The Sons of Noah and the Spread of the Nations
After the Flood the seventy nations of the world descend from Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and spread across the earth.
Noah leaves the ark with his wife, three sons and their wives—eight people from whom the world must be repopulated. He builds an altar, then plants a vineyard, and the episode of his drunkenness ends badly: Ham treats his father with contempt, Shem and Japheth cover him walking backwards, and Noah curses Ham's son Canaan while blessing Shem, in whose tents the Divine Presence will dwell. Chapter 10 of Genesis is the first map of nations in world literature: Japheth fathers the peoples of the north and the isles, including Javan (Greece); Ham fathers Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan; Shem fathers Elam, Ashur, Aram and the line leading to Abraham. Tradition counts seventy nations and seventy languages here—a number echoed later by the seventy souls of Jacob's household who go down to Egypt. The dispersion is still peaceful: each family settles "after its tongue, after its family, in its nation." Yet the seed of the next crisis is already planted, for part of humanity will refuse to scatter and will gather in the valley of Shinar.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 9:18–10:32 — Noach’s wine, the curse of Canaan and the “table of the seventy nations”
- Devarim 32:8 — “according to the number of the children of Israel” — seventy nations against seventy souls
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 36–37 — “may God dwell in the tents of Shem” — a hint at the Temple and the house of study
- Yoma 10a — the identification of Yefet’s sons with historical peoples: Yavan is Greece, Madai is Media
Rishonim
- Rashi on Bereishit 9:22 — the sages’ dispute over Cham’s act; why Canaan was cursed is explained by Rashi on 9:25
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
Noah · Shem · Nimrod · Arpachshad · Shelach · Peleg · Reu · Serug · Nachor son of Serug · Cham · Yefet