Japheth
Japheth was a son of Noah who, with Shem, walked backward to cover their father's nakedness rather than expose it. Noah blessed him with the words, 'God shall enlarge Japheth,' and his descendants - Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, and others - became the seafaring and northern peoples spread across the coastlands. He stands in Scripture as ancestor of the Gentile nations that would one day dwell in the tents of Shem.
Biography
- Father
- Noah
- Children
- Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Tiras
- Era
- Post-Flood (Primeval History)
Family
Did You Know?
Noah's blessing 'God shall enlarge Japheth' (Genesis 9:27) contains a Hebrew wordplay - the verb 'enlarge' (yapht) echoes the name Japheth (Yephet) itself.
Japheth's sons in Genesis 10 - including Javan (the Greeks), Madai (the Medes), and Tubal and Meshech - map onto the peoples of Anatolia, the Aegean, and the northern coastlands, making him the traditional ancestor of the 'maritime' Gentile nations.
The name Javan, one of Japheth's sons, is the standard Hebrew word for Greece throughout the Old Testament, so Japheth's line quietly connects the Table of Nations to the later Greek world of the New Testament.
Key Chapters
Key Passages
Japheth Honors Noah
Genesis 9:23-27
Japheth shares in the blessing for covering his father, and Noah prophesies that God will enlarge him.
23nd Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their fatherโs nakedness.
Descendants of Japheth
Genesis 10:2-5
From Japheth come the maritime and coastland peoples, spreading out into many nations and tongues.
2he sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.