All Nations: The United and Divided Nations of Genesis 10

As previously explained, all of humanity came from the three descendants of Noah; Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Noah, of course, is a descendant of Adam, the first man. According to Scripture, then, we are all a part of the human family, made in the image of God and are bearers of His likeness. 

Genesis 10 tells us that after the flood Noah’s sons repopulated Earth. From these three men came 70 groups of people (nations), known as the Table of Nations. It identifies who they were, where they settled, the languages they spoke, and their political units. The table is very specific, but in general Shem’s descendants went to Mesopotamia and northern Arabia, Ham’s descendants went to Africa and southern Arabia, and Japheth’s descendants went to Asia Minor and Europe (NLT Study Bible, 2008). 

The Dividing of The Nations

According to the Genesis text, at one time all of the people of Earth used the same language (Gen. 11:1). The division came after these united people began building the Tower of Babel. Their plan was to settle in Babylonia and become famous by building a city with a tower that reached into the sky (the heavens), a plan that was their own agenda and not God’s. God intervened by confusing their language so they wouldn’t be able to understand each other. 

5 But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. 6 “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.” 

8 In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why the city was called Babel, because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world. ~Gen. 11:5-9 (NLT)

The Genesis account does not reveal how exactly God did this, but the plural us (vs.7) reveals the Father did not do this alone. According to the Testament of Naphtali, God used His archangels to carry out His plan. 

The Testament of Naphtali is a portion of a larger work, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This text has never been included in any Christian canon, however, it was quoted by Origen and Tertullian, two of the early church fathers (Park, 2016). In it, Naphtali, one of the twelve patriarchs of Israel (one of Jacob’s/Israel’s sons), explains how God dispersed the nations. 

3 And do not forget the Lord your God, the God of your fathers; Who was chosen by our father Abraham when the nations were divided in the time of Phaleg. 4 For at that time the Lord, blessed be He, came down from His highest heavens, and brought down with Him seventy ministering angels, Michael at their head. 5 He commanded them to teach the seventy families which sprang from the loins of Noah seventy languages. ~Test. of Naphtali 8:3-5

Deut. 32:8 teaches that when God divided the human race He established their boundaries according to the number in his heavenly country. However, God decided to keep Israel for Himself, though at the time the nation did not exist. They were still in the loins of their forefather Abraham. 

The Testament of Naphtali also explains this. According to this text, the 70 nations each chose to stray from the Lord and worship the angels who taught them their languages (consider Col. 2:18-19)—everyone except Abraham. 

5 But when Michael said unto Abraham our father, “Abram, whom dost thou choose, and whom wilt thou worship?” Abram answered, “I choose and select only Him who said, and the world was created; Who formed me in the womb of my mother, body within body; Who placed in me spirit and soul; Him I choose, and to Him I will cleave, I and my seed, all the days of the world.” 10.1 ‘Then the Most High dispersed the nations, and apportioned and allotted to every nation its share and lot. 2 And from that time all the nations of the earth separated themselves from the Lord, blessed be He; only the house of Abraham remained with his Creator to worship Him; and after him Isaac and Jacob. ~Testament of Naphtali 9:5-10:2 

This gives an explanation of why God chose Israel for Himself (Ps. 135:4; Ex. 19:5; Dt. 10:15). It wasn’t because the people who formed the nation were so great. Indeed, they were very flawed, including Abraham. It also wasn’t because they were so numerous (Dt. 7:7), and it absolutely had nothing to do with the color of their skin. It was because of the faith of their patriarch, because faith has always been what pleases Him (Rom. 3:30). God decided to make them into a nation because He was pleased with Abraham, just as He was pleased with Moses and came close to making him into a great nation, too (Ex. 32:10). 

Therefore, the division of the nations was ultimately due to their abandonment of God’s plan in order to fulfill their own. The division was God’s righteous correction. Though the individual patriarchs chose to follow different paths, God always allowed made salvation available through faith. 

REFERENCES

Janghoon Park, “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). 

Tyndale House Publishers. (2008). NLT Study Bible (p. 39).

Robert Henry Charles, ed., Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 23–24.