⁴The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, ⁿ and Rodanim. ⁵Those who lived in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea came from these sons of Japheth. All the families grew and became different nations, each nation with its own land and its own language.

Ham’s Sons

⁶The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, ⁿ Put, and Canaan.

⁷The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca.

The sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.

⁸Cush also had a descendant named Nimrod, who became a very powerful man on earth. ⁹He was a great hunter before the Lord, which is why people say someone is “like Nimrod, a great hunter before the Lord.” ¹⁰At first Nimrod’s kingdom covered Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in the land of Babylonia. ¹¹From there he went to Assyria, where he built the cities of Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, and Calah. ¹²He also built Resen, the great city between Nineveh and Calah.

¹³Mizraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, ¹⁴Pathrusites, Casluhites, and the people of Crete. (The Philistines came from the Casluhites.)

¹⁵Canaan was the father of Sidon, his first son, and of Heth. ¹⁶He was also the father of the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, ¹⁷Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, ¹⁸Arvadites, Zemarites, and Hamathites. The families of the Canaanites scattered. ¹⁹Their land reached from Sidon to Gerar as far as Gaza, and then to Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.

²⁰All these people were the sons of Ham, and all these families had their own languages, their own lands, and their own nations.

Shem’s Sons

²¹Shem, Japheth’s older brother, also had sons. One of his descendants was the father of all the sons of Eber.

²²The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.

²³The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech.

²⁴Arphaxad was the father of Shelah, who was the father of Eber. ²⁵Eber was the father of two sons—one named Peleg, ⁿ because the earth was divided during his life, and the other was named Joktan.

²⁶Joktan was the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, ²⁷Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, ²⁸Obal, Abimael, Sheba, ²⁹Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these people were the sons of Joktan. ³⁰They lived in the area between Mesha and Sephar in the hill country in the East.

³¹These are the people from the family of Shem, arranged by families, languages, countries, and nations.

³²This is the list of the families from the sons of Noah, arranged according to their nations. From these families came all the nations who spread across the earth after the flood.

The Languages Confused

11At this time the whole world spoke one language, and everyone used the same words. ²As people moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.

³They said to each other, “Let’s make bricks and bake them to make them hard.” So they used bricks instead of stones, and tar instead of mortar. ⁴Then they said to each other, “Let’s build a city and a tower for ourselves, whose top will reach high into the sky. We will become famous. Then we will not be scattered over all the earth.”

⁵The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. ⁶The Lord said, “Now, these people are united, all speaking the same language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. They will be able to do anything they want. ⁷Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not be able to understand each other.”

⁸So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹The place is called Babel ⁿ since that is where the Lord confused the language of the whole world. So the Lord caused them to spread out from there over the whole world.

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Footnotes

nKittim His descendants were the people of Cyprus.
nMizraim This is another name for Egypt.
nPeleg This name sounds like the Hebrew word for “divided.”
nBabel This name sounds like the Hebrew word for “confused.”