no supervision over that chart at all, and I'd get in trouble if I attempted to send it out.

The Genealogy and Curse of Ham

But it is extremely interesting. And then you have the sons of Ham given here, and we begin, and the sons of Ham, Cush, Mizraim, and Foot, and Canaan. Now you see, there were other sons of Ham, but the curse only went upon Canaan.

Why it didn't go upon the others? I'm not prepared to say. I recognize there are others that can give you the whole thing. Now from Cush there came the Ethiopians, and may I say that actually from the Canaanites you get the Phoenicians, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, the Gergesites, Hivites, and all the other electorate lights too, by the way.

But frankly, you find that the Africans came from Cush, and they're the Ethiopians. Mizraim, the Egyptians, and the Libyans, you see. So that all of these races, they were Hamitic, if you please. This is a tremendous division.