Genesis 11 Genealogy
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Scripture reading: Gen. 11:10-11
Scripture reading: Gen. 11:10-11
These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters.
The genealogy of Genesis 11 tells us about the world after the flood. Before the flood, we have the record of people in Genesis 5. And now comes a new era starting with Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives. Noah’s father, Lamech, believed that Noah would be the Messiah who would put an end to the curse of sin. But was that the case? Yes and no. In the end, mankind was saved because of Noah. Noah’s faith and obedience saved mankind.
Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Noah’s obedience became a source of salvation for all who trusted in him. And so we can say that Noah was a foreshadow of Jesus Christ. When we trust in Jesus, we trust that He was fully obedient to the Father. We trust that He was without sin, without disobedience, and that’s what makes it possible for Him to die in our place. If Jesus was a sinner, then He can only die for Himself as judgement for His own sins. But Jesus died bearing our sins on the cross instead.
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,
The Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel
Noah was a foreshadow of Christ, but he didn’t bring an end to sin. If we look at the first half of Genesis 11, from vv. 1-10, we see the story of the Tower of Babel. Now you might all be familiar with this story. Some people got very excited about a construction project, and they started to build a Tower. And they called it the Tower of Babel. It would reach the heavens, and through their architectural skills, they would make a name for themselves.
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
And so in response to this, God comes down and confuses their languages, and so the construction project comes to a halt, and all the people are divided.
And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
The message of the Genesis 11 genealogy
The message of the Genesis 11 genealogy
Now in the second half of Genesis 11, we have a genealogy that begins with Noah’s son, Shem, and ends with Abraham. We all know who Abraham is. Abraham’s the forefather of faith. And at first it seems like this genealogy has nothing to do with the Tower of Babel, but what we’re going to see is that that isn’t the case. God gives us all this information so we can clearly see what’s going on.
First, God gives us the age at which they had or begot their sons. So let’s write these numbers down as “Years before son”.
Now right off the bat, we can grasp a key part of this story. It’s in Gen. 11:10. The Bible tells us that Arpachshad was born 2 years after the flood.
These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood.
Now, let’s say that the flood came at year ‘x’. That means Arpachshad was born in the year x + 2, and Shelah was born in the year x + 2 + 35. Eber was born in the year x + 2 + 35 + 30. So going by this pattern, what year was Abraham born?
x + 2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 32 + 30 + 29 + 70
x + 292.
Okay, and what year did Noah die?
After the flood Noah lived 350 years.
Noah died in the year x + 350. So what this tells us is that Noah was alive throughout this entire genealogy of Genesis 11. And more than that, Noah lived together at the same time as Abraham. How can we calculate that?
350 - 292 = 58 years.
So what does this mean? Imagine you are Noah. You put in so much effort to build a huge ark with none of the modern day construction materials. You finish building the ark, but nobody trusts in you except your wife, your sons, and their wives. So everyone who trusts in you and enters the ark is saved by the flood. But the flood changes the earth in a way you don’t expect. When you come out of the ark, there are new mountains and valleys. The landscape is different.
Ps 104:6-8 “You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.”
And more than just a change in landscape, there’s another very big change that happens because of the flood.
When you play truth or dare, you spin a empty bottle right? If you spin a bottle with some water inside, it’s not going to spin properly. So what happens when the earth, all of a sudden, is filled with water? There’s an imbalance. And so now the earth rotates on its axis by a tilt of 23.5 degrees. We used to say, ‘That person is tilted.’ Well, the whole earth is tilted, and because of the flood, seasons began. That’s what God says in Gen. 8:22.
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
So what are the implications of this? We can see it in the next piece of information that God gives us.
God doesn’t just give us their age at which they had their sons, but also the number of years they lived after having their sons. We can write these numbers down as “Years after son”.
And from this, we can calculate their total lifespan.
And what we see is that the lifespan goes through a major cut from Shem to Eber, and from Eber to Peleg. In Gen. 5, the average lifespan was in the 900s. But now after the flood, the climate has changed so much that the living conditions are no longer optimal. And so from Shem onwards, human lifespan is cut by half.
But why is the average human lifespan cut by half again after Eber? The Bible tells us that the earth was divided during the days of Peleg.
To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother’s name was Joktan.
This tells us that the Tower of Babel event happened during Peleg’s time. In fact, judging from his lifespan, we could even speculate that Peleg and the rest might have taken part in the construction of the Tower of Babel. The Bible tells us that the whole region was a place of idolatry.
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.
So the lifespan of mankind was cut in half once because of the flood, and second time because of idolatry and the Tower of Babel.
Ps 55:23 “But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction; men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.”
Can you imagine how Noah must have felt? Noah saw the effects of sin on this earth, and he saw how God judged the world through the flood. But during his own lifetime, he saw sin take over the lives of his children and grandchildren.
Those who crossed over
Those who crossed over
Now, what about Eber? Do you think he took part in building the Tower of Babel?
Eber’s name comes from the Hebrew word abar, which means ‘to cross over.’ And it is from this same word that we get the word ‘Hebrew,’ which means ‘One who crossed over.’
Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner. These were allies of Abram.
Abraham was called a ‘Hebrew’ because he crossed the river Euphrates in order to leave the place of idolatry. And we can also say that Eber and those before him also crossed over in order to leave the place of idolatry. How can we know this?
In 1964, there was a group of Italian archaeologists who started digging in northern Syria. Ten years later, in 1974, they discovered some clay tablets which had writings inscribed on them in a cuneiform script. But that following summer, in 1975, they discovered a vast archive of about seventeen thousand clay tablets dating from 2600-2300 BC. And these clay tablets talked about an ancient city-state called Ebla, and they used words like ‘El’ and ‘Ya’. And what some scholars think is that Eber left the place of sin in order to start his own kingdom, the kingdom of Ebla, where they could worship God.
Conclusion: We need to be spiritual Hebrews
Conclusion: We need to be spiritual Hebrews
The message of Genesis 11 genealogy is this: stop living in sin, or you’re going to die. Cross over and leave the place of sin behind.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, how can we cross over from the place of sin? Sin could even endure through the ark. That’s because sin is a heart problem. It has to do with our hearts, our spirits, our souls. It will follow us wherever we go as long as our hearts are beating.
But look at this passage. King David sinned against God, but what did God do?
David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.
The word here for ‘put away’ is Abar, which means cross over. So what the prophet Nathan is saying is that God has taken your sin and crossed it over. And because of that, David did not die. And note the language. It doesn’t say God has eradicated your sin. It doesn’t say God has made it disappear. It says that God has put it away. And so who took on David’s sin?
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
This is what it means to be a spiritual Hebrew. It means that God has taken our sins from us, and put them on Jesus Christ, that we may not die. Eber’s lifespan wasn’t cut in half. So if we trust in Jesus, we will become the spiritual Hebrews who have crossed over from the place of sin, into righteousness.