I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 1.

I always struggle with what to make of this chapter because genealogies have never been of great importance to me. That being said, today’s passage tells us how the Israelites viewed their relationship with the peoples with whom they had some interaction. The people of western Asia and Europe were the descendants of Japheth. The peoples of Africa and living around them were descendants of Ham. And the people living in Mesopotamia were descended from Shem. I am not sure why the writers of this book thought that was important, but the fact that they did reveals something about how they thought. In addition, this breakdown of the peoples of the world does not divide up according to the way we divide people up into races even though the origins of the way we view races today came from how people reading their own biases back into this passage. This should remind us to be careful about reading our own biases into the Scripture.