Week 1 Genesis
A list of names is hard to read through and my typical bible-reader’s default is to tell myself the lists aren’t too important. But it’s hard to dispute the importance of two family lists in the first section of Genesis.
One is in chapter five. It starts with Adam & Seth and goes right down to Noah. That chapter ends like this: by the time Noah was 500 years old, he had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
The names stop right there while the long and riveting story of Noah & the Flood takes up the next four chapters. But once the great aquatic reset is done the family list picks up in chapter 10 right where it left off: this is the history of the families of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (if you took out the Flood story you’d sail directly from SH&J in 5:32 to SH&J in 10:1).
Japheth has four verses in chapter ten listing his family…Ham fifteen…& Shem eleven. You’d get the impression that Ham was important because he’s given more space than his brothers. But that’s not true because the writer comes back to Shem in chapter 11 and works through another seventeen-verses of names that start with Shem and end with Abraham.
It’s pretty normal for a bible reader to dismiss names. But Adam & Noah & Abraham are an impressive line-up. And you figure the writer had his reasons for adding them to the story.
Note: quotes from Genesis 5:32 & 10:1 (NLT)