Genesis 9:18-11:32
New Catholic Bible
A World of Diverse Peoples[a]
18 The Return of Sin.[b] The sons of Noah who left the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of the people of Canaan. 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from these came all the people on the earth.
20 Now Noah tilled the soil, and he was the first to plant grape vines. 21 He drank some of the wine and he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of the Canaanites, saw his father lying naked, and he mentioned it to his two brothers who were standing outside.[c] 23 Shem and Japheth took a robe and, holding it in back of them, walked backward toward him and covered their father with it. Having faced backward, they did not see their father naked.
24 When Noah woke up from his drunken slumber, he learned what his youngest son had done to him. 25 Because of this, he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
A slave of slaves
shall he be to his brothers!”[d]
26 [e]And he continued,
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem,
and let Canaan be his slave!
27 May God enlarge Japheth
so that he dwells in the land of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave!”
28 After the flood, Noah lived for three hundred and fifty years. 29 In all, Noah lived for nine hundred and fifty years, and then he died.
Chapter 10
The Human Family.[f] 1 These are the descendants of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth, to whom sons were born after the flood.
2 The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meschech, and Tiras.
3 The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.
4 The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim, and the Rodanim.
5 From these came the peoples of the islands and their territories, each clan in the nations with their own language.
6 The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.
7 The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca.
The sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.
8 Cush gave birth to Nimrod. He was the first of the mighty ones upon the earth. 9 He was a great hunter before the Lord, for it is said, “Just like Nimrod, a great hunter before the Lord.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Asshur where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, which is the main city.
13 Mizraim gave birth to the Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, Casluhim, and Caphtorim (from whom came the Philistines).
15 Canaan gave birth to Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 17 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 18 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites.
Afterward the clans of the Canaanites spread outward. 19 The boundaries of the Canaanites stretch from Sidon in the area of Gerar up to Gaza, and then go toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, up to Lasha.
20 These were the sons of Ham according to their clans and their languages, in their various territories and according to their peoples.
21 Shem, the ancestor of all of the sons of Eber and the older brother of Japheth, also had children.
22 The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram.
23 The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash.
24 Arpachshad gave birth to Shelah, and Shelah gave birth to Eber. 25 Eber had two sons: one named Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided) and the other named Joktan.
26 Joktan gave birth to Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan.
30 They lived in the mountain region in the east, from Mesha on toward Sephar.
31 These were the sons of Shem according to their clans and their languages, in their various territories and according to their languages.
32 These were the families of the sons of Noah in their various generations and clans. These divided up to become all the nations on the earth after the flood.
Chapter 11
An Attempt at Unity.[g] 1 The whole world had only one language, everyone using the same words. 2 Migrating from the east, men came upon a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them in a fire.” These bricks were what they used instead of stone, and bitumen in place of cement.[h] 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build a city and a tower so high that it touches the heavens.[i] We shall make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all throughout the earth.”
5 But the Lord came down and saw the city and the tower that these men were building. 6 The Lord said, “Behold, they are a single people and they have only one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. Now nothing that they think up will be impossible for them. 7 Let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other when they speak.”
8 The Lord scattered them over the whole earth[j] and they ceased building their city. 9 This is why it is called Babel,[k] for there the Lord confused everyone’s language. It was also from there that the Lord scattered people over the whole earth.
10 Genealogy of Abraham.[l] The descendants of Shem are as follow:
Shem was one hundred years old when he had Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11 Shem, after he had Arpachshad, lived another five hundred years and had other sons and daughters.
12 Arpachshad was thirty-five years old when he had Shelah. 13 Arpachshad, after he had Shelah, lived another four hundred and three years and had other sons and daughters.
14 Shelah was thirty years old when he had Eber. 15 Shelah, after he had Eber, lived another four hundred and three years and had other sons and daughters.
16 Eber was thirty-four years old when he had Peleg. 17 Eber, after he had Peleg, lived another four hundred and thirty years and had other sons and daughters.
18 Peleg was thirty years old when he had Reu. 19 Peleg, after he had Reu, lived another two hundred and nine years and had other sons and daughters.
20 Reu was thirty-two years old when he had Serug. 21 Reu, after he had Serug, lived another two hundred and seven years and had other sons and daughters.
22 Serug was thirty years old when he had Nahor. 23 Serug, after he had Nahor, lived another two hundred years and had other sons and daughters.
24 Nahor was twenty-nine years old when he had Terah. 25 Nahor, after he had Terah, lived one hundred and nineteen years and had other sons and daughters.
26 Terah was seventy years old when he had Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27 These are the descendants of Terah.
Terah had Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran had Lot. 28 Haran then died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.[m] 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The wife of Abram was Sarai, and the wife of Nahor was Milcah who was a daughter of Haran (the father of Milcah and Iscah). 30 Sarai was barren and did not have any children.
31 Then Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law and the wife of Abram his son, and he left Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. They went as far as Haran where they settled.[n]
32 Terah lived to be two hundred and five years old. Terah died in Haran.
Footnotes
- Genesis 9:18 God has blessed the new creation, and the earth is repopulated. At the heart of this humankind, which is divided and marked by sin, is the towering figure of Abraham. It is upon him that the Lord has affixed his choice as the forerunner through whom the salvation of human beings will take place.
- Genesis 9:18 The story is from the Yahwist tradition. After the second creation, as after the first, we read the story of a sin, a condemnation, and a prophecy of hope. This last is connected with chapter 12 and the call of Abraham.
- Genesis 9:22 This is not a sexual sin but an abuse of power; the sons make themselves the superiors and judges of their father, who is humiliated and dishonored. To the Hebrews drunkenness is wanton, dishonorable, and humiliating; it provokes ridicule, leads to idolatry, incites violence, causes injustice and poverty, and makes persons subject to their enemies. It is unseemly especially for the leaders of nations. Clothing, then, in addition to being a means of decency, expresses the dignity of the person and his or her social position. When naked (Gen 3:7), Adam and Eve are deprived of glory and grace; the garments of skin with which God clothes them (Gen 3:21) are symbolic of their hope of being clothed again in their lost dignity.
- Genesis 9:25 According to the Semitic mentality, the blessings and curses of the Patriarchs (generally) are regarded as efficacious and able to determine the lot of the tribe represented by each Patriarch. For this reason, popular stories connected events or characteristics of a human group with blessings or curses uttered by an ancestor. In the present story Noah curses Canaan and therefore the Canaanites. The Canaanites were to be supplanted by the Hebrews in the conquest of the Promised Land. The Phoenicians, too, were Canaanites (see Gen 10:15-19; Jdg 1:31).
- Genesis 9:26 A great numerical and territorial expansion is announced for the descendants of Japheth; there is a play on the resemblance in sound between this ancestor’s name and the verb meaning “to open,” “to enlarge.”
- Genesis 10:1 For the ancient Semites, a person’s genealogy was not a strictly historical document, but a juridical one, meant to show the transmission of rights. For this reason, physical generation often serves as an image pointing to a legal generation, as, for example, adoption. The genealogical tree had, of course, to be composed of historical persons so as to determine a juridical succession.
The genealogy of peoples or cities is an image derived from the preceding and can signify ties of derivation or affinity between one people and another on the ethnic, geographical, historical, political, sociological, cultural, and other planes. Since the whole matter was flexible and since we are dealing only with an image, it is obvious that one and the same people could locate themselves, from different points of view, in various genealogical lineages, including some far removed from modern-day scientific genealogies.
On the basis of historical and geographical data, the Priestly tradition, here incorporating Yahwist features, in this chapter compiles a genealogical tree for peoples known in the second millennium B.C. The picture, in which an historical and religious intention is at work, asserts the substantial unity of the human race, which is divided into various peoples and languages. All human beings are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Creator God and heirs of his blessings, and all are meant to be saved.
Given its purpose, the picture does not provide a basis for resolving the anthropological question of monogenism or polygenism, nor the historical question of the extent of the flood. In this “list of peoples” the Semites come in last place because the writer takes them as his starting point for the continuation of his story, while from this point on the descendants of Japheth and Ham cease to be of direct concern to the biblical story. - Genesis 11:1 After having presented in the list of peoples what might be called the mission field of the People of God, the biblical narrative dwells on a fundamental aspect of this field, one that is always alive in the various human groups, namely, the insistent need for unity. The passage, from the Yahwist source, makes use of an ancient popular story that seems to copy in an ironic way Mesopotamian texts on the dedication of its well-known temple towers.
The story concerns a migrating people who come down from the mountains into a vast plain and feel the need of establishing a city center with a skyscraper tower that will guarantee the maintenance of their unity. Make a name for ourselves means to establish a power that will foster their cohesion and their own political identity. But, as happens in human undertakings, a moment comes in which intentions diverge, so that the unity of the people is broken, as if they were speaking different languages. The tradition sees in this occurrence an explicit manifestation of God, the author of human nature. The direction events take always depends on God. - Genesis 11:3 Bricks . . . instead of stone, and bitumen in place of cement: stone and cement were used as building materials in Canaan. Stone was scarce in Mesopotamia, however, so bricks and bitumen were used (as indicated by archaeological excavations).
- Genesis 11:4 Tower so high that it touches the heavens: this is a direct reference to the most important temple tower (ziggurat) found in Babylon, which goes by the name of “the house that lifts high its head.” Scholars regard the ziggurats of Babylonia as the earliest skyscrapers.
- Genesis 11:8 Scattered them over the whole earth: God countered their prideful rebellion at its very origin. They had chosen to settle, but he forced them to scatter. This account relates how it was that the families of the earth were separated, “each clan in the nations with their own language” (Gen 10:5) and were “divided up to become all the nations on the earth after the flood” (Gen 10:32).
- Genesis 11:9 Babel (i.e., Babylonia), according to a popular etymology, meant “gate of god” or “gate of the gods.” The sacred writer, having told of the failure of the human undertaking (and the failure also of the gods who wanted to be worshiped on the Mesopotamian towers), asks us to read the name “Babel” as a reminder of that failure: he suggests a connection with the root bll, “to confuse,” from which the form balbel and then, by contraction, babel, would supposedly be derived.
- Genesis 11:10 These verses are from the Priestly tradition, a continuation of the genealogy begun in chapter 5, except for verses 28-30, which are Yahwist. Beginning perhaps with Arpachshad, named as son of Shem, the list of names here is a real genealogy, a document of the family of Abraham; only the numbers continue to be symbolic and conventional, without any strictly historical value. Abraham comes from a seminomadic family or clan that has settled in the city of Ur, at that time on the shores of the Persian Gulf and already rich and powerful, especially in the 21st and 20th centuries B.C.
Abraham and his family travel up the valley of the Euphrates and settle in upper Mesopotamia. The period of these events may be around 1850 B.C. - Genesis 11:28 Ur of the Chaldeans: Ur was an ancient city of the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia as well as a populous and prosperous one. In this case, the phrase is an anachronism, because the Chaldeans were not known to history until some thousand years after Abraham.
- Genesis 11:31 Abraham traveled along the Euphrates to Haran, a trading town in northern Mesopotamia or Syria. This was the best route from which to reach Canaan and bypass the great desert with its people and animals (see Gen 12:4; Acts 7:2-4).
