Genesis 10:22-32

The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram. And the children of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash. And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber. And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazar-maveth, and Jerah, And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah, And Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba, And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were the sons of Joktan. And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the east. These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

Genesis 10 closes by tracing out the line of Shem and then pulling the camera back to show the whole human family spreading out after the flood. Families, tongues, lands, nations. The world is being repopulated. The earth is being divided. History is moving forward exactly as God said it would.

One name especially stands out in the middle of the list. Peleg. We are told that in his days the earth was divided. The word used there speaks of the physical earth, which suggests an actual division in the land itself. That helps explain how the animals could spread from Ararat to the far reaches of the earth. What looks impossible to the skeptic is not a problem at all when the earth itself is being reshaped in the aftermath of the flood.

And that is where this chapter becomes more than genealogy. It becomes an answer. If the flood was real, how did the nations spread? How did the animals disperse? How did the earth become filled again? Genesis says the earth was divided in Peleg’s day, and that division helps account for the movement outward into every corner of the world.

The picture is that after the collapse of the water canopy and the upheaval connected to the flood, the earth went through massive changes. The Ice Age did not have to creep in slowly over endless ages, but could come in catastrophic stages. As massive amounts of water were locked up in glaciers, ocean levels would recede, land bridges would emerge, and routes would open that made migration possible across regions now separated by sea. In that way, the spreading of animal life from Ararat outward is not a weakness in the flood account at all. It is one more indication that the biblical record is entirely coherent on its own terms.

So Genesis 10 ends by reminding us that the nations were divided in the earth after the flood, but not at random. The Lord was overseeing the whole process. He was not only preserving life in the ark. He was preparing for the world that would come after it.

Beloved, what looks to the cynic like confusion is actually order when viewed through the lens of Scripture. God had a plan for the nations, a plan for the lands, and a plan for the creatures He preserved. The same God who brought them through the flood also brought them into the world beyond it.