Every human being alive, in the reckoning of Genesis, descends from one household of eight. Noah, son of Lamech, is the righteous survivor who 'found grace in the eyes of the LORD'; his unnamed wife enters and leaves the ark at his side; and their three sons — Shem, Ham and Japheth — become the root of the whole species. What makes this tree worth studying is that it is not merely a pedigree but a map. Chapter ten of Genesis, the Table of Nations, traditionally enumerates seventy descendant peoples stemming from Noah's sons, so that geography and genealogy become the same document.
The fracture arrives immediately after the rescue. Noah plants a vineyard, becomes drunk and lies exposed; Ham sees his father and tells his brothers, while Shem and Japheth walk in backwards to cover him. The blessing that follows falls on Shem — apparently the middle son, born when Noah was 502 — and on Japheth, who is to be 'enlarged' and dwell in Shem's tents. The curse falls not on Ham but on Ham's youngest son, Canaan — 'a servant of servants' — a displaced consequence handed to a grandson who did nothing. From that moment the sibling triad is two against one, and no reconciliation is recorded.
The branches carry the quarrel outward. Japheth fathers Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras — the northern and seafaring nations, with Ashkenaz and Togarmah under Gomer and Tarshish, Kittim, Elishah and Dodanim under Javan. Ham fathers Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan: Egypt, Nubia, Libya and the land of promise. Cush produces Nimrod, the first empire-builder, and Canaan's list runs to Sidon, Heth and the Jebusite and Amorite peoples Israel will later face. Shem's sons are Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram; through Arphaxad come Shelah and Eber, whose sons are Peleg — in whose days the earth was divided — and Joktan, father of thirteen named descendants. Only Peleg's line runs on to Abram.
The tree follows the Masoretic text of Genesis 5, 9, 10 and 11, with the named generations from Shem to Abraham paralleled in 1 Chronicles 1 — material compiled from older sources, though estimates for the Pentateuch's final formation remain debated. It endures because it is an origin story with consequences: Abraham, Shem's ninth-generation descendant, is promised the land held by Canaan, the one grandson his ancestor cursed. A drunken night in a vineyard becomes the charter for centuries of national enmity, and a family quarrel is written into the borders of a world.
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