Shem, Ham, and Yéfet (Gen 5:32)
The Genealogy of Adam
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32 and Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Yéfet. וַיּ֣וֹלֶד נֹ֔חַ אֶת־שֵׁ֖ם אֶת־חָ֥ם וְאֶת־יָֽפֶת׃
We’re returning to this last verse of Genesis 5, which was the jumping-off point for most of our discussion last week, one last time. We’ve pointed out that if the Genealogy were continuing beyond this point, we would have expected to read the regular pattern here. Let’s compare:
Gen 5:25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he begot Lamech.
28 *When Lamech had lived 182 years, he begot Noah.
32 *When Noah had lived 500 years, he begot Shem.
Those asterisks (*) indicate that I’ve created a text that’s not actually in our Bibles. The actual Lemekh paragraph of the Genealogy is an extended coda, simultaneously letting us know that we are coming to the end of the sequence and reconnecting us (via v. 29) to the story we read in Genesis 3. Noah’s three sons, here in v. 32, are the cadence that tells us that the Genealogy, and with it this chapter, are over. (Apologies to the Masoretes, who did not agree that this was an ending of any kind.)
You notice that my imaginary continuation of The Genealogy of Adam assumes that Shem was Noah’s eldest. Traditional commentators (given here in my Commentators’ Bible translation) argue about this question:
Rashi: Wasn’t Japheth the oldest? But you would naturally ask first about Shem, who was righteous, was born circumcised, and from whom Abraham was descended; see Genesis Rabbah.
Kimhi: The Sages reckon as follows: Japheth must have been the eldest. The Flood occurred when Noah was 600. Since he begot his eldest at 500, that son must have been 99 when the Flood came and 100 after it. But “Shem was 100 years old when he begot Arpachshad, two years afterthe Flood” (11:10). So (they conclude) Japheth must have been the eldest. But if that is so, why would the text here and everywhere else list them as “Shem, Ham, and Japheth”? In fact, Shem begot Arpachshad two years after the beginning of the Flood. When the Flood began, he was 99. When it was over, he was 100, and he was still 100 early in the second year after the beginning of the Flood, when he begot Arpachshad.
Nahmanides [to 6:10]: It seems to me that 10:21 tells us Japheth was the oldest; note that Japheth’s descendants are listed first in that chapter. And 9:24 tells us that Ham was the youngest. But Shem is given precedence here as the most important. Ham, who followed him in birth order, is listed next even though that means Japheth is left for last. The text did not want to completely ignore birth order, and Japheth was not important enough to override it on his account. But Shem was, even though his descendants are listed last in ch. 10. Other sons are also listed out of birth order: “The sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael” (1 Chron. 1:28); “to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau” (Josh. 24:4).
Gersonides [to 6:10]: Shem is listed first because of his prominence; since he was the youngest, the other two are listed in order of increasing age.
Abarbanel [to 9:18]: Since the Torah always lists them in this order, this must be the order of their birth—first Shem, after him Ham, and after him Japheth.
You see that I am following an old Jewish tradition in discussing tiny details at great length. Nahum Sarna tells us just how much we don’t know about these names:
Shem Its meaning is “name, fame, renown,” and it is probably abbreviated from shemuel or the like.
Ham Its origin is obscure, despite attempts to connect it with Hebrew ḥam, “a wife’s father,” ḥam, “hot, dark-skinned,” and Egyptian ḥm, “servant.” Ham is synonymous with Egypt in Psalms 78:51; 105:23, 27; and 106:32.
Japheth The name may be the same as that of Iapetus, which appears in Greek mythology but has no Greek etymology. Its meaning is unknown.
And Cassuto comments:
The various explanations suggested with regard to the etymology of the three names are all doubtful.
There’s really no reason to assume that names of any kind have “meaning”; on the other hand, most names do “come from” somewhere. Thanks to NASA it is easy to learn that Iapetus is indeed from the Greek era that corresponds to the Primeval History of Genesis, one in which mythology is just starting to coalesce into history.
If indeed Japheth and Iapetus are related, Iapetus would have to derive from Japheth and not the other way around, since Japheth (as you’ve seen in my translation of v. 32) is another Lémekh / Jéred kind of segholate-shaped name, which appears with an a vowel instead of an e vowel in English only because its first occurrence in the Bible is at the end of a verse, in pausal form. ⇥ See 7:13 for the “real” version of the name, and Lesson 12 of my Hebrew course if you want a better understanding of segholate (éh-eh) shapes and pausal forms. ⇤
Washington Irving makes a point that’s important for us, even though he’s using it to make a joke. Here’s what he wrote in Chapter 3 of his Knickerbocker's History of New York:
Noah, we are told by sundry very credible historians, becoming sole surviving heir and proprietor of the earth, in fee simple, after the deluge, like a good father, portioned out his estate among his children. To Shem he gave Asia; to Ham, Africa; and to Japhet, Europe. Now it is a thousand times to be lamented that he had but three sons, for had there been a fourth he would doubtless have inherited America, which, of course, would have been dragged forth from its obscurity on the occasion; and thus many a hard-working historian and philosopher would have been spared a prodigious mass of weary conjecture respecting the first discovery and population of this country.
Indeed, European maps once featured a 3-leaf clover, one for each continent, assigning a continent to each of Noah’s sons, just as Irving says. The ultimate reason for Shem’s being listed first among Noah’s sons is undoubtedly, as Rashi says, that he is the ancestor of Abraham and thus of the Jews.
I learn from a sometimes amusing podcast called The Bible for Normal People (1) that “normal people” are Protestant, and (2) that normal people think the Bible is a book about God. We Jews think the Bible is a book about us (and specifically our relationship with God), so it is quite natural that we should give Shem first billing among Noah’s sons — he is, after all, the ancestor of his namesake, the Semites.
We’ll meet these three boys a number of times as we read on and will have more opportunities to discuss them in detail. For now, we close The Genealogy of Adam and turn the page to begin a surprising new story.