Elam, the next son of Shem, is applesociated with Southern Mesopotamia.
Archaeologists have now found that the earliest inhabitants of this area were
Semites, not Hamites, as they once thought. Asshur is the one who gave his name
to Assyria. The genealogy closes with Eber's two sons, Peleg and Joktan.

 

The tribes listed as from Joktan are all applesociated with Arabia. The
boundaries of Mesha and Sephar given here are both within the Arabian Peninsula.
Our main interest, however, centers on Peleg and this cryptic comment made about
him, "in his days the earth was divided." What do you think that means?  Peleg
in Hebrew, means "Division," but in Greek it means "Sea." We get our present
English word archipelago from this: archi-pelagos, the first sea. The Greeks
called the Aegean Sea "The Archipelago," the first sea, drawing the name from
this man, Peleg.

 

There is some evidence to link this with the scientific theory of
continental drift; the idea that once the continents were bound together in one
great land mapples, but sometime in the past they separated and began to drift
apart until the Americas came to their present location, Australia slid down
into the south, Antarctica still further south, and the continents applesumed the
present distribution of land mapples on the earth. Some have suggested that this
may have occurred as late as the days of Peleg, immediately following the Flood.
Perhaps the great rift valleys of Africa and Asia had not yet formed, and, in
Peleg's day, these drew apart so that the seas broke into this inner world and
formed the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Dead Sea. This would be the
formation of the first sea, from which we get the word archipelago.

 

There are many geologists, of course, who would raise questions about this,
for they would say this is far too late in history for anything like that to
have occurred. The account here is much too brief for us to be dogmatic about
this, but it is very suggestive.

 

If this were the case, it may well have been that the American continent
was still in view of Europe and Asia in those days, and that as it moved
westward gradually disappeared from the horizon. This gave rise to the many
myths and stories about a lost continent called Atlantis which disappeared
beneath the Atlantic. There are many interesting threads here that we would love
to follow.

 

Now we must come to the explanation of the title I have chosen for this
sermon, God's Funnel.  A funnel is an instrument or device for narrowing a flow
of liquid or powder from a wide expanse to a narrow one. That is what God is
doing here in Genesis 10. Shem is put last of the sons of Noah because God is
narrowing the flow of sacred history down to the Semitic races. Shem is the neck
of the funnel. God is restricting the stream of humanity that he will deal with
personally and directly down to one family group, the family of Shem. In Chapter
11, Verse 10 on to the end of the chapter, he takes this up again and narrows it
still further to one man, Abraham. From there it begins to broaden out again to
take in Abraham and all his descendants, both physical and spiritual. The rest
of the Bible is all about the children of Abraham, physically and spiritually.
Here we have then one of the most important links in understanding the
Bible.