Successions -- Genesis 10

We have something to see from Genesis 10 that will confirm the thesis of the role of the opening note of a verse.

Genesis is about births -- and here are a host of them to populate the storied earth. What sort of music does it make. It's odd to be describing music. These are not my favorite sections of the Bible. I don't know the stories or the names or what memories they might have carried for the people who wrote them. But if I was around a fire, listening to the minstrel, and hearing the recitation, I expect I might have been enthralled.

We have already heard some of this music. We began with toldot, which I have rendered as 'successions', now we are seeing a synonym, mwpkot, [in SimHebrew, w is sh, k is a strong h] which I have rendered as 'families'. But neither is 'generations', the word used in the KJV -- these are dorot, the plural of dor, as in the phrase ldor vdor - from generation to generation. 

This song is at times, a concatenation of names. So verses 2-4. Then verse 5 beginning with the qarne ornament explains what the prior list accomplished. verses 6-7 and a slight variation on Nimrod verse 8-10. Verses 5 and 10 each close a section and each one rises to a recitation on the 6th degree of the scale. Perhaps 11-12 would also be included by the minstrel in that section, a temporary culmination of the impact of Nimrod.

Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter,
Bind a leopard to the altar
And consecrate his spear to the Lord. (Christopher Smart liked this passage).

The list of tribes and children continues through verses 13-18 on low reciting notes c, d, e. In verse 19 we again hear the high C, bringing to an end the list of Ham's children. Verse 20 concludes the section with its backward looking colon (a role that can be played by any ta'am saying to us: remember what we have sung about). Opening on a proclamation on the dominant, it announces that you have heard the catalogue of the children of Ham. JB uses a past tense verb here "These were the generation of ..." -- reasonable but definitely biased to a reading sequence rather than a wholistic memory of the sound of the song. And the past tense in this translation is applicable to the act of reading, not the issue of the history or the form of the verb which remains present even though it refers to past times.

The text deals with the list of the three sons of Noah in reverse order. Shem is the last beginning in verse 21 and continuing to the end of the chapter. The high C on verse 25 highlights the children of Eber, Peleg and Joktan.

וּלְעֵ֥בֶר יֻלַּ֖ד שְׁנֵ֣י בָנִ֑ים שֵׁ֣ם הָֽאֶחָ֞ד פֶּ֗לֶג כִּ֤י בְיָמָיו֙ נִפְלְגָ֣ה הָאָ֔רֶץ וְשֵׁ֥ם אָחִ֖יו יָקְטָֽן		25 And to Eiver were born two sons, the name of the first Peleg, because in his days the earth was entangled, and the name of his brother, Joktan.
ch ulybr iuld wni bnim wm hakd plg ci bimiv nplgh harx vwm akiv ioqTn	9 22	vl/ybr ild wn\i bn\im wm h/akd plg ci b/im\iv n/plg\h h/arx v/wm ak\iv iqTn

The closing explanation of this section is a matter-of-fact low verse 30. Where the musical phrase sequence e f g# B ^A B e tar,rev,C qad,B z-q,f g# e is unique for verse 25, the phrase, e f g# ^A f g# f e, in verse 30 occurs 42 times in the Scripture. I doubt that there is a real significance to this count apart from the use of a lower timbre of the tone of voice. Verses 31 and 32 both begin on the dominant B, thus connecting themselves to the prior verses. Check out the comments on verse 32 in the earlier post of this series on the song of the genealogies in Genesis.