Japheth?

A correspondent writes:

1. Noah had three sons. What order were they in birth (who was oldest, second and youngest)?

It is commonly thought that the order is Shem, Ham, and then Japheth. The main reason is that this the the order the names are given in when they are introduced in Genesis 5:32 and elsewhere. Also, Genesis 10:21 explicitly states that Shem is Japheth’s elder brother.

I have seen it argued that Ham was the oldest but lost his birthright due to the incident where Noah got drunk, but the arguments for this are not convincing.

2. Does the birth order in this case have any theological significance ?

It shows Israel being descended from the firstborn (actual or legal, depending on the birth order theory you take).

3. One of the sons was the father of the chosen people, the other the Canaanites.    What happened to the descendants of the third son ? 

They went a variety of places, many of which were overseas from Israel, which is why Genesis 10:5 describes them as being maritime peoples, since that is how the Israelites encountered them (via the sea). They also went other places, generally to the north, northeast , and northwest from Israel’s perspective.

One thing you should be aware of regarding ancient near eastern genealogies like the one in Genesis 10 is that they aren’t exclusively biological in nature. They also include legal adoptions of peoples and tribes. If two tribes formed an alliance or merged culturally then they one tribe would be adopted into the lineage of the other. This is similar to how in our modern genealogies we don’t separate out people who were adopted. Grandma is still Grandma whether your mother was physically born to Grandma or whether she was adopted by her. The ancient near easterners did the same thing, only they did it with tribes instead of just individuals, and they allowed the adoptions to take place after the original patriarch of the lineage was dead. (We can see these kind of adoptions happening elsewhere in the genealogies of Israel in the Bible, as when Caleb is reckoned both as a Kennizite and as a descendant of Judah.)

As a result, the table of nations given in Genesis 10 isn’t simply a biological record. It includes biological factors as well as cultural and political affiliations, resulting in adoptions of tribes into lineages that aren’t necessarily biologically related. This kind of genalogization is how patriarchical cultures keep track of everybody and how they relate to each other.

The upshot is that the decendants of Japheth aren’t necessarily all biological descendants of his. Some may be descendants attributed to him by adoption even after his death.

In general, the Japhethites represent speakers of Indo-European languages like Greek.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin