Beyond The Basics

Transcript:

Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast. My name is Dan Snyder and I am your host. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Beyond the Basics where we are exploring the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, one chapter at a time.

Well this week we get into Genesis chapter 10. If you remember, we just finished up the story of the flood. Noah exited the ark, made a sacrifice, and God made a covenant with Noah. And now we get into Genesis 10 where we get another long list of names, which I know is everybody’s favorite, but I’m going to try and make this interesting and hopefully informative. And I think at the end you’ll see that even a long list of names is still going to point to Jesus.

So this list is commonly called the Table of Nations. And the reason is because this chapter explains how in the biblical worldview all of the nations came to be. And we’re going to go through and see.

I’m not going to break down this list name by name. There is a lot of names on here, a lot of speculation about where each family ends up and what nations they turn into. I’m not going to speculate too much on that because I just don’t know. I’m not an ancient historian. I’m not somebody who, you know, knows about these things. But I’m going to give you a little bit of information.

So first, let’s do a quick overview of the chapter. So we find that the nations are dispersed after the flood. The sons of Japheth, or the descendants of Japheth, they spread across the coastlands. So that’s going to be again in a biblical worldview, speaks of far away places, far away countries. So the sons of Japheth spread far away. The descendants of Ham, or the sons of Ham, become the nations of Babylon, Egypt, and then the Canaanite tribes. And then the descendants of Shem become the Hebrews and the Arabs. And all this put together gives us a total of 70 nations. I’ll leave that up to you to count each one. I counted it does equal 70 as long as you leave out Nimrod who is not a nation, he’s an individual person.

So why is the number 70 significant? 70 indicates completeness on a large scale. So when we think of the number 7, we think of completion, obviously we think of creation first. Creation was complete after seven days. So 70 would be on a much larger scale. And then of course the number 70 is 70 times 10 and 10 we know is indicative of God’s authority. As we’ve talked about the number 10, we see the 10 commandments, the 10 plagues.

So this number 70, it’s saying this is the complete list of nations under God’s authority. This is what God has determined the nations to be. Other places that we see the number 70. 70 people went down to Egypt in Jacob’s family. There were 70 elders in Israel when Israel left Egypt. And then we’re supposed to forgive others 70 times seven.

So in all three of these examples, that number 70 indicates completion on a large scale. The verse in Genesis that talks about Jacob’s family that says that 70 were all the persons of the house. So that’s Jacob’s entire family. The elders in Israel, the 70 elders comprised the entirety of the governing body of Israel. Then, forgiving others 70 times seven, that’s taking it up to even a larger scale and saying you need to forgive somebody over and over and over and over.

Another point to make about this list of nations is that geographical accuracy is not the point of the chapter. You will find if you start to look up these nations and map it out that some of the descriptions is not quite accurate. Some of the reasons for that is because it’s described in relation to Israel, not according to a perfect map where you see north, south, east, west. The intention is to show that all the nations came from three sons. It is not necessarily to say that this is exactly where each nation ended up on a map.

And then in this list of names, in this genealogy, we see that the Hebrew tendency to list the non-chosen lines before the chosen seed line pops up again. So Japheth is listed first, Ham is listed second, and then Shem is listed third.

So the sons of Japheth are seven sons and seven grandsons. So again, that number seven means the completion or totality of all the coastlands peoples. Again, that word coastlands tends to signify the most far off nations, the most distant regions.

For example, in Isaiah 60 verse nine, it says: For the coastlands shall hope for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from afar, there’s silver and gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has made you beautiful.

So there’s a lot of debate about where these people settled specifically. Generally most scholars agree that they are Mediterranean and European peoples. For example Turks, Greeks, Russians, Medes, Phoenicians and then they go even as far as Tarshish which is likely the biblical name for Spain or at least a city in modern-day Spain.

Now most of these names don’t pop up again throughout the rest of the Bible except for in Ezekiel 38 through 39 we see several of these sons of Japheth allied against Israel and this is going to include Gomer, Magog, Jevon, Tubal, Meshach. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing those names correctly. That’s going to be the case for most of these genealogies when we go through them. I’m not a Hebrew expert, so I don’t know if I’m pronouncing correctly. So please forgive me if I mispronounce some of these names.

But anyway, Ezekiel 38 through 39 says that these nations will come against Israel in the latter days and be completely destroyed. And in fact, Israel is going to be burying the dead from this alliance for seven months. Now, we’ll get more into this when we get to the book of Ezekiel, is, I mean, who knows? It’s probably going to be 10 years from now at the rate we’re going, but that’s okay.

But this is, in my opinion, a prophecy that is a little bit muddled. I think that this is talking about the time right before Jesus returns, the alliance against Israel, but it’s also talking about the alliance at the end of the millennial reign of Jesus.

We find in many Old Testament prophecies about Jesus, Messianic prophecies, that they’re talking about Jesus’ first coming and his second coming at the same time. Isaiah 61:1 is a really good example of this. It says: The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

And that’s verses one and the first part of verse two. And Jesus quoted that in Luke chapter four saying, “This is fulfilled today.”

But that prophecy doesn’t end there. It goes on to say, “And the day of vengeance of our God.”

That part of the prophecy had not been fulfilled yet when Jesus came at his first coming. That’s fulfilled at the second coming. So that prophecy has a two-fold fulfillment, one at Jesus’ first coming, one at Jesus’ second coming.

And I believe that this prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39 is the same way. It has one fulfillment right before Jesus’ second coming and another fulfillment at the end of the millennial reign. And where that line is drawn, where that difference is, where the marker is for the difference between the beginning of the millennial kingdom and the end of the millennial kingdom. I don’t know where that is. I mean, I probably won’t ever know. We’ll have to let things play out. But I do believe that that’s the case. So I think that’s interesting that those nations are going to be allied against Israel right before Jesus returns.

So then we move on to the sons of Ham. Ham had four sons. There are seven grandsons from Cush and seven grandsons from Egypt. Some of your translations will say something different there, but that word is just the Hebrew word for the English “Egypt.”

Let me switch to a different translation. Some of your translations there will have Mizraim instead of Egypt. That’s just the Hebrew word for Egypt. That’s what the Hebrews called it. Egypt is the English word. So that’s all that is.

So seven grandsons from Egypt and then twelve grandsons from Canaan. So again, we have the number seven twice indicating the completeness or the totality of these two nations. And then 12 grandsons from Canaan, which is interesting because these are the tribes that Israel had to destroy in Canaan and Israel also had 12 tribes. So these 12 grandsons from Canaan indicates kind of an antithesis to Israel. And so all these nations, all these peoples, these families populated Africa and Asia.

Then it goes down to verse 8 where we read that Cush fathered Nimrod and it says that he was the first on the earth to be a mighty man. And that word there, mighty man, is the word Gabor, which is the same word used to describe the Nephilim in Genesis 6.

This is saying Nimrod was just like the Nephilim that were on the earth right before the flood. So this implies that Nimrod was a hunter of men. He was a murderer. In fact, his name, Nimrod, means we will rebel. So Nimrod was rebellious. He was arrogant. He was murderous. He hunted people. He was just like the Nephilim, the wicked, bloodthirsty Nephilim that were on the earth before the flood.

So we read this phrase, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord. And that phrasing is strange in English because in English that doesn’t sound like anything too controversial. You know, if you were to say, I’m standing before the Lord, we use that phrase commonly in Christianese, in Christian vernacular, to indicate that we’re coming to the Lord in prayer, in humility, in worship. But this phrase actually is, it’s indicating the opposite. It’s saying that he’s standing in opposition to the Lord.

Then it goes on to tell us that he is the founder of Babylon. So he’s actually an antichrist type, meaning he is someone that will foreshadow or give insight into what the Antichrist will look like one day when the Antichrist appears on the earth. Because he was the one who founded Babylon, the Antichrist will reestablish Babylon on the world stage and Babylon will actually be destroyed at that time. So Nimrod foreshadows the Antichrist here.

And this is going to restart the pre-flood narrative. Again, we mentioned that Nimrod is a Gabor. He is a Nephilim. And so just like before the flood, we have Gabor on the earth again. We have Nephilim on the earth again. And we’re going to explore this more in chapter 11 about the same story playing out after the flood as it was before the flood.

So after Nimrod is introduced, then the author describes in verses 15 through 20, the territory of Canaan. The boundaries of all the Canaanite tribes are established and this foreshadows the land that is given to Abraham later on in chapter 12.

Then at the end of the chapter, the sons of Seth are introduced. He has 12 sons and grandsons until we get to Peleg and Joktan. Again, please forgive my butchering of that name. And it says that the earth is divided in the days of Peleg and Joktan. So then it goes on to describe Joktan’s descendants. Again, remembering that the seed line always comes last. So this is telling us that the seed is not coming through Joktan. It’s going to come through Peleg. And Peleg’s line is not described until after the story of Babel.

So the story actually divides these two genealogies, these two family lines to give us kind of a literary picture of how the earth was divided in those days. The earth was divided between the seed line and the non-seed line. And then again, as we mentioned earlier, these sons of Seth ended up likely becoming the Persians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, Arab tribes, and then of course the Hebrews through Peleg.

So how does all this point to Jesus? Just a list of names. How does this list of names point to Jesus?

Well, first, as I just mentioned, it traces the seed line through Peleg. We see that the non-seed lines are all laid out for us so that we can see who the seed will not be coming through and we can see the results of those families that don’t carry the seed.

And then it also foreshadows the opposition that will come against Christ. As I mentioned, that Nimrod figure is a type of the Antichrist that will stand against Jesus one day. And in fact, 1 John tells us that that Antichrist has been among us throughout the generations, are many antichrists, even now, that stand in opposition to Christ. That’s what antichrist means.

The antichrist, capital A antichrist, will be on the earth one day as one figure to unite the planet against Jesus. But there are many small a antichrists, even now, and always have been. And this Nimrod figure is the first of those individuals that will stand before God in opposition and shake their fists and say, I am greater than God. And that’s what the Antichrist will do one day before Jesus returns. He’s going to stand there. He’s going to rebuild Babylon and he’s going to shake his fist at Jesus and he’s going say, I am greater than God. And of course, Jesus will return and defeat the Antichrist and remake the earth.

So what can we ask ourselves? What kind of questions can we ask ourselves to reflect on this chapter? Again, I know the list of names, the genealogies are everybody’s favorite, and most of the time we tend to just skip through it, either skip the chapter entirely or skim through it quickly. And don’t stop to think, what can we learn from this? But this is scripture, and so we can learn something. We can reflect on something. So what can we ask ourselves?

Well, I have a few questions here.

So first question is, what does the number 70 tell us about God’s design for the nations even now? And if you are not driving, if you’re listening to this at home instead of in the car, go look up Acts chapter 17 verses 24 through 27, and that can give you some insight into that question.

Next question is, once again we see righteous people devolving through the generations into wickedness. Yet God always chooses a remnant out of the wickedness. And that’s going to be the line of Peleg that we’re going to explore later on. So what does this say about God? What can we learn about God that he always chooses a remnant?

Why does the author take the time to detail the boundaries of the territory of Canaan? I mentioned the answer briefly in the episode, but go into a little more detail in this question when you’re doing this on your own.

What are the similarities between Nimrod and Lamech in Genesis 4? And what warning does this provide to the reader?

And then last, how does this chapter change or challenge your view of human history?

Well, thank you so much for joining me this week on this episode. Before I let you go, I do want to remind you that there are several ways you can support the podcast. You can like the Facebook page.

You can go to the website, you can follow, subscribe there to the podcast and to the blog. I’ve got blog posts up that you can subscribe to, get those in your email inbox every time I release them and publish them. You can subscribe and follow on your podcast app.

You can rate the show, that would be a huge help to support the show.

And another thing that you can do is you can subscribe on the website. You can set up a monthly subscription for $6 a month. And you can get the study guides. You get access to download every study guide for every episode. And these study guides are going to have all my notes from the episode. It’s going to have notes for stuff that’s actually not even on the show because as I go through the audio, I cut stuff out for clarity, for time. And I cut out material, but I leave it on the notes for you so that you can still read through that information. And it provides space for you to answer these questions that I ask at the end of the episode.

I also have further study questions that I don’t ask on the episode. And these questions you can go through and study more in depth, and it’s going to take you through the various themes, various topics that we explore in each chapter. It’s gonna help you to recognize these themes throughout the Bible. It’s gonna help you to make connections between Old Testament and New Testament.

I’m gonna give you an example of a question that I ask in the Further Study section so that you can kinda get an idea of what you would be getting if you download the study guide. So one of the questions from this week would be the same word, Gibbor, is used to describe Nimrod in Genesis 10 verse 8 and to describe God in Deuteronomy 10 verse 17. So what does this comparison reveal to us about God?

So that’s an example of something that you would be going through and answering on the study guide if you were to set up a monthly subscription on the website.

The other thing that you can get as a monthly subscriber is access to question and answer episodes. Now I’m currently taking questions for Genesis 1 through 8. All listeners can submit questions, but if you want to hear the question and answer episode, you need to be a subscriber because only subscribers will get access to that episode. So go ahead, send in your questions on the website, go to the contact page and submit your question there, http://www.beyondthebasics.blog.

And as soon as I get enough questions to fill up an episode, I will release that. But again, you do need to be a monthly subscriber to get access to it.

As always, leave a comment, let me know what you think. I love to hear from you guys. Thanks for listening.