Reading Biblical genealogies is akin to reading from the phone book: an endless list of seemingly meaningless names. You will be tempted to skip past them, but don’t. You see, every name represents a story, and every person is significant in the history of God’s saving work and his redemptive plan for the ages—including yours. These genealogies are a reminder that you, too, matter to God and are a key part to his eternal plan, a gateway to the blessing he desires to bring to the part of Planet Earth that you occupy.
The Journey // Focus: Genesis 10:1, 32
This is the account of the families of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the three sons of Noah. Many children were born to them after the great flood… These are the clans that descended from Noah’s sons, arranged by nation according to their lines of descent. All the nations of the earth descended from these clans after the great flood.
Reading chapter 10 in Genesis may be, for some, akin to reading from the phone book: an endless list of meaningless names. Several times throughout scripture, we are treated to such chronologies, and often, if we were to be honest about our Bible reading, we would have to admit that we skipped over them or read them with zero retention. And writing a devotional on them? Forget about it!
Yet every name represents a story, and every person is significant in the history of God’s saving work and his redemptive plan for the ages. Read in context and with the purpose of the author in mind, these names serve as vital connectors to the past and key gateways into the future, giving us a glimpse into the mind of our merciful, gracious God. And more than anything, we are taught that the Creator is in control, and his sovereign plan cannot be disrupted, destroyed or deleted.
In this particular list, verse 32 gives us the author’s intention; he wants us to know how the human race got to where it was and what was about to unfold in the plan of God. From here on out in the Biblical narrative, humanity will be narrowed down to one man, Abraham, from whose family the entire earth will have the opportunity to find restoration to the plan of God:
“These are the clans that descended from Noah’s sons, arranged by nation according to their lines of descent. All the nations of the earth descended from these clans after the great flood.”
Interestingly, before Abraham is introduced in the next chapter, the nations of the earth that had descended from Noah numbered seventy. After Abraham, at the close of Genesis, the seed of this patriarch numbered seventy. (Genesis 46:27; cf. Ex 1:5) He who was taken from the nations has reached the number of the nations. Genesis has now revealed to us the ultimate purpose in God’s choice of Abraham: through his “seed” God’s blessing will be restored to “all people on earth” (12:3), for the number seventy represents the idea of completeness. (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Abridged Edition: Old Testament, 2004.)
What is the point? God is never without a plan! Even when his creation goes astray, and thus his plan has seemingly gone awry, God is not caught off guard. He knew ahead of time what would happen, and while his heart is grieved at the rebellion of those whom he lovingly created, he graciously, mercifully offers a plan of redemption through a man, Abraham, by whose seed, Israel, a Redeemer, Jesus would come to rescue the world from the sin in which it had become hopelessly entangled.
Thank God for a planning Creator! And thank God his plans can neither be altered nor stopped. And while your name may seem meaningless among all the names in the table of nations, your story matters to God, and even down to the minute details of your life, God has fit you into his eternal plan—a plan that cannot be disrupted, destroyed or deleted.
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