Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight, is study #8 of Genesis, chapter 11 and we are going to begin by reading Genesis 11:12-13:

And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.

This is the time after the flood. As we saw in our last study, the Bible calendar reference patriarch was Shem immediately after the flood. The Lord picks up the calendar two years after the flood, as that is when it is said that Shem begat Arphaxad and then Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad 500 years. So, two years after the flood was 4988BC and this was the beginning of Shem’s period, until 500 years later in the year 4488 when Shem died and Arphaxad was born.

Then, again, we read in Genesis 11:12-13:

And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years…

Remember what we learned from Genesis 5 when the Lord did the math work for us? We must add together the two periods of time given and, in this case, it would be 35 and 403 and we come to the total of 438. Therefore, Arphaxad’s period of being the calendar reference patriarch was from 4488BC until 4050BC and then he died in the year 4050BC.

Then it says in Genesis 11:14-15:

And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.

It is the same methodology and the same calendar keys. We know that when Selah is born it was the same year Arphaxad died in 4050BC. He then lived 30 years and begat Eber; that is, he begat a progenitor that would produce a later descendant named Eber. Eber would come forth from that individual born 30 years from the point of Salah being the Bible calendar reference patriarch and then, after that point, Salah lived 403 years and then he died.

So, Salah was born in 4050BC and he died 433 years later in the year 3617BC. In 3617BC Eber was born. Again, it is all “end to end.” One patriarch dies and the same year another patriarch is born and takes over the calendar.

Let us continue and read Genesis 11:16:17

And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.

Eber was born in 3617BC and then 464 years later in the year 3153BC Eber died. As we discussed in detail a few studies ago concerning the tower of Babel and the confusion of the world’s languages, it very likely took place in the days of Eber. That means that somewhere between 3617BC and 3153BC the tower of Babel incident occurred and God confounded the languages of the world and a great many different tongues developed, where there had previously been one language. It is also likely that this happened closed to Eber’s death than his birth and it could have been the year before he died in 3154BC, putting it closer to the time of the division of continents in the days of Peleg. We spent some time discussing how the division of languages had to happen first, before the division of the continents. That is the only way we can have these people all over the earth on all the different continents and speaking so many different languages. They first had to have experienced the tower of Babel before being dispersed when God separated them by bringing about the continental shift.

We also saw that the word “Hebrew” was derived from Eber’s name. That is strong evidence and it is probably the reason God focused on Eber in Genesis 10 because there was no (apparent) reason to focus on him, but the reason the Lord highlighted him was that it was in his days that God formed the Hebrew language. All the later descendants of Eber would speak Hebrew and we saw that Abram was said to be a Hebrew. There was no Hebrew language until the tower of Babel incident, in all likelihood. I say, “in all likelihood,” because there was one language that all people spoke, but we do not know what language that was, but this language would have gone back to the time of creation. We are not told what language Adam and Eve spoke. Someone might say, “Well, their language was Hebrew. After all, we have the account in Genesis about the creation, which is written in Hebrew.” Yes, that is true, but God gave that account to Moses many thousands of years after creation during the wilderness sojourn after they came out of Egypt. God gave Moses divine revelation in a tongue Moses could understand because Moses was a Hebrew, but that does not prove that the original language until the time of Eber was Hebrew. We have no evidence of that. Since the word “Hebrew” is derived from “Eber,” there is evidence that the division of tongues took place in his time or in his days.

Again, Eber was born in 3617BC and died in 3153BC. Let us read Genesis 11:18-19:

And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.

Once again, Peleg was born the same year that Eber died and that would have been 3153BC and then 239 years later, Peleg died in the year 2914BC. It is a total of 239 years. Again, God tells us that it was in the days of Peleg that the earth was divided. We saw that statement back in Genesis 10:25:

And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

The secular evidence points to the year 3114BC as the year when God divided the one huge continent into the several continents we have today. We based that on the Mayan calendar date of 3114BC because they placed this date as the foundation of their calendar, even though the date does not seem to have anything to do with anything. Why would they pick that date? That date fits right into the lifespan of Peleg, the time when he was the Bible calendar patriarch. In 3114BC Peleg would have been 39 years old, going on 40 years. Or, you could say he was 40 years (inclusive) from his birth, from 3114 to 3153. That is an outstanding year, given what we know concerning timelines and time paths elsewhere in the Bible and how God uses the numbers “39” and “40.”

For instance, from 7BC, the birth of Christ, until the cross in 33AD, it was 39 actual years and 40 calendar years. There are other examples.

So, here we have a secular calendar date and since it is secular, we cannot say it as absolute, but the evidence strongly suggests that it was the date for the division of the continents and it would explain why the Mayans used the date 3114BC as the foundation of their calendar. It was a terrible catastrophic event that would have stood out in comparison to any other date. Just think of the terror it would have provoked in people. People tend to remember an earthquake when the ground shakes for even ten seconds, but this would have been a continuous shaking and movement of the whole world. Entire continents would have been moving across the ocean floor to the place where God was going to position them. It was certainly something the people of the world would have remembered and taken note of and, therefore, it became the foundation date of the Mayan calendar. The Mayans were more advanced than some other peoples of that time in the sense that they did develop a calendar. They placed that date, which identified with the 39th/40th year of Peleg. It is definite that in the days of Peleg the earth was divided and if it is correct that it was the year 3114BC, Peleg would have been aged 39 and he would have lived exactly 200 more years from 3114BC and died in 2914BC. He would have lived 200 years after the division of the continents.

Let us go on to Genesis 11:20-21:

And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug: And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.

Again, it is the same methodology. In the year that Peleg died (2914BC), Reu was born. When we add up the two dates God gives us, we would add 32 plus 207 and it totals 239 years. Then 239 years from 2914BC is the year 2675BC. Reu was born in the year Peleg died, in the year 2914, and then Reu died 239 years later in 2675BC.

Then it says in Genesis 11:22-23:

And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor: And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.

We go through the same formula. Again, just to point it out, each one of these Bible calendar patriarchs are extremely important because they are establishing a chain. They are establishing a timeline. Even though one part does not seem all that important and we could say, “What does it matter?” We know very little about Reu. We know very little about Serug. God does not tell us much about these men in the Bible, like he told us about Peleg and Eber. Nonetheless, their lives were extremely important. Their position in the Bible is extremely important because they are links in the chain of the history of the world that God is laying out.

So, again, it is the same formula with Serug. He was born in the year that Reu died in 2675 BC and he lived for 230 years and then he died in the year 2445 and that is the end of Serug’s life and the end of his days in representing the calendar. The calendar would no longer be tied to him because he died.

Let us go on to Genesis 11, verse 24 and we are going to see that God will do something He did back in Genesis, chapter 5. Remember, we followed the Biblical calendar until we reached the time of Noah and then God gave much more detail about the flood for several chapters. Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 had information about the flood and God is again returning to the Biblical timeline as the Lord is giving us this genealogy, but we are now coming out of the Biblical timeline, as far as the formula of someone being born and living a certain time and then dying. We are going to enter a time when the Lord will give much more detail and Nahor is a sort of transitional character. It says in Genesis 11:24-26:

And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

This is also very consistent with what the Lord did earlier as we emerged from the calendar reference patriarchs back in Genesis, chapter 5. We were told about Lamech and how Lamech beget Noah. Then it said in Genesis 5:32:

And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

It is very similar, as we are coming out of the calendar, as there is another individual and he just happens to beget Abram, Nahor, and Haran, just like Noah had begotten three sons. It is also interesting in the order the sons are listed. Abram was also not the firstborn son and, yet, he is the first one listed. It was the same case with Shem. I think we talked about how God listed Shem first, but there is evidence that Shem was not the firstborn son, but they are listed first because of their importance in God’s magnificent salvation program. It said, “And Nahor lived nine and twenty years,” and we know that Serug died in 2445BC and that would have been the year of Nahor’s birth and then he lived 29 years and he begat Terah. After he begat Terah, he lived for 119 years and begat sons and daughters. So, all the days of Nahor were 148 years. That means that Nahor was born in 2445 and he lived 148 years and he died in 2297BC. Now we are coming down to the period of history in which God is going to give us a great many details. We will enter the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Jacob’s twelve sons will enter the historical account of Israel’s stay in Egypt for 430 years, the coming out of Egypt and the 40-year wilderness sojourn and their entry into the Promised Land of Canaan. There will be the period of the judges and God was very careful to give us an accurate timeline for the period of the judges. And as we leave the period of the judges, we will enter in to the period of the kings of Israel, where God is very careful to give us timeline information regarding all the kings of Israel and Judah. We will be able to work our way from Saul, the first king, who began to reign in 1047BC, and all the way down to the last king of Judah in 587BC.

So, from this date of 2297BC regarding Nahor, there will be no more genealogies that span hundreds of years, but we are then going to follow Biblical history. The Book of Genesis will only take us to the days of Joseph and the entry into Egypt, but it is a lead-in to all the rest of Old Testament Biblical history. The entire Old Testament after Genesis is given based on the descent in history from Abraham all the way through the captivity in Egypt, the wilderness sojourn, the period of the judges, the period of the kings and all the way down to the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ in 7BC. The Old Testament leaves off before Christ is born, but that is what this is all leading up to, as it flows from this point. It is sort of like being on a road that is about to give way to a “super highway” and we will be quickly caught up and taken along through the rest of Old Testament Biblical history from this point.

I would like to mention the death of Nahor in 2297BC. If you add 2297 to 2033AD…and I mention that year 2033AD because an increasing amount of Biblical evidence points to that year. When we add 2,297 and 2,033, it totals 4,330 and if we minus “1” it is 4,329. That is the number of years from the death of Nahor to this date we are looking at as a possibility for the end of the world. The number “4,329” breaks down to “3 x 3 x 13 x 37.” The number “3” points to the purpose of God. The number “13” identifies with the end of the world and the number “37” is the number of judgment. Each one of these numbers is highly significant and it is a very strong time path from the death of Nahor all the way to this potential end of the world date of 2033AD.