9And they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. 10And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:9-10
I mentioned at the end of the previous Gem there is a category missing from the four terms. Did you notice the omission? I gave you a number of clues in the quotes I added at the end of the Gem. Where are the nations, the countries of the world? If indeed the primary meaning of [ethnos] in this verse is ‘ethnic group’ as I and many others suspect, then where are there references to the nations of the world; the countries with national boundaries labelled on world maps?
I find it interesting that there is difficulty in determining how many countries or nations there are in the world. Allow me to ask you, my readers, how many countries or nations are currently in the world at this point in 2024? That should be easy to ascertain, should it not? No actually it is difficult to gain an answer to this relatively simple question. Much like the people groups of the world, there are numerous answers which various people, organisations or nations give to this simple question.
- There are 193 independent nation states recognised by the United Nations.
- Added to them are three not recognised by the UN: Vatican City, Palestine and Taiwan.
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica adds 10 more, bringing the number to 206.
- The US (CIA) lists 237 countries or nations in the world currently.
There are many anomalies:
- Greenland is not recognised by the UN, but Iceland is.
- Greenland is controlled by Denmark, which is considerably smaller than Iceland.
- Many nations or countries are not recognised as a political entity because other nations refuse to allow them free choice.
- The world’s political map is always in a state of transition. No sooner than a new map of the countries of the world is published, it is quickly out of date.
In addition to the independent nation states there are 48 monarchies.
- There are 15 Constitutional monarchies in the British Commonwealth.
- There are eight monarchies listed as Other European Monarchies.
- There are a further two European Mixed Monarchies.
- There are ten Muslim Monarchies.
- Four East and Southeast Asian Constitutional Monarchies
- Five Other Sovereign Monarchies
- Four Non-Sovereign monarchies – making 48 monarchies in total1.
1 If you would like a list of the monarchies within each of the above categories, ask me.
Added to them are a further set of smaller entities which are protected or controlled by another nation resulting in a nightmare of confusion. When anyone totals the number and attempts to draw a conclusion as to how many countries are in the world and list their names there are those who dispute the list. The United Nations lists 194 or 195 as members of the UN, but even at that number there are disputes, let alone when it is suggested there are 253 countries or some even dare to say there are 256 countries worldwide. It’s enough to start a war.
You will have got the idea by now that the missing category is that of nations or countries which have the sovereignty or the right to exist as an independent country or nation state. Little wonder the world map of countries keeps being redrawn. As a geographer I find this all so interesting. What does God think about nations and countries? You saw from the previous Gem that the word used for ‘nation(s)’ is the word [ethnos / ethnē] which is more in keeping with the ethnic groups and tribes. I don’t know if any of you Gem readers are wondering “Where are the terms which refer to the ‘countries’ or the ‘nations’ of the world?” Actually God doesn’t refer to the countries of the world in HIs Word much at all. The Word of God includes references to specific nations but not as a collective of nations. In fact the term used in the Bible for nations in both Hebrew and Greek as the word for country is more correctly referring to earth, land, ground or soil. From which we can extrapolate it to mean country or territory. [אֶרֶץ] erets. The other Hebrew word applied to country or nation is the word גוי, (goy) in plural form goyim [גוים] but this term is more applicable to a group of people belonging to the same ethnic family who speak the same language, rather than a geographical or political unit. Goyim is a word used by Jews to describe non-Jews; the ethnically excluded group, not the geographic land they occupy.
The Hebrew word [אֶרֶץ] erets and the Greek word [γῆ gē] (LXX) both have the same combination of meanings: soil, land, ground, country, territory or earth or world. The Greek word [γῆ] is the same element which appears in geography or geology or geocentric, meaning earth shape, earth form or earth focus. In point of fact God does not appear to be too focused on the political entities we call countries at all.
If we look at Genesis 10 you will notice an interesting feature. A chapter which discusses the rise of the nations of the world, doesn’t in fact use the term ‘nation’. Examine the first verse (10:1) below and you will see it is clearly talking about descendants, the children born to them and their subsequent offspring.
This is the account of the families of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the three sons of Noah. Many children were born to them after the great flood.
Genesis 10:1
Their descendants became the seafaring peoples that spread out to various lands, each identified by its own language, clan, and national identity.
Genesis 10:5
In Genesis 10:5 above, the word translated as national identity is ‘goyim’, which as I have indicated above refers to a group of people belonging to the same ethnic family who speak the same language, rather than a geographical or political unit; not the geographic land they occupy.
He (Nimrod) built his kingdom in the land of Babylonia, with the cities of Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh. From there he expanded his territory to Assyria, building the cities of Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah . . .
Genesis 10:10-11
In this verse the sense is clearly that Nimrod’s kingdom was a kingdom centred on a city. He expanded his territory to other cities in Assyria building Nineveh, Reheboth-ir and Caleh. The suffix -ir refers to a city state. The early kingdoms were indeed centred on cities. The king ruled over a city state. This approach was extended into the feudal period of Europe.
Mizraim was the ancestor of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Casluhites, and the Caphtorites, from whom the Philistines came.
Genesis 10:13-14
The reference to Mizraim in the verse above (Gen 10:13) is clearly an ancestor of the subsequent tribes which came from his seed. Mizraim is the Hebrew term for ‘Egypt’. Yet in this instance the text is not referring to the nation or the country of Egypt, more the progenitor of the people who occupied the territory.
These were the descendants of Shem, identified by clan, language, territory, and national identity. These are the clans that descended from Noah’s sons, arranged by nation according to their lines of descent. All the nations of the earth descended from these clans after the great flood.
Genesis 10:31-32
The three references to nations or national identity are all the same word, ‘goyim‘ mentioned above. The people of the nations are referred to as non-Jewish, not as inhabitants of a particular nation, nation state or country. What is in focus for each of these terms is the people, descendants or ethnic groups which came from the early ancestors or progenitors. From all this ethnically, culturally diverse set of people groups, God chose a people for Himself which He called His people, the Jews, the people of the Land, [am ha aretz] which then becomes a technical term for the Jews, The Hebrews, the people of the Promised Land.
Lastly, allow me to draw your attention to the nations or countries of the world which dare to boast that there are no Christians in their nation, their political entity with a national border for which you require a visa or a permit to enter. Does what I have told you above negate national boundaries and country borders? No, of course not. That is a reality of our modern world. But that is not the way God seems to view the world. God’s focus appears to be more on the people groups or the language groups of the world. It is like God pays no attention to the countries as such. Take note of my opening sentence of this paragraph. Somehow when a government or a country makes the bold claim that their country is either atheist (e.g. Albania, Russia and other communist states) or doesn’t have a single Christian, it soon discovers that statement is not indeed true. God starts moving behind the scenes speaking to people in dreams and visions and other ways to draw people to Himself. Cambodia under Pol Pot, China under communism and Iran under the ayatollahs have all discovered their claim meant nothing in God’s eyes or ears. In fact at this point in time, the Christians of Iran are the fastest growing church in the world.
In the next Gem I will explore the final two terms used in God’s Word used to denote these groupings of human kind in Revelation. Namely kingdoms and multitudes, the two terms I footnoted in the second chart in Gem 2239 and told you I would come back to at the right time. Next Gem is the right time.
My recommendation to anti-Christian regimes is not to make vain boasts you can’t fulfil.
Ian
Diocletian issued an edict to destroy the Bible in 303 AD. Voltaire boasted that 100 years after his death that Christianity and the Bible would not exist. Fifty years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society used his press and his house to produce Bibles.
Ian
Persecution doesn’t stamp Christianity out, it only stamps it in. Nero learned that lesson; but then again maybe he didn’t.
Ian
I learned that lesson the hard way, much to my benefit. I figured all I had to do was to show Tania that Christianity was nonsense. I just needed to show her that God was a myth. Little did I know I ended up fighting God on that venture and losing wondrously.
Ian
I believe they are included, “…from EVERY tribe, language, people and nation…” the word EVERY is inclusive of the nations [plural] as it is EVERY NATION.