A History Of Nations (& Why Nations Compete With Each Other)
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(1) This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.… (32) These are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their lines of descent, within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.‘ (Genesis 10:1, 32)
The first account of ‘nations’ in the Bible is after the Flood of Noah, in Genesis 10. Prior to the Flood, one could surmise there were two ‘nations’ or tribes that formed; the tribe of Adam or Seth that formed the lineage from Adam to Noah, and the tribe of Cain which died out during the Flood. The number of humans is unknown but was likely less than 100,000 (or roughly the population of North Port today, but without the traffic).
Both ‘tribes’ were filled with evil, so much so that the Biblical account states God ‘regretted’ or ‘was sorry’ creating humans (Genesis 6:6). Considering God’s perfect will, He most likely did not regret creating humans (or anything of His great work) but knew one of the key ingredients that came out of the combination of the sin of man and of Satan and his fallen angels were the Nephilim, the children created by Satan’s minions and human women, which brought a great manifestation of Satan’s rebellious nature into being (Genesis 6:4-5), greater than simply the sin nature of man. Thus, God had in His plan the means to hit the ‘reset’ button and start again, with Noah and his family, by initiating the Great Flood.
The Ark, as the Bible record states, floated on the waters of the Flood for 150 days and 47 days later came to rest on Mount Ararat in what is eastern Turkey, close to its border with western Iran (Genesis 8:3-4). It took another seven months before Noah and his family could disembark from the Ark onto dry ground (Genesis 8:5-14). From there the animals were let loose from the confines of the Ark to roam the earth, and Noah built an altar to sacrifice some animals to worship the Lord.
Unfortunately, Noah also planted a vineyard that produced a wine strong enough to make him drunk, and he ended up passing out naked. Ham was the first to see his father, and instead of covering him went and told Shem and Japheth, who walked backwards with the blanket to cover Noah (Genesis 9:20-23). Noah cursed Ham for his indiscretion, then praised Shem and Japheth while calling for Ham’s descendants to be their slaves (Genesis 9:22-29). This set up how the three ‘foundational’ nations would interact with each other up through today.
After the Flood, Noah’s three sons began the basis of these first three nations that populated the world into the modern nations of today. Japheth was the patriarch of the Japhethites, a ‘maritime people(s) spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language’ (Genesis 10:2-5). It is believed the Japhethites moved into the northern regions of Europe and Caucasus Asia, or today’s Russia, and outward via the Mediterranean Sea. One of Japheth’s sons was Magog, whose nation is mentioned in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and along with Gog (also mentioned as a ‘prince’ of Magog in Ezekiel 38) is one of the nations mentioned in the final battle (considered ‘Armageddon’, on the plains of Megiddo in Israel) after the thousand-year reign of Christ before Satan is once and for all deposed into the Lake of Fire for all Eternity (Revelation 20:7-10).
Ham, the patriarch of the nation of Hamites, moved southwest into western Asia (including Canaan or today’s Israel), and northeastern Africa. The names of Ham’s sons became the names of future nations listed often in the Bible; Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan. Noah’s curse against Ham became fact; these nations grew to be Israel’s rivals and bitter enemies, as from Ham and his sons came Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon while Canaan’s descendants became the Jebusites, Amorites and the Philistines.
From Shem, the one blessed by Noah, became the patriarch of the Semites, or the Semitic people. Shem moved south into modern-day Iraq and Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula. The Semites overlapped with both the Japhethites and the Hamites, and founded the ancient city of Ur in the ‘fertile crescent’ region above the Persian Gulf, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (and close to the perceived location of the lost Garden of Eden). Of the sons of Shem, Abram (later Abraham) came from son Arphaxad’s lineage, which Abraham became the patriarch of both the nation of Israel (through his son Isaac) and the nations of Arabia (through his son Ishmael).
These three nations grew, moved into unpopulated regions around the world, and created more nations. The Biblical account in the Old Testament records specifically the nation of Israel and the mix of Semitic and Hamitic nations that surrounded it, with the Japhethitic nations (such as Greece and Rome) coming into play more in the New Testament. Today the nations of the world continue to intertwine and compete, and often fight each other – as the sons of Noah likely did as they grew up and competed with each other.
But one day, as we return to Revelation 20 and its aftermath, the sons of Noah who are Faithful and follow Jesus will reunite as truly ‘one nation under God’ for all Eternity, while those who are not Faithful will be reunited with Satan in the Lake of Fire, for all Eternity. Pray that all people will make the choice to follow Jesus, and be a good citizen of His kingdom by sharing the Gospel to those who need to hear it.
