Biblical Nations - Put and Lud

Before we start, I wanted to handle two quick pieces of housekeeping.  First of all, I must give all of my readers yet another note of appreciation for not only surpassing 160,000 hits on August 1, but for also roaring past 10,000 hits during the month of July (11,298 to be exact).  Wow!  Second, note that I've created two new pages just below the blog title on the home screen - links to Founding Fathers and Geography of War have now been archived and arranged for easier access, in addition to the previous summaries for Boston and Our Story With God.  If you're new to the blog, I highly recommend checking out some of these old topics.  Please let me know your thoughts and comments!  Now onto this week's study...

Put and Lud

Key Scripture: Ezekiel 30:5

Figures: none

This week we take a look at more far-away nations by analyzing where a couple of lesser-known people groups may have lived.  Not much is known about these people or their societies, but they are mentioned in Scripture and that's a good enough reason for me to bring them up.  For starters, we will look at a few of the named places found in Ezekiel 30:5.

In the Table of Nations, Put is listed as the third son of Noah's son, Ham.  He is the only one of those listed who is not recorded as having any offspring himself but several historians, including Josephus, believed that he was the father of the people of Put.  Furthermore, he associates the people with the land of Libya, along the northern coast of Africa to the west of Egypt.  Several prophets describe them as being warlike, with Nahum and Jeremiah mentioning that they help Egypt, and Ezekiel saying that they fight alongside Tyre, Egypt, and Gog.  Historical records dating from the times of Nebuchadnezzar II and Ptolemy are believed to have referenced the land of Put, and both place it geographically to the northwest of Egypt (although Ptolemy's reference is farther west, closer to modern Algeria).  There is, however, a competing theory that Put is actually the same as a land known to the Egyptians as Punt, which had a significant history as a trade partner with the land of the pharaohs but whose location was never documented.  The merchandise that Punt provided, however, suggests it may have been situated along the horn of Africa near modern Somalia or Eritrea.

Mentioned alongside Put is Lud, which is a civilization even more difficult to pin down.  Genesis 10 mentions a man named Lud descending from Noah's son, Shem, which is echoed in the first chapter of 1 Chronicles.  Also mentioned in the Genesis passage, however, is a grandson of Ham (through Mizraim, the Hebrew name for Egypt) named Ludim.  That name is recorded in 1 Chronicles as Lud as well, so depending on which English translation you prefer and what book of the Bible you're reading there are two viable options as the father of Lud.  Noted historians Josephus and Herodotus both believed that the people mentioned by several of the Hebrew Bible's major prophets were from the area known as Anatolia or Asia Minor, which is in modern Turkey.  The number of references to Lud serving alongside the armies of other nations descended from Ham, however, could mean the second (non-Semitic) people group should be favored.  If that is the case, the Lud mentioned by Isaiah and Jeremiah as being hired warriors who fought with bow and arrow may have been the Hamitic civilization that originated from a point along Africa's northern coast.

Two other locations warrant a brief mention while we're on the topic of obscure and remote nations - Cub and Tarshish.  Some translations of Ezekiel 30 mention a people group called Cub (sometimes spelled Chub or Kub), but this group does not appear in any other Biblical verses and no additional information is provided.  Tarshish, on the other hand, is a location that is mentioned dozens of times throughout the Bible, most notably as the destination where Jonah intends to escape God's assignment to preach to the wicked city of Nineveh.  The location is likely a city rather than a region, and the name is a generic term that means "smelting place" so it may have been a common descriptor for numerous towns.  If the 25 references in the Old Testament are all the same place, then we can assume it was a spot west of Israel that was along a coast or island, and had local access to metals such as silver, iron, tin, and lead.  Two popular theories place it on the island of Sardinia, just off the western coast of Italy, or along the Spanish coast near Gibraltar.