From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (V)

The other day I was reading Genesis 10:10-21, and I kept noticing this recurring phrase that piqued my curiosity. It's giving all the generations of Noah's sons after the flood, and it keeps saying, "These are the sons of .... according to their clans, and languages, and territories and nations ..."

It stands out to me for two reasons: a) in Genesis 11, right after all this, it's going to tell the story of the Tower of Babel, and it'll start by saying that everyone had only one language and a common speech (in contrast to what it's saying here in Genesis 10); and b) all this diversity of clans, territories and languages in Genesis 10 seems to be happening in fulfillment of God's blessing, back in Genesis 9, when he told Noah's family, to multiply on the earth and increase upon it (9:7).

In other words, God's heart, it seems, is for a rich, variegated, wide-spreading, culturally diverse family of human beings filling the earth. And whatever else was wrong with it, the problem with the building project of Babel was that it was forcing humanity into stark, sterile homogeneity.

It makes me think about the importance of cultural diversity among God's people, and the ways church ministry can either promote or discourage the kind of nation/tribe/language/cultural variety we see in Genesis 10. Because it's not just Genesis where we see it. If the Book of Revelation can be trusted on the matter, it's what we'll experience on the last day, too: we'll be part of "a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb" (Revelation 7:9). Churches that enjoy the Genesis 10 blessing of rich, difficult, but joyful cultural diversity are getting, I think, good practice here on earth for that Heavenly day.