Meshech

AI summary: Meshech matters because the cross references move him from genealogy into the prophetic imagination of the nations. Ezekiel and the Psalms use the name to evoke remote peoples, trade, martial force, and estrangement from the worshiping center of God's people. That gives the ancestral name a long symbolic life beyond Genesis. Taken together, the material presents Meshech as a Japhethite ancestor whose descendants help populate the Bible's vision of the wider world and its distant powers.¹

Drawing out, the sixth son of Japheth (Gen. 10:2), the founder of a tribe (1 Chr. 1:5; Ezek. 27:13; 38:2, 3). They were in all probability the Moschi, a people inhabiting the Moschian Mountains, between the Black and the Caspian Seas. In Ps. 120:5 the name occurs as simply a synonym for foreigners or barbarians. “During the ascendency of the Babylonians and Persians in Western Asia, the Moschi were subdued; but it seems probable that a large number of them crossed the Caucasus range and spread over the northern steppes, mingling with the Scythians. There they became known as Muscovs, and gave that name to the Russian nation and its ancient capital by which they are still generally known throughout the East” ³