THE BIBLE PEDIGREE OF THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD. 125 



bringing to bear upon them more ancient records than those of 

 Greece and Eome from lands nearer to what the Bible declares 

 and observation proves to be the centre of the great dispersion. 

 But such results if established confirm the absolute accuracy 

 of the table ; while a complete and accurate table of descents, 

 considering that every head of a family in the second generation 

 at least spoke a different language, could not have been ivorked 

 out by original investigation as late as even a hundred years 

 after the dispersion. It must, therefore, have either been 

 ivritten doivii by a patriarch within a generation or so after the 

 event or else have been told to a later writer by the Great 

 Disposer of events Himself. 



What object could He have had, some might, however, ask, 

 in either preserving or revealing a perfectly accurate pedigree 

 of the nations ? Surely that it might be evident to all who 

 afterwards read His " oracles " and sacred history that He has 

 indeed " made of one blood all nations of men," that the 

 ancestors of all once had an equal knowledge of Him and 

 access to Him, and that the history of His previous dealings with 

 and promises to the patriarchs from Adam down to the sons of 

 Noah belongs equally to all men. Among those promises there 

 stands pre-eminent that of the hard-won victory of redemption, 

 when " the woman's seed " should " bruise the serpent's head."* 



Let us then unroll this ancient pedigree, examine this title 

 deed, which, if it is indeed genuine, enables all men to claim 

 descent from ancestors with whom for themselves and their heirs 

 in all ages God made His first great covenants of grace. 



At the very outset of the genealogy, a coincidence meets us 

 in the name of Noah's own son Japheth.t It will be observed 

 that the Bible gives Javan as the name of the third son of 

 Japheth, and, after enumerating the sons of J avan, it says, " By 

 these were the isles (or coastlands)^ of the nations divided." 

 Now this description possibly might be intended to apply to all 

 the nations descended from Japheth, whose prime founders have 

 just been individually mentioned, but it certainly does apply to 

 the nations or tribes that sprang from the persons named in the 

 last foregoing verse — the sons of Javan : for the Grecian people 

 have from remote prehistoric times inhabited not only the 



* Gen. iii, 15. 



t This name is written as Japheth in its first two occurrences and 

 thrice besides (including Gen. x, 1) ; as JSphgth also five times (including 

 Gen. X, 2), and as JSphgt once (in Gen, ix, 27). 



X Gen. X, 5, E.V. margin. 



