Who begot who

DEVOTION

GENESIS

WHO BEGOT WHO

Gen 10:1-5

10:1 This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah's sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.

2 The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras. 3 The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah. 4 The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim and the Rodanim.   5(From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)

NIV

The whole of this chapter is like this, names upon names of sons born to fathers who were sons born to fathers who were sons of Noah. The idea here is to show us that from the three sons of Noah the whole earth was repopulated and in doing this they did not remain at the place where there existed the ark. It would have been impossible as their numbers grew they needed more land for both their crops and their livestock. It would have also been necessary they needed space between themselves. Within the constitution of every man is the need to lead, to be the head of his family, it is the way God designed the male and we are told the man should be the head of his family as Christ if the head of his church. Men would need to separate themselves as they built their families, headed off into unchartered lands. From some particular descendants of Japheth we are told the maritime peoples began. What we are seeing is mankind is finding various trades, or occupations that differ from each other. We also see that clans are forming into various nations. This is not necessarily nations which have borders, although it would develop into that at some point, but at first clans were nations, much like the Indian nations that occupied the Americas. They had no positive borders, but did in some sense have a certain defined territory. We note that although we are told each had thier own language, this is not a chronological statement. We know that all mankind spoke the same language until they attempted to build the tower of Babel, which is to come a little later in this narrative of the beginning. So why are we being told all about who fathered who, especially since it was through the line of Shem that Jesus came into this world. Why do we need to know about the others? The whole idea of God wanting us to know about clans, about nations, about fathers having sons and each becoming or developing into different nations is a bit difficult to understand. How do we see a truth for us in this? As we view our world today, each nation with its own language, but in our modern times we still are able to understand each other, which sort of circumvents what God did to the peoples during the construction of the tower of Babel. Yet we still have many nations, all with their borders, and own leadership. We also have each family with its own leadership. Today many of us desire to know our ancestry and many websites offer opportunity to research our past ancestors and find our roots, as to which nation, which language we descended from. We are told it is even possible to tell from our DNA as to what clan we belong to. Yet what we find in all this is the fact we have the right to be called sons of God.

Gal 3:26-29

26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

NIV

Here is the whole truth of knowing our lineage. When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior no matter what human line of descendants we are, we become the sons of God. We are now in fact from the line of Abraham and heirs according to the promise. We are back to the promise of God. We no longer belong to our ancestors, but to God. All the genealogy throughout the scriptures point us to this one moment in time when none of that matters except becoming known as sons of God, children of God.

1 John 3:1

3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God ! And that is what we are!

NIV

Although we are going to see more narrative of who begot who and come across certain individuals who have some claim to fame, and we are told of their lives, it all comes down to this:

God is the father of us. We are his children. That is the bottom line.