Genesis: From Table of Nations to Tower of Babel: Reading beneath the Names

Written by Mark Biskeborn

Genesis: Chapter 10: the Table of Nations:
On the surface, this is patriarchal genealogy like the one we find soon again in chapter 12. Almost all this chapter is a relatively boring list of which man begot the next. It appears to be repetitive and monotonous.

Look again. By digging a little behind the names, we discover a story, one more intriguing than on first glance.

Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth, who walked out of the ark after the great flood. Most readers would easily gloss over this otherwise dull passage. But if we look up the meaning of these three sons’ of Noah, the story lights up a little.

In the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, we learn the ancient Hebrew meaning of Noah’s sons names. Shem: the spiritual of man, upright, righteous, brilliant.

Ham: oblique, curved, inferior; he is the physical in man, given over to sensuality.

Japheth: extended and wide, increase, expansion. He is the intellect or reason, the mental realm.

These three characteristics live prominently in every human. So, we could read about Noah’s three sons as allegories for three of the most basic aspects of all us: spiritual, reason, physical/sensual. This passage suggests that all humans can become more full, more intuitive and capable if only we, as individuals, develop a balance between three important aspects in the human heart.

When we look closer at the many grandsons, the sons of Noah’s three sons, we learn here a sort of rudimentary taxonomy of human psychology from the most basic three and parsed down into more refined characteristics and behavioral traits as if genealogy of human types. We might think of this “genealogy” as a primitive version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Criteria. It resembles the variety of human types in the polytheism of ancient Greece—from Athena to Zeus—or of ancient India’s Hinduism.

Let’s look up the name of Shem’s first-born son, Elam. Given Shem’s characteristic as spiritual and righteous in name, his son, Elam would also be a well developed individual with “resourcefulness, creative power of Truth, of that which is of God.”

Let’s just take one of Japheth’s sons, Gomer, whose name, in ancient Hebrew, means: full and complete, finished, perfect. Gomer, as an allegory, represents a fullness image of his father, Japheth. However, Gomer, like his father, has not developed a balance of the three main human strengths as mentioned above. Gomer is complete in the realm of reason. But human reason in its greatest perfection and completion, Gomer fails to reach spiritual wisdom and truth. Because of Gomer’s imbalance between the basic human traits, he later fails in life, his “tribe” because a hostile nation to Israel (see Ezekiel 38:6).

Let’s take one of Ham’s sons, Cush, whose name, in ancient Hebrew, means: burned, blackened, combustible, Ethiopia. As the son of Ham, a man of physical sensuality, Cush represents a dark thought and holds tight to the physical and sensual, something material and void of intelligence and spirituality. Cush seems to inherit Ham’s characteristics.

Let’s look down this line of inheritance—or taxonomy—from Ham to Cush and then to Cush’s son, Nimrod whose name in ancient Hebrew means: self-ruling will, arbitrary sway, insubordination, rebellion, revolution, anarchy, despotism, misrule. He sounds like an unjust ruler, a despot or tyrant. Following a lineage of Ham, Nimrod “was a mighty hunter before Jehovah.” Nimrod brought forth in the material, as evidenced in Genesis 10:10. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel…in the land of Shinar.

At least until we look at the meaning of the names of these proudly begotten sons, who, in turn, went out and planted their seeds and thus populated the world after the flood. The sons of Noah sired many people. This was considered a blessing in ancient times, unlike now, when we suffer from the pollution of overpopulation and human imbalance in nature.

One odd lapse in this story arises when we learn about how Noah’s sons populate expanded territories. And yet, these three young men, when they stepped out of Noah’s Ark after the “flood to destroy all life” (Genesis: 9:16), did not have any brides at their sides. If the earth was destroyed along with everyone outside the ark, how did Noah’s sons find wives? The story teller of this passage failed to clarify this point while drinking wine at a campfire.

In Genesis 10:32, Noah’s sons spread a new, refreshed population of human beings. This sets up the story about the Tower of Babel.

Chapter 11: The Tower of Babel : this new population spoke the same language after the “flood to destroy all life.” In the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary by Charles Fillmore, Babel means “confusion, chaos, vanity, nothing, in ancient Hebrew, but in ancient Sumerian "Babel" meant the gates of gods," a notion that the Israeli God does not appreciate and neither do most any other gods.

Nimrod, a grandson of Noah, had the town of Chaldea built in the land of Shinar.

In Hebrew, Chaldea means “savant, astrologer, magi.” According to Charles Fillmore, Chaldea is a psychic realm in man, posing as the true spiritual realm, thus deceiving the individual and robbing him of the spiritual contact and good that he is seeking.”

In a different view, the tower of Babel is a deception as it is a high tower as if reaching heaven. It deceives people into believing that heaven is some place outside one’s self. Heaven is a state of mind and soul, not a high-rise or skyscraper of bricks and tar.

We cannot let ourselves believe that high towers are things to worship as a means to reaching the heavens of existence. A high tower might loom over us and impose some sort of authority by its massive weight and size, but the tower is nothing more than an illusion. People should not allow some form of status quo by such architecture, nor our ticket to a peaceful, heavenly life in some far altitude. As in our own times we can eagerly sign up to work for massive luring security of corporations which, left alone, "do whatever they will imagine."

The tower of Babel can create a confusing chaos in the minds and hearts of individual. When a person believes that an outer entity, a tower or an authoritative office, can comprehend and contact that divine spirit within each of us, then these things and people can take away our own path to peace or heaven. In that case then they only deceive others. They take away the power of individuals.

If everyone speaks the same language and the same ideas no progress is made. There is little freedom. Conformity in thought and language only leads to any sort of a tyranny or fascist state as mentioned above in the case of Nimrod. Without variety and freedom of expressing different thoughts, liberty would be suppressed. And now “nothing will prevent them from doing that which some selected people will imagine to do” (Genesis: 11:6).