Photo and Commentary ©2023 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
As the population of the world continues to grow, the need for city planners becomes increasingly evident. Housing needs must be balanced with transportation and ecological concerns. The challenge to accomplish this is apparent in cities like Seattle and others across our country. But try to imagine the undertaking facing Noah and his family as they left the ark and determined how they would reestablish the world following the total devastation. Certainly numbers weren’t their primary concern, but some form of organization was needed.
Genesis 10 gives us a brief account of that, but it’s a chapter of Scripture we usually skip over rather rapidly, primarily because it contains an abundance of names with which we are not familiar and have difficulty pronouncing. It tells of where the descendants of his three sons settled as they began a new life. But we should also remember it wasn’t just mankind that had to repopulate the world; all of nature faced the challenge of finding their proper niche and there establishing new populations. And this distribution was not allocated equally over the planet. Consider Costa Rica, a country about the size of West Virginia, yet having more species of birds than the United States and Canada put together. We’re left with more questions than answers. Why should this Black-cheeked Woodpecker elect to limit its range to a narrow strip reaching from the southern part of Mexico to western Ecuador? Why not join the 22 other woodpeckers that make North America their home? With 239 species of woodpeckers distributed around the world, why should it choose this limited range?
We may draw a blank on woodpeckers, but this chapter does give us a brief glance at the process mankind went through. “These, then, were the descendants of Shem, classified according to their political groupings, languages, and geographical locations.” (Genesis 10:31 Living Bible) How much of this was determined by man alone and how much was guided by God? It doesn’t say, but the next chapter gives us a discouraging hint as it describes the events at Babel. Fortunately, for us, the Bible ends on the most positive note possible, describing a population redistribution that is totally dependent upon the choices we make. Choose well, my friend.