6. Riphath seems to be suggested by the name of the Rhiphæan Mountains in the distant regions of the north of Scythia. More probably we may find some intimation of their presence near Armenia in the name Riphates, which is that of a mountain range in that vicinity.
7. Togarmah is supposed to be represented by the tribes of the Caucasus, Georgians and Armenians, who call themselves “the House of Torgona,” the latter word being the same as Togarmah.
8. (b) Magog, the name of the second son of Japheth, was also the name of a country. Slavonic tribes in the north and northeast of Europe are supposed to be comprehended under this term as descendants from the grandson of Japheth, and the original country of Magog was the Caucasian Mountainsand the country around the northern part of the Caspian Sea.
9. In the time of the prophet Ezekiel they had become a powerful people and had overrun the north of Europe. The Russians are, and the Scythians were, the descendants of Magog, and Gog is the “prince of Rosh,” of Meshech, and of Tubal. They are described by Ezekiel, chaps. 38:15 and 39:3, as a wild race of mounted men armed with the bow. This seems also to describe the Scythians who invaded Palestine B. C. 625, and left the evidence of their presence in the city called Scythopolis,formerly Beth-shean, now Beisan, on the Jordan.[23]
10. (c) Madai is the name by which the Medes are known on the Assyrian monuments. Their country was south of the Caspian Sea.
11. (d) Javan was the progenitor of the Greeks, and the name occurs on the Assyrian monuments as Javanu;a term also used by Darius, the Mede.[24]
12. The sons of Javan were: (1.) Elishah, who settled in the northwest of Asia Minor from the Propontis eastward throughout Mysia and Lydia and the adjacent islands. (2.) Tarshish, supposed to be the ancestor of the Etruscans who inhabited the northern part of Italy; but the name as it occurs in Isa. 23:6–10; Ezek. 27:12 and 38:13, seems to refer to a city on the southern coast of Spain whither Jonah attempted to escape. Jonah 1:3. (3.) Kittim. Thisname is afterwards spelled Chittim, but it is the same word in the Hebrew text. It has the plural ending (im), and therefore refers to a people of that name. In Isa. 23:1, 12, Chittim refers to the island of Cyprus; but when “the isles of Chittim” are mentioned, as in Jer. 2:10 and in Ezek. 27:6, the phrase includes the island of Crete and the islands along the coast of Asia Minor and the Ægean Sea, thus embracing a great sea district, with probably all Greece.In Dan. 11:30 Chittim includes Macedonia, because of its supposed settlement from the former, as Bochart shows.[25]
(4.) Dodanim is the same as Rodanim, which is also in plural form, and refers to the Greeks of the island of Rhodes, which is particularly one of the islands of Kittim or Chittim.
13. The other sons of Japheth were: (e) Tubal and (f) Meshech and (g) Tiras. Of these Tubal and Meshech appear as tribes neighboring with the Scythians and other northern tribes, and perhaps remained about the southeastern parts of the Black Sea. The Tubal of Isa. 66:19 was, as supposed, in Spain;but a tribe called Tyrrhenians in later times settled the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.[26] The name is supposed to be derived from the turreted walls by which the early Tyrrhenians surrounded their fortifications, and not from Tyre, as some have said; this Bochart shows. Tiras is supposed by some to represent ancient Thrace, but this is doubtful, asthe people seem to have been associated with the Achæans, Lydians, Sicilians, and Sardinians fourteen centuries B. C.,in an invasion of Egypt, as Chabas shows.[27]They seem in remote antiquity to have been seafarers and pirates upon the Italian seas and Greek Archipelago.[28]