Merciful. It’s oftentimes helpful to find ‘brackets’ in passages of Scripture, meaning – phrases or word choices that begin and end a passage. We see an example of that in the previous chapter (Gen. 9:1,7); and this chapter we have another: both verse 1 and verse 32 bracket the listing of the ‘table of nations.’ But not only does this bracket introduce and conclude the genealogy of Noah’s sons, it has within it a reminder of God’s mercy – both verses end with the phrase, “after the flood” (Gen. 10:1b; 32b). It’s as though the reader should stop and say – ‘Wow, look at how God so thoroughly replenished the planet that He made desolate. What mercy…’ Sadly, future generations like Nimrod and those at the Tower of Babel would spurn such mercy – forgetting that the populated planet they enjoyed had, not too long before, “perished, being flooded with water” (2 Pet. 3:6b). Let’s be careful not to do the same. We, too, live “after the flood.”
