What Does Genesis 10:28 Mean?

Obal, Abimael, Sheba, these too were sons of Joktan. Sheba appears in the Japhethite genealogy (as a son of Raamah/Cush in verse 7) and also here as a son of Joktan from the Shemite line. The double appearance of Sheba in the Table of Nations reflects either overlapping territorial identities, the common use of a name for different groups, or a genuine genealogical complexity in which Sheba-identified peoples had connections to multiple ancestral lines. The ancient world was not neatly organized around single genealogical origins.

Abimael has been associated with a South Arabian tribal group and possibly with an Ishmaelite connection. The names in Joktan's genealogy are among the most difficult to trace with certainty because the South Arabian world of the ancient period left fewer documentary records than Mesopotamia or Egypt. What the genealogy asserts is confident even when the details are obscure: these peoples existed, they had names, they had territories, and they descended from the same Shem who was the covenant son of Noah.

The queen of Sheba who visited Solomon in Jerusalem brought "a very great retinue" and questioned him with hard questions about all that was on her heart. Jesus said she came from the ends of the earth to hear wisdom. Whether her Sheba traces genealogically to Cush's Raamah or to Joktan, the theological point is the same: a descendant of Noah, from the furthest reaches of the known world, sought out the wisdom of God and praised the God of Israel for it. The Table of Nations makes the possibility of that encounter intelligible.