Last week, one of my students assigned this question to me for my homework. At first, I thought “Well, that’ll take about 15.7 seconds to answer, what else am I going to do?” But, as so often is the case, the more I dug around in Scripture, the more interesting little tidbits I found that related to the question of the ark and its occupants, that I wound up walking into class with four pages of notes (most of which was Scripture…which is the way I like it).

Whenever we’re seeking an answer about something that’s in the Bible, or even about something that’s not in the text explicitly but that may be lurking between the lines, it’s of utmost importance that we stick as close to the Text as possible. Put another way, as my late pastor, Ken Hutcherson, used to say with some regularity, “The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible, and if you want to know what it says, the best thing to do is to read it.” So, what does the Bible say about Noah and his family…both before and after the flood?

Noah was deemed righteous by God

But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among those in his generations; Noah walked with God. — Genesis 6:8, 9

Then Yahweh said to Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this generation. — Genesis 7:1

Was Noah perfect? Was Noah sinless? No, of course not, for as we learn later on in the Bible:

But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. — Isaiah 59:2

and

all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God — Romans 3:23

The favor Noah received from God was not because Noah was sinless, but because he sinned less than those in his generation—he sought after (walked with) God in faith (Hebrews 11:7), and because of the faith that Noah had in God, God imputed His own righteousness to Noah. He was saved in the same way that we are today—by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Our works cannot save us, for even the “good” things we do are as filthy rags in God’s sight (Isaiah 64:6).

Noah had only three sons

And Noah was 500 years old, and Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. — Genesis 5:32

Now how do we know that Noah didn’t have other offspring before the flood, maybe some who weren’t faithful and wound up dying in the deluge? Again, the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible, so let’s let the Word of God answer this question for us:

Then Yahweh said to Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this generation. — Genesis 7:1

Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. — Genesis 9:18

So, God commanded all of Noah’s household to enter the ark, and they did. Who left the ark when the earth had dried up? Yep…Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

While we’re talking about Noah’s sons, let’s take a little journey into the text to debunk a common misconception about the birth order these three sons. Whenever we see these three mentioned in a list, we see them in the same order: “Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” (Genesis 5:32, 6:10; 7:13, 9:18, 10:1; 1 Chronicles 1:4). As far as I can tell, only Genesis 10 talks about them in a different order (Japheth, Ham, Shem) after it introduces them in their more familiar order. But “Shem, Ham, and Japheth” is not, in fact, their birth order!

What’s their actual birth order?

Let’s start with the easiest son to reckon:

Ham, the youngest

Then Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father…Then Noah awoke from his wine, and he knew what his youngest son had done to him. — Genesis 9:22, 24

So, even though Ham is always listed second in the list of sons, he was quite clearly born last. This is going to be a walk in the park, right?

Well, not so much.

Japheth, the confusing

According to Genesis 10:21…

1. Japeth is younger than Shem (NLT, ESV, Amplified, CSB, HCSB, ASV, ERV, GNT, ISV, LSV, NET)…or is it that

2. Japheth is older than Shem (KJV, NKJV, NIV, YLT)?
   (I can just hear my KJV-only brothers saying, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day” when they see the NIV in this list :-)

Uhhh….let’s put a pin in Japheth and focus on Shem for a minute, because things suddenly got all kinds of weird.

Shem, the tie-breaker

The only relevant thing that God says about Shem’s age is found in Genesis 11:

These are the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood; — Genesis 11:10

There’s some ambiguity here….does “after the flood” mean “after the flood started” or does it mean “after the flood ended”? A case could be made for either reckoning, so we’ll have to take this into account.

Now, let’s throw in some more information and see what shakes out:

• Noah was 500 years old when he begat his first son (Genesis 5:32).

• Noah was 600 years old when the flood started (Genesis 7:6, 11).

• Noah and his clan were on the ark for 370 days:

  • Started in Noah’s 600th year, in the 2nd month, on the 17th day of the month (Genesis 7:11)

  • Ended in Noah’s 601st year, in the 2nd month, on the 27th day of the month (Genesis 9:13, 14)

So, Shem was born when Noah was either 502 (“after the flood” = “after the flood started”) or when Noah was 503 (“after the flood” = “after the flood ended”).

But wait a minute, Genesis 5:32 says: “And Noah was 500 years old, and Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” You don’t have to be a mathmatician to see that 500 < 502 < 503. Also, if Noah’s first son was born when he was 500, that would make his firstborn 100 years old when the flood started, not “two years after the flood” (Genesis 11:10).

So, clearly, the birth order was:

1. Japheth

   1. born when Noah was 500

   2. 100 years old when the flood started

2. Shem

   1. born when Noah was either 502 or 503

   2. 97 or 98 years old when the flood started.

3. Ham — born after Shem, though we don’t know when.

Some of you might be thinking, “Oh come on, Dan, the genealogies have rounded numbers for the listed ages!” To which I would say, “Go read Genesis 5 yourself and see for yourself: 130, 800, 930, 105, 807, 912, 90 815, 905, 70, 840, 910, 65, 830, 895, 162, 800, 962, 75, 300, 365, 187, 782, 969, 182, 595, 777, 500.”

Okay, that was a fun little tangent. Now that’s out of my system, let’s get back on task, shall we?

There were only eight people on the ark

The Bible is abundantly clear on this point:

But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. — Genesis 6:18

“Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. — Genesis 8:16

So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. — Genesis 8:18

who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. — 1 Peter 3:20

and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly — 2 Peter 2:5

…there were four men and their respective wives on the ark; there were no grandchildren.

What about the grandchildren?

Noah’s sons did have children (obviously), but not until after the flood:

Now these are the records of the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah; and sons were born to them after the flood. — Genesis 10:1

Conclusion

The Bible does not explicitly state whether or not Shem, Ham, and Japheth had children before the flood, but I think we can rightly infer that they did not because we know that only 8 people were on board the ark, that this constituted the entirety of Noah’s house (Genesis 7:1), and that 8 people left the ark after their 370-day tour.

Ultimately, the question of “What if…” is unanswerable because the answer lies totally in the realm of the imagination. We can speculate, but we can never come to a meaningful conclusion. God saves those whom, by His sovereign will, He has chosen to save: 

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So, then, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” So, then, He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. — Romans 9:14–18

just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will — Ephesians 1:4, 5

 …and in this case, that was 8 people in all.

Homework

All this talk about birth order brought an interesting question to mind that I’d like the students to chew on:

If a child is called “firstborn” in the Bible, what does that mean? Does it always mean “the first one born,” or does God have something else in mind?