Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
The generations of the sons of Noah - Hebrew, towlªdot (H8435) (see the note at Genesis 5:1). This is an ethnological, rather than a genealogical catalogue: a narrative of the settlement of nations existing in the time of Moses-perhaps only the principal ones; because though the list comprises the sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, all their descendants are not enumerated. It is a record of the early colonization of the earth, inserted parenthetically at the point where Moses, in tracing the progress of the divine dispensations, is about to pass from general into special history. It is constructed on the principle of mentioning only the people who were most prominent for their bearing upon, and their connection with, Israel, and furnishes materials for a geographical map of the original settlements of the three sons of Noah, 'of whom the whole earth was overspread.' The names, therefore, contained in this table do not, with one or two exceptions, apply to individuals, but nations, conformably to the Orental custom of calling tribes after their founders, or giving the name of a country to its people, viewing them as a collective unity.
Thus, the descendants of the Noachidae are, for the most part, described by names indicative of tribes and nations, and ending in the Hebrew im, or the English ite. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that neither the years of the patriarchs, before and after their son's birth, nor the duration of their life, is noticed, shows that the lists in this chapter are given on a different principle, and with a different design from that in the following chapter.
Sons of Noah. The historian has not arranged this catalogue aaccording to their seniority of birth; because the account begins with the descendants of Japheth, and the line of Ham is given before that of Shem, though he is expressly said to be the youngest, or younger son of Noah; and Shem was the elder brother of Japheth (Genesis 10:21), the true rendering of that passage. The reason of Shem being put last in this table is, that the continuous stream of the narrative was henceforth to now in his line.