Shem Built a City and Japheth Went to the Sea

When the ark settled on the mountain of Lubar, in the Ararat range, and Noah stepped out onto the earth that had been washed clean, the first thing he did was build an altar. He sacrificed. He prayed. And then he did something that the Torah does not describe but that the Book of Jubilees, written in Hebrew in the second century BCE, records with the care of a family chronicler: he stayed on the mountain, and his sons stayed near him.

Shem built his city close to his father Noah on the mountain. He named it after his wife, Sedeqeteleba, just as Noah had named his city after his wife on the same slopes. Two cities on the same mountain, father and eldest son side by side. A third city, Naelatamak, was built to the south, and a fourth, Adataness, to the west. Three cities near the mountain of the ark, named for women, marking the landscape of the world's new beginning with domestic geography rather than imperial ambition.

The sons of Shem are listed in the Jubilees account: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, born two years after the flood, Lud, and Aram. The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Tiras. These names became peoples, became nations, became languages. The table of nations that Genesis sketches in broad strokes, Jubilees traces with a specificity that reads like the genealogical records of a priestly community determined to understand exactly where every nation came from and what its relationship was to the covenant family.

But Japheth's portion caused a problem almost immediately. Madai, son of Japheth, saw the land of the sea that had been assigned to him, and it did not please him. He was not content with cold shores and sea-breezes. He begged a portion from Elam and Asshur and Arpachshad, his wife's brother, in the warmer, more central lands that belonged to Shem's family. They gave it to him. The first generation after the flood had already begun adjusting the arrangement, trading portions, accommodating preferences, doing what families do when the inheritance does not quite match the desire.

This is a small story in the large machinery of the Jubilees cosmology, but it matters. Madai's dissatisfaction with his portion and the willingness of Shem's sons to accommodate him sets a precedent. The lots that Noah cast had assigned every family its inheritance in the presence of God and the holy judge. The intention was that the lots would hold. But human beings, even in the first generation after the catastrophe that was supposed to have reset everything, were already negotiating around the fixed assignment. Madai wanted better land. His relatives gave it to him. No curse followed. No disaster. The adjustment was small enough to absorb.

Canaan's adjustment was not small. When Ham's son looked north at Shem's portion, at the land of Lebanon running down to Egypt, and settled there despite his father's warning and his brothers' curse, he was making a choice of a different magnitude. The land of Shem was neither hot nor cold, but of blended cold and heat, the sacred center of the world's geography, and Canaan had no claim to it. Madai had negotiated in good faith with family members who could give. Canaan had simply taken, from a portion that was not his family's to give.

Shem, meanwhile, stayed on the mountain and built his city and named it after his wife and watched his sons set out across the eastern inheritance. He did not rush to occupy. He did not negotiate for better land. He stayed at the sacred center and held the ground that the lot had given him. The Book of Jubilees treats this staying as a form of faithfulness that echoes down through generations. His portion included the Garden of Eden, Mount Sinai, and Mount Zion, the three holy places facing each other, and Shem's decision to build on the mountain near his father rather than rush to claim the best parts of his inheritance was the disposition that made him worthy of those holy places to begin with.

The Jubilees tradition wants us to understand that the world after Noah was not a blank slate on which anything could be written. It was a designed world, with sacred centers and assigned portions and oaths sworn before God. Some of Noah's descendants honored that design. Shem built near the mountain. Japheth's grandson asked permission before taking from another's portion. And some broke it. Canaan took and would not return. The world that resulted from all of these choices, honored and violated, negotiated and refused, is the world the Torah would spend the next several books trying to set right. The ark had landed. The design had been declared. The human work of either honoring or ignoring that design had begun the moment Noah stepped off the gangplank and started building altars.