On Genesis, Part 17: The Shemites

On Genesis, Part 17: The Shemites

In our recent discussion of the Hamites and the description of Nimrod and the first Adamic empire, of which ancient Akkad was a part, we had discussed the first Akkadian empire and the presence of a historical Cush in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. Then in our separate discussion of the accursed tribes of the Canaanites, we had described the rise of several Canaanite empires in the early 2nd millennium BC, namely the Babylonian Empire of the Amorites, the Hittite Empire, and the Mittani Kingdom of the Hurrians. These Canaanite empires were relatively short-lived, as compared to those of Egypt and Assyria, but it is quite possible that they were not the only Canaanite empires which existed in ancient history.

For example, there is ancient Ebla, the importance of which was not even discovered until the site of the city was excavated after its discovery in 1964. Evidently, Ebla had dominated what is now northwestern Syria from the mid-to-late 3rd millennium through most of the 2nd millennium BC. Ebla was about 34 miles southwest of Ḥalab, or Aleppo, which is said to have been the seat of another kingdom, Yamhad, although it is apparent that the empires of Yamhad and Ebla had each covered the same general territory at the heights of each of their power, along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in modern northwestern Syria. As a digression, in this sense an empire is only a city-state which subjects to itself other city-states within a particular region, whose inhabitants were not necessarily of the same tribe, and these empires were quite small compared to the empires of later history.

In an example of this, Yamhad is mentioned in an inscription which recorded a letter by an unnamed king of Assyria which is addressed to Zimri-Lim, a king of Mari in the 18th century BC where we read in part that “Moreover, with regard to what my lord wrote here to the kings, saying, ‘Come to the sacrifice in honor of Ishtar,’ I gathered the kings to Sharmaneh and conveyed this message to them: ‘There is no king who is strong just by himself. Ten (to) fifteen kings are following Hammurabi the man of Babylon; so, too, Rim-Sin the man of Larsa; so, too, Ibal-pi-el the man of Eshnunna; so, too, Amut-pi-el the man of Qatanum; (and) twenty kings are following Yarim-Lim the man of Yamhad.’” [1]

[1 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 628.]

The information in regard to Ebla is so new that the name is not found in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, although its name did appear in early Akkadian inscriptions, but its voluminous archives were not discovered until 1975. According to an article in the online edition of Encyclopedia Britannica we read: “Excavation of the tell (mound) now known to be the site of Ebla started in 1964 with a team of archaeologists from the University of Rome led by Paolo Matthiae. In 1975 Matthiae’s team found Ebla’s archives, dating to the 3rd millennium bc [sic]. Discovered virtually intact in the order in which they had once been stored on their now-collapsed shelves were more than 17,000 clay cuneiform tablets and fragments, offering a rich source of information about Ebla.” [2] The Assyrian king Naram-sin, the grandson of Sargon of Akkad, left an inscription boasting that he had destroyed Ebla and another city of unknown location, named Armanum, in the second half of the 23rd century BC. [3] Perhaps since both of these cities were quite obscure before the discovery of Ebla in 1964, until then the importance of the inscription could not have been fully realized.

Another ancient city, Mari, which we have already mentioned, was evidently an ally or sometimes a subject state of Ebla. The site of Mari is on the Euphrates River in modern Syria perhaps about a hundred miles to the east of Ebla. The city is believed to have flourished for about twelve hundred years from the early 3rd to the early 2nd millennia BC, but was apparently also abandoned for about a century in the middle of the 3rd millennium. The languages of Ebla and Mari are said to have been closely related. So for that reason and others, it had once been proposed that both cities were a part of a so-called “Kish civilization”, a proposal which has since been discredited but which still appears in various sources. [4] However sources generally state that both Ebla and Mari were “Semitic”, that their languages were Semitic, and that the cultures were Amorite, and with this we see a serious discrepancy with the viewpoint of Scripture. In a separate article on the language of Ebla, Wikipedia states in part that “Variants of the language were also spoken in Mari and Nagar”, another city in the region of Mari, but somewhat north of the Euphrates in northern Mesopotamia. [5, 6, 7] The kingdom of Yamhad which was once centered in Aleppo, to the north of Ebla, is also considered to have been Semitic, and then its languages are said to have been both Hurrian and Amorite. [8]

[2 Ebla, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Ebla, accessed June 8th, 2023; 3 Ebla, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla, accessed June 8th, 2023; 4 Kish Civilization, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_civilization, accessed June 8th, 2023; 5 Ebla, Wikipedia; 6 Eblaite language, Wikipedia, accessed June 8th, 2023; 7 Mari, Syria, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari,_Syria, accessed June 8th, 2023; 8 Yamhad, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamhad, accessed June 8th, 2023.]

Furthermore, the Hurrian language is classified distinctly as Hurro-Urartian, since the inhabitants of the kingdom of Urartu in the mountains to the north of Mittani spoke a similar language. Both languages utilized Assyrian cuneiform for writing. But while Hurrian is attested to have existed from the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the language of Urartu is not attested in inscriptions until about 900 BC, by which time Hurrian is said to have vanished, so they may not have actually been different languages, having been related. [9, 10] The Hittite language, which had also borrowed Assyrian cuneiform for writing, is generally classified as Indo-European. [11] However according to Scripture, the Hurrians, which are called either Hivites or Horites in Scripture, along with the Amorites and the Hittites are all descended from Ham through Canaan, and not from Shem, so how could they be Semites? The Akkadian language of the Assyrians is also said to have been Semitic, [12] but at least the sons of Asshur are actual Shemites, according to Genesis.

[9 Hurrian language, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_language, Wikipedia, accessed June 8th, 2023; 10 Hurro-Urartian languages, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurro-Urartian_languages, accessed June 8th, 2023; 11 Hittite language, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language, accessed June 8th, 2023; 12 Assyria, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria, accessed June 8th, 2023.]

I have purposely cited Wikipedia for this part of our discussion, because while is often a superficial and biased source, here it rather accurately reflects the opinions of academic archaeologists and historians as to the classifications of the people and languages of the early Levant, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. They are all biased in this respect, as they follow the opinions of the Jews and classify peoples as “Semites” based on the language which they spoke, and not on their race. But language is not a good determinant of race, especially since throughout history the languages of conquerors have been adopted by foreign subjects. So, for example, in South and Central America today, there are tens of millions of indigenous peoples who never set foot in Europe, who have little or no Spanish or Portuguese blood, and yet they speak Spanish or Portuguese. Language alone should not classify a Canaanite as a Semite, and if the Canaanites spoke a common language, even if it contained several different dialects, at an older time than the surviving records of any tribe of Shemites, how could that language even be labelled as “Semitic”?

So we must ask, what defines a Semite? And what is a Hamite, or a Canaanite? We would classify these people according to their classification here in Genesis, and not according to linguistic dialect, which is superficial and subjective. Then, as the division of tongues is described in Genesis chapter 11, we would not expect the linguistic dialects to be distributed in a manner by which they may be neatly classified according to the names of the sons of Noah. And then there is another question which is even more upsetting to the commonly held but not necessarily correct denominational worldview of Scripture, which is what language is Hebrew? We shall address these last questions when we present Genesis chapter 11 and discuss the division of languages which that chapter records. Rather consistently, modern archaeologists and historians label some of the Canaanite tribes as having been “Semitic”, while other Canaanite tribes are “Indo-European” or perhaps “Hurro-Urartian”, and several of these Canaanite tribes appeared in these historic areas long before the sons of Noah were dispersed in the separation of languages which is described in Genesis chapter 11, according to the chronology which we shall present from Scripture when we arrive at that point in this commentary.

So it is our opinion, that the Canaanite tribes were separated from the general body of the sons of Noah even before the dispersion on the plain of Shinar at the Tower of Babel incident which is described in Genesis chapter 11. Having been separated from the sons of Noah, they are found in northern Syria, and adjacent Anatolia as well as in the land later known as Canaan, and among the Kenites and Rephaim and other races which did not descend from Noah. In those places, they were often ruled by kings who were of the Nephilim, of which the signal example in Scripture is Og of Bashan. With this, the presence of the accursed Canaanites is more fully accounted for in early antiquity.

Now we shall continue our discussion of the nations which had descended from the sons of Noah in Genesis chapter 10 where we had left off with the description of the Shemites, the sons of Shem. Having already discussed Japhethites and Hamites, first we shall notice that the sons of Noah are not presented here in the order of their age, something which is seen frequently in later Scripture. Rather, as we shall see, the families of Shem are described last in this chapter even though Shem was not the youngest son, and the most likely reason for that is because Abraham, having come from of the line of Shem, becomes the central figure in the narrative of Genesis with chapter 12. Therefore this line of Shem is described for many more generations than either Japheth or Ham, and it remains the focus of the narrative in Genesis chapter 11. In Genesis chapter 12, that focus is further narrowed to Abraham alone, but at the end of this chapter it will be narrowed to the line of the eldest sons down from Arphaxad.

So commencing where we had stopped, with verse 21 of this chapter:

21 Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.

In Genesis chapter 9, even before the incident which caused the circumstances of the birth of Canaan is described, we read “18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.” The mention of Canaan in that passage seems superfluous, even unnecessary, until one realizes that Canaan is a pivotal subject later in the chapter. Here we would say the same thing of Eber, that the Israelites who descended from Eber, having retained his name, would be known by that name later in history, and that name would help to identify them at a time which was still far in the future when Moses had written. So the early mention of Canaan in chapter 9, and of Eber here in chapter 10, is a literary device by which an individual is distinguished for a particular reason, whether for good or for evil. But perhaps this too is a parable, as it is descendants of Canaan and Eber who would be opposed to one another in the future history of the children of Israel in later Scripture.

Since Japheth is the eldest son, which is stated here in verse 21 of this chapter, his families were listed first by Moses here. But Ham was the youngest son, as he was described in Genesis chapter 9 as the “youngest son” of Noah in verse 24, and yet his sons were described before those of Shem, who must have been the second son. As we have explained, this order where Shem is placed last must have also been a literary device employed by Moses, because as the narrative moves forward it is his descendants who become its primary subjects. While we may never know why Shem was preferred over Japheth to carry out the will of Yahweh God in His plan of redemption for the Adamic race, there are other occasions where the eldest son was not the preferred son. Perhaps this too is a lesson for men, that a man will not be preferred by Yahweh merely for his stature, or his precedence, or some other factor over which the man himself had no control by which to reward himself. But in any event, Shem’s precedence in the eyes of God, rather than having been in order of his birth, seems to have been reflected in his name, which by itself means name, but also for that reason, noted or even celebrated, among similar things. [13]

[13 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, p. 832.]

22 The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.

Elam: The Hebrew word עילם, eylam, or עולם, ewlam, is defined by Strong’s (# 5867) as “probably” having been derived from the verb עלם, alem or elem, which is to veil or conceal (# 5965). Therefore it is assigned a meaning of hidden or distant. However just as much merit is found in associating the word to another entry for the same spelling עולם or עלם, which is transliterated by Strong’s as owlam or olam (# 5769), and which is defined as “properly concealed” but which may also mean eternal or everlasting. The word appears in that last sense often throughout Scripture. The name Elam was also borne by several of the later children of Israel, but its use in the prophets must be in reference to this Elam in Genesis chapter 10.

That the historic nation of the Persians sprung from Elam is fully evident in the words of the prophets, since everywhere that Elam is mentioned in the Bible, it is Persians who had fulfilled that role in history. For example in Isaiah chapter 21, which is a prophecy of the fall of Babylon, we read in verse 2, in part, “Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease.” In history, about 200 years after Isaiah had written those words, the Persians and Medes had conquered Babylon. In the words of the prophets Jeremiah and Daniel, Persia and Media are often mentioned together, such as in the prophecy of the ram and the goat in Daniel chapter 8 where we read “20 The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.” In the vision of the beast in Daniel chapter 2, the two arms of silver represent the later empire of the Persians and the Medes. In Jeremiah chapter 25 there is a mention of “25 … all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of the Medes”, who were descended from Madai the son of Japheth. In Daniel chapter 8, in the third year of Belshazzar, the prophet describes a vision which he had and he wrote: “2 And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai.” Shushan, more commonly called Susa in English, was the capital city of ancient Persia.

So Daniel informs us that Susa was “in the province of Elam”, and describing the palaces of Persia perhaps about 530 years later, Strabo of Cappadocia wrote that “Although they adorned the palace at Susa more than any other, they esteemed no less highly the palaces at Persepolis and Pasargadae; at any rate, the treasure and the riches and the tombs of the Persians were there, since they were on sites that were at the same time hereditary and more strongly fortified by nature.” [14] In that same book he had also written that “I might almost say that Susis also is a part of Persis; it lies between Persis and Babylonia and has a most notable city, Susa.” [15] Later, describing the interior of Persia, he wrote in part: “And bordering on Susis is Elymaïs, most of which is rugged and inhabited by brigands; and bordering Elymaïs are Media and the region of the Zagrus.” [16] Susiana was the district along the Tigris River, adjacent to the Persian Gulf and on the opposite side of the river from Babylon. It is further apparent in that passage that the name of Elam is preserved in the name of Elymaïs, a district in Persia to the north of Susis and Persis. The name Elam was also preserved by the Assyrians, as an Elamite or man of Elam is an Elamû in the Assyrian language. As we shall see below with the word Aššurû, the final ‘u’ marks the genitive case, so it denotes an Assyrian, a man of Asshur. [17]

[14 Strabo, Geography, 15.3.3; 15 ibid., 15.3.2; 16 ibid., 16.1.17; 17 The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 4, E, The Oriental Institute, Chicago, 1958, Sixth Printing, 2004. p. 76.]

Asshur: Asshur, the second son of Shem, is the eponymous ancestor of the nation of the Assyrians, who are often called Asshur in the words of the prophets. The name אשור or Ashur (# 804) is said by Strong’s to be “apparently from” a verb אשר or ashar, (# 833) which is defined as to be straight, to be level, right, or figuratively to go forward, be honest or prosper, and therefore the name is defined as successful. In the Assyrian language, the word for Assyria is transliterated from cuneiform as Aššur and the word for Assyrian as Aššurû. [18]

[18 The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 2, A part II, The Oriental Institute, Chicago, 1968, Fourth Printing, 2004. p. 471.]

Assyria had a long and sometimes tumultuous history before its own rise to empire and the first invasions of Israel circa 745 B.C. For many centuries they were overshadowed by, or even under the yoke of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Mitanni Kingdom, or the Sumerians or Babylonians. A Wikipedia article on Assyria states in part that: “The Old Assyrian period was the second stage of Assyrian history, covering the history of the city of Assur from its rise as an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I 2025 BC to the foundation of a larger Assyrian territorial state after the accession of Ashur-uballit I 1363 BC…” [19] The earliest archaeological evidence from the eponymous city of Assur in Mesopotamia is generally dated to no earlier than 2,500 or 2,600 BC. [20] This seems to be accurate, since Puzur-Ashur I is listed in several inscriptions which have been discovered which contain what is called The Assyrian King List, and there were perhaps several dozen kings which lived before him, the first 17 who were explicitly said to have dwelled in tents. [21]

This would also certainly agree with the Genesis narrative and the description earlier in this chapter where we read of Nimrod: “10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah.” The Akkadian empire of Kish ruled over Asshur, according to archaeological records, as early as its first recorded ruler, Sargon of Akkad, who is said to have “probably” conquered Assur. [22] We would rather believe the account in Genesis, knowing that the empire of Nimrod had ruled over Asshur from the beginning. The Assyrian language is properly a dialect of Akkadian. Sargon of Akkad is said to have lived in the 24th century BC, and we would not make the mistaken conclusion of identifying him with the Biblical Nimrod, who had most certainly lived some centuries earlier. Nimrod was a son of Cush, only three generations from Noah.

Later, Assyria was ruled by Amorites for a short time in the late 19th through the 18th centuries BC, and became subject to the Hurrian Mitanni Kingdom in the late 15th century BC. Assyria may have suffered in the Hittite destruction of the Mittani in the early 14th century, but benefitted by once again having its independence, whereafter it grew to a territorial kingdom and eventually into the Assyrian empire from the late 10th century BC, conquering Syria, Israel and most of Judah in the mid-to-late 8th century BC. The prophet Jonah must have visited Nineveh in the early 8th century BC, as he is recorded as having prophesied things which Jeroboam II, the king who ruled Israel throughout the first half of that century, had accomplished against the Assyrians.

[19 Old Assyrian Period, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Assyrian_period, accessed June 9th, 2023; 20 Early Assyrian Period, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Assyrian_period, accessed June 9th, 2023; 21 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, p. 564; 22 Early Assyrian Period, Wikipedia.]

Arphaxad: The Hebrew name ארפכשד, Arphakshad or Arphaxad (# 775), was not defined in the original Strong’s Concordance. Gesenius supplies a fantastic etymology relying on a presumably great antiquity of certain modern names to place it near modern Armenia. [23] The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon agrees with Gesenius, that the first syllable of the name means boundary, but conjectures the possible meanings of the latter part of the name by comparing it to several modern Arab words. This approach is ridiculous, since Arphaxad is first the name of a person, as the Scripture represents it. [24]

Arphaxad, the third son of Shem and the ancestor of the Hebrews, has no land with which he may be identified which has survived into the historic period. For this reason, Flavius Josephus and others have only made guesses based on mere conjecture, due to the circumstances in which Abraham is first found in Scripture. In Genesis chapter 11 we read of Abraham’s father: “28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.” After that, Abraham went to Haran in Padan-Aram, and it is there that his kinfolk are found. Ur of the Chaldees, or Ur Kasdim as it is in Hebrew, was excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1927, and it sits on the west bank of the Euphrates River, just opposite ancient Sumer in lower Mesopotamia. [25] Other commentators would identify “Ur of the Chaldees” with the modern Urfa, an ancient city in modern Turkey only about 20 miles north of Harran, both of which would have been in ancient Padanaram. Both Abraham and Isaac had their sons, Isaac and Jacob, take their wives from among Abraham’s kin in Padanaram. [26]

[23 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, p. 81; 24 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 2021, p. 75; 25 Ur, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur, accessed June 9^th, 2020; 26 Genesis 25:20, 28:2.]

But if Abraham were in Urfa when his father died, perhaps Genesis 11:31 would read differently where it says “31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.” Here we see that Abraham had to pass through the land of Canaan to get to Haran in Padanaram from Ur, and that indicates that he must have been in Ur Kasdim, near Babylon, and not in Urfa which was already in Padanaram. In secular records as well as in the 60th Psalm, Padanaram is also called Aram-Naharaim, or “Aram between the Rivers” since it was in upper Mesopotamia. As we have already seen, the area was surrounded by and sometimes ruled over by the Canaanite empires of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, those of the Hittites and Hurrians. Perhaps that explains why Arphaxad had no land, because it was taken during the ebb and flow of all of these Canaanite empires.

So it may forever be argued whether the land of Arphaxad was somewhere near or around Haran, or whether it was originally in western Syria near the Euphrates River opposite Sumer, which was called the land of Shinar in Scripture, and later Babylonia. Some tribes of Aram are found in that area later in history, in the land between Damascus and the Euphrates River to the east. However by the historical period the name had disappeared, if it ever existed as a land, and there is no archaeological discovery which has yet provided it for us. In any event, by the time of Abraham his kindred were called Syrians, after Aram the younger brother of Arphaxad, for whom Padanaram was named, as the word means “Plain of Aram”. Then, in Deuteronomy chapter 26, we read where it speaks of Jacob and says: “5 And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.” So apparently, by the time of Abraham, any identification of Arphaxad had been lost to his younger brother Aram.

Perhaps the fact that by the time of Abraham, Arphaxad had no land, and therefore Abraham had no inheritance, is alluded to in the words of Paul of Tarsus where he wrote in Hebrews chapter 11 that “8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: 10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

Lud: The fourth son of Shem was Lud. That Lud is Lydia in western Anatolia is supported in Isaiah 66:19, which is the only other mention of the Shemitic Lud in the Bible. All other mentions of Lud, or by error of the translators, “Lydian(s)”, which are found in the Old Testament are actually the Ludim of northern Africa, which are properly the Lubim, the sons of Mizraim in Egypt for whom Libya was later named, as we explained in our commentary for verse 13 of this chapter. Most translators and commentators totally confuse these two different tribes named Lud.

In Isaiah chapter 66 we read, where Yahweh is speaking of the coming fate of the captive children of Israel:

19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the [Nations].

This prophecy in Isaiah 66:19 was surely fulfilled concerning Lud, as well as Pul, Tubal and Javan, when the Kimmerians, who may be identified with the Bit Hu-um-ri-ia or Khumri of the Assyrian inscriptions who were of the descendants of the Israelites whom the Assyrians had taken into captivity, [27] had invaded Anatolia following the destruction of Nineveh in 612 BC, where they are said to have destroyed much of Phrygia, and invaded and sacked both Lydia and Ionia before crossing over into Thrace in Europe at the end of the 7th century BC.

While we do not agree with some of the statements which it has conjectured from the Greek historian Herodotus, in an article on the Cimmerians at an archaeology website we read:

An ancient nomadic people of the Russian steppes, north of the Caucasus and Sea of Azov, driven out by the Scythians into Anatolia toward the end of the 8th century BC. As they retreated, they destroyed Phrygia, Lydia, and the Greek cities on the coast and then caused havoc in Anatolia. Their decline soon began, and their final defeat may be dated c 637 or 626, when they were routed by Alyattes of Lydia. Their relatives, the Thracians, retreated similarly into the Balkans. The Cimmerian origin is uncertain, but they may have been responsible for Catacomb and Kuban cultures, c 1700 BC onwards. The Cimmerians' destruction across southwestern Asia has been detected archaeologically at many sites. Our knowledge of them has come from the writings of Herodotus and the Assyrian records. [28]

[27 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, pp. 283-285; 28 Cimmerians, Archaeologs, https://www.archaeologs.com/w/cimmerians/en, accessed June 9^th, 2023.]

While it is a digression here, even Wikipedia acknowledges the Kimmerian role in the sacking of Nineveh, along with Scythians, in 612 BC where it states in part, speaking of that city: “It was the largest city in the world for approximately fifty years until the year 612 BC when, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria, it was sacked by a coalition of its former subject peoples including the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians.” [29] Moreover, Alyattes of Lydia ruled from about 610 to 560 BC, [30] so the date for the Kimmerians in Phrygia and Lydia is far too early as it was given in our prior source on the subject, the article from Archeologs. According to Strabo, the Cimmerians had “in Homer’s own time or shortly before his time, overran the whole country from the Bosporus to Ionia.” [31] They overran Anatolia, but they did not dwell there. Over three centuries later a portion of the Galatae, descendants of the Cimmerians or others of the Scythians who had come from the Israelites, would return to Anatolia and dwell in the lands formerly occupied by Phrygians and Lydians.

The identification of Lud with the Lydians is fully ascertained by these circumstances of later history and the mention of Lud in that prophecy of Isaiah. However in earlier times, the descendants of Lud appear as the Luwians of Hittite inscriptions, of the people who were situated to the west of the land of Hatti in Anatolia, in the very location of the Lydians. [32]

[27 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, pp. 283-285; 28 Cimmerians, Archaeologs, https://www.archaeologs.com/w/cimmerians/en, accessed June 9^th, 2023; 29 Nineveh, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh, accessed June 9^th, 2023; 30 Alyattes, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alyattes, accessed June 9^th, 2023; 31 Geography, Strabo, 1.1.10; 32 for minor examples, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, pp. 189-190.]

The Etruscans, also called Tyrrhenians and Etrurians, who for several centuries held Itrurea in Italy and parts of the coasts and islands in the western Mediterranean, are discussed at length by Diodorus Siculus, although he states nothing concerning their origins. [33] However Herodotus, Strabo and the Roman historian Tacitus had all stated that the Etruscans were originally Lydians. [34, 35, 36] Archaeologists had at one time generally doubted the Etruscan connection to the Lydians simply because no Etruscan inscriptions had been found in Anatolia. Such inscriptions, such as The Lemnos Stele, have, however, been found on islands off the coast of Anatolia, and since then genetic and other significant cultural connections have been made in various academic disciplines. [37, 38] (We have not had a chance to investigate the purported genetic evidence, of which we are usually skeptical, but there are occasions where such research is valid.)

[33 Library of History, Diodorus Siculus, primarily at 5.40 ff.; 34 The Histories, Herodotus, 1.94; 35 Geography, Strabo, 5.2.2; 36 Annals of Rome, Tacitus, 4.52 ff.; 37 Ancient Etruscans Were Immigrants From Anatolia, Or What Is Now Turkey, Science Daily, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070616191637.htm, accessed June 9^th, 2023; 38 Did the Etruscans Have An Anatolian Origin?, https://www.thecollector.com/etruscans-anatolian-origins/, accessed June 9^th, 2023.]

Aram: Finally, Aram is the fifth and last son of Shem. The word ארם or aram is defined as elevated, or in that sense, exalted. Everywhere in the Old Testament that the words Syria or Syrian appear, Aram is the Hebrew word from which they are translated, but the translation is not at all congruent, and is actually quite unfortunate. There is often confusion concerning the name “Syria”, but it is originally a Greek word, even if it was based on a Hebrew term, and it was used only as a geographical term by the Greeks and later Romans, to describe a much wider area than the land of Aram. To the Greeks and Romans, Syria had no intrinsic connection to Aram.

As we have seen here and in our discussion of the Canaanites, some of the Canaanite empires as well as the Sidonians and others had occupied large portions of what is historically called Syria. The Greek historian Herodotus even reckoned Palestine as part of Syria [39], and he referred to the Judahites who fought against Necho at Megiddo as the “Syrians of Palestine”. [40, 41]. Herodotus also called “Syrians” certain Cappadocians “who dwell about the rivers Thermôdon and Parthenius”. [42] While the precise identity of the Cappadocians is uncertain, Strabo explained that they “have to the present time been called ‘White Syrians’, as though some Syrians were black”, and so with that we may deduce that all the Syrians known to Strabo were White so far as he was concerned [43]. Many writers, including Strabo, mistook the Assyrians for Syrians, certainly due to the similarity of the names in Greek [44]. But with all of this, it is clear that Syria was strictly a Greek geographical label, describing a land of many diverse tribes, and Aram in Scripture should not have been translated as Syrian.

The Greek poet Homer had mentioned a Syrian named Cinyras [45] who conquered Cyprus and had Paphos for a capital, but George Rawlinson and other commentators have Paphos as an early Phoenician colony [46]. Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Judaeans records that Cyprus, whom he calls the “Citteans”, were subjects of Tyre just prior to the time of the Assyrian invasions of Israel [47]. In his lamentations for Tyre, the prophet Ezekiel also has the Israelite tribe of Asher in Cyprus, and Tyre was situated within Asher’s territory [48]. It is apparent that the Greek words Συρία or Syria, Σύρος or Syrian, and Τύρος or Tyre, had all been derived from the same Hebrew word, Tsor (Strong’s #s 6864 and 6865), which is the ancient Hebrew name for the city called in the Bible either Tyre or Tyrus. George Rawlinson also explained this in his translation of Herodotus, simply by stating that “‘Syrian’ is nothing but a variant of ‘Tyrian.’” [49]

[39 The Histories, Herodotus, 7.89.i; 40 ibid., 2.159; 41 cf. II Chronicles 35:20; 42 Herodotus, 2.104; 43 Geography, Strabo, 16.1.2; 44 ibid., 16.1.3; 45 Iliad, Homer, 11.20; 46 Herodotus, The Histories, 2.182 and 7.195, translated by George Rawlinson, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, 1910, 1997, and cf. Rawlinson’s footnotes on pp. 221 and 590; Antiquities of the Judaeans, Flavius Josephus, 9.14.2 (9:283-287); 48 Ezekiel 27:6; 49 Rawlinson, p. 537.]

Perhaps originally Aram may have been centered in Damascus, or perhaps in some region in the north, such as Padanaram. But Damascus is mentioned in Scripture in Genesis chapter 14, so it is at least as old as the first Biblical references to Padanaram found in Genesis chapter 25. The language attributed to Aram, which is called Aramaic, became the dominant language of trade in the Near East from the rise of the Persian empire until it was supplanted by Greek after the time of Alexander. Even in the time of the Persian empire, Aramaic, and not Farsi, was the lingua franca. But evidently, the Aramaic language itself is not attested until a relatively late time.

In an inscription esteemed to have dated circa 860 BC, made by Ben-Hadad of Damascus, evidently the same king of Damascus mentioned in the Biblical books of Kings and Chronicles, we read: “A stela set up by Barhadad, the son of Tabrimmon, and son of Hezion, king of Aram, for his Lord Melqart, which he vowed to him and he (then) heard his voice.” While the inscription was evidently partially illegible, some of the text has been filled in by the translators from 1 Kings 15:18 where it mentions this same king. The stele was discovered in 1939 in Aleppo, Syria, which is very near to ancient Padanaram. [50] Another inscription in which Aram is mentioned was found about 16 miles southeast of Aleppo, which mentions Aram and several Israelite Hebrew names ending with the prefixes -el, for god, and -yah, for Yahweh. It is a copy of a treaty which dates to around 750 BC, the time of Jeroboam II. [51] Arameans are mentioned in an Assyrian inscription from the rule of Adad-Nirari II, king of Assyria at the turn of the 9th century BC, and later in that century in an inscription of Shalmaneser III which is titled “The Fight Against the Aramean Coalition” [52].

[50 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, p. 655; 51 ibid., p. 659; 52 ibid., pp. 275-276.]

But there seems to be a dearth of mentions of Aram in other and older sources, at least until more recent discoveries have been made at Ebla and Mari. I have not yet investigated whether we may even access original sources for those findings. According to the article for Arameans at Wikipedia:

The toponym A-ra-mu appears in an inscription at the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Ebla listing geographical names, and the term Armi, the Eblaite term for nearby Idlib, occurs frequently in the Ebla tablets (c. 2300 BCE). One of the annals of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2250 BCE) mentions that he captured “Dubul, the ensí of A-ra-me” (Arame is seemingly a genitive form), in the course of a campaign against Simurrum in the northern mountains. Other early references to a place or people of “Aram” have appeared at the archives of Mari (c. 1900 BCE) and at Ugarit (c. 1300 BCE). There is no consensus on the origin and meaning of the word “Aram”, one of the most accepted suggestions being that it is derived from a Semitic root rwm, “to be high”. [53]

In that same Wikipedia article, it is properly stated that the Aramaic language is not attested in inscriptions until the 10th century BC, so there are no older examples. That does not mean that the dialect is not older that that, but perhaps only that it was not used for official inscriptions or correspondence until that time. That would indicate that Aram had no real power of its own until that time. Also, we cannot help but to think that this town Armi nearby to Ebla may have been the Armanum which the inscription of Naram-sin had attested that he had destroyed along with Ebla, as we had discussed earlier in this presentation.

This citation from Wikipedia seems to suggest that all of Aram was originally in the mountains to the north, perhaps around Padanaram. The article for the Arameans at Britannica is dated, and offers not much more than what we have already discussed. It is silent on Aram before the rise of Assyria, but also suggests that Aram invaded Syria and Mesopotamia from the north. So we shall cite it in part:

In the Old Testament the Aramaeans are represented as being closely akin to the Hebrews and living in northern Syria around Harran from about the 16th century bc [sic]. The Aramaeans are also mentioned often in Assyrian records as freebooters. The first mention of the Aramaeans occurs in inscriptions of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I (1115–1077). By the end of the 11th century bc [sic], the Aramaeans had formed the state of Bit-Adini on both sides of the Euphrates River below Carchemish and held areas in Anatolia and northern Syria and in the Anti-Lebanon area, including Damascus. About 1030 bc [sic] a coalition of the southern Aramaeans, led by Hadadezer, king of Zobah, in league with the Ammonites, Edomites, and the Aramaeans of Mesopotamia, attacked Israel but was defeated by King David.

To the east, however, the Aramaean tribes spread into Babylonia, where an Aramaean usurper was crowned king of Babylon under the name of Adad-apal-iddin. By the 9th century the whole area from Babylon to the Mediterranean coast was in the hands of the Aramaean tribes known collectively as Kaldu (or Kashdu)—the biblical Chaldeans. Assyria, nearly encircled, took the offensive, and in 853 the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III fought a battle at Karkar against the armies of Hamath, Aram, Phoenicia, and Israel. This battle was indecisive, but in 838 Shalmaneser was able to annex the area held by the tribes on the middle Euphrates. [54]

Aramaean holdings in Anatolia and northern Syria may account for the later Cappadocians who were called “White Syrians” by the Greeks, as we have seen in Strabo. But the history of Aram must be more complex, and Damascus having been inhabited by Aram as early as the days of Abraham, Aram must have been spread into diverse places at a time earlier than Abraham. This we shall discuss at greater length when we discuss the call of Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. Aside from Padanaram, or Aram-Naharaim, Damascus and Bet-Adini in Mesopotamia, some of the other areas occupied by Aram include Hamath in northern Syria, Aram-Bet Rehob in Lebanon, Aram-Zobah between Damascus and the Euphrates River, and Aram-Ma'akah, as well as several other places which did not bear the name of Aram historically. Of these, Aramnaharaim and Aramzobah are mentioned in the 60th Psalm. Near Aram-Zobah must have been Aram-Ma'akah, which in the King James Version is Syriamaachah at 1 Chronicles 19:6. Some of these were in league with or mercenaries for the Ammonites who were opposed to David, which is described in that same chapter.

Here, rather than accepting the notion that all of Aram came into southern Syria from the north, we would rather imagine that Aram, and Arphaxad, may have held their own lands near to one another in central Syria, perhaps extending to the north or the south, and that it was lost to one or several of the surrounding empires, forcing Arphaxad into obscurity, and pressing Aram into several directions, north, south, and east into Mesopotamia. We cannot prove this, but it would explain a presence from Aram in all of these places at an once at early time.

[53 Arameans, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arameans, accessed June 9^th, 2023; 54 Aramaean, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aramaean accessed June 9^th, 2023.]

The sons of Aram:

23 And the children of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash.

All of these are mentioned again only where the genealogy is repeated in 1 Chronicles chapter 1, and there is no definite association with any place or people of which I am aware. However one interesting fact is that ancient Tyre was called Ushu in Assyrian inscriptions [55] or Uzu in Egyptian inscriptions [56]. That final ‘u’ in Assyrian marking the genitive, Ushu would be “city of Ush” or Uz. So perhaps there were no Canaanites in Tyre because the city had originally belonged to Aram, but that is merely an inviting conjecture based on the phonetic similarity of the names. There is another land of Uz to the south of Judah, mentioned in Job and in Jeremiah, but that Uz was very likely named for Uz the son of Esau mentioned in Genesis chapter 36, and it was inhabited by Edomites.

The Hebrew word for Uz (# 5780), עוץ or uwts or awts, is defined by Strong’s as consultation. Hul is from a word (# 2343) said to mean circle, and Gether (# 1666) and Mash (# 4851) are both undefined by Strong’s. Newer revised editions such as the Strong’s data found in the Bibleworks software program, offer definitions of wooded, circle, fear, and drawn out, in the order which the names appear in the verse. It is striking that only 1 in 4 are in agreement with the original Strong’s.

[55 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, pp. 287, 300; 56 ibid., pp. 243; 52 ibid., pp. 275-276.]

And now, placed at the end because the focus on the line of Shem is already narrowed to the descendants of just one of the sons of Arphaxad:

24 And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber.

Here is where we shall leave off with our commentary, and return with a discussion of the Hebrews, and hopefully some documented ancient physical descriptions of the sons of Noah when we return to finally complete our commentary for Genesis chapter 10.