Genesis 10:4

The sons of Javan; Elishah. Since Tyre imported its purple cloth from the “isles of Elishah” (Ezekiel 27:7), probably the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, it would seem likely that the descendants of Javan’s son Elishah should be sought in that region. It is known that Sicily and Sardinia were colonized by Greeks; thus the inhabitants of Sardinia and Sicily were the “sons” of mainland Greece just as Elishah was the son of Javan, progenitor of the Greeks. The similarity of the name Elishah to that part of Greece called Aeolis or Elis and to the name by which the Greeks called their country, “Hellas,” seems to connect Elishah, originally, with mainland Greece.

Tarshish. This name appears frequently in the Bible. According to Isaiah 66:19 and Psalm 72:10, Tarshish was a land “afar off.” It had good trade relations with Tyre, which imported silver, iron, tin, and lead from thence (Ezekiel 27:12). Jonah intended to escape to Tarshish when the Lord sent him to Nineveh (Jonah 1:3). It was, presumably, the remote Phoenician colony in the mining district of southern Spain, the Tartessus of the Greeks and Romans, in the area of the middle and lower Baetis (now Guadalquivir) River. “Tarshish,” meaning “smelter” or “refinery,” was probably the name of several different places with which the Phoenicians and, at times, the Hebrews, carried on a trade in metals, in “ships of Tarshish” (Psalm 48:7; see on 1 Kings 10:22).

Kittim. Many commentators have identified Kittim with Cyprus because a capital of Cyprus was named Kition. This would agree with Isaiah 23:1, 12, which speaks of Chittim as being not far from Tyre and Sidon. In Jeremiah 2:10 and Daniel 11:30 the name Chittim denotes Greeks in general. But its earlier meaning, as in Isaiah, seems to be more circumscribed. It is, therefore, safe to identify Kittim either with Cyprus or with other islands in the vicinity of Greece.

Dodanim. If this spelling is correct, the Greek Dardanians, along the northwestern coast of Asia Minor, must be meant. The LXX, however, reads Rodioi. The parallel list of 1 Chronicles 1:7 reads Rodanim in Hebrew, which the KJV translators changed to Dodanim, to agree with the Hebrew spelling in chapter 10:4. The letters d and r in Hebrew are so similar that a scribe may easily have mistaken the r for a d in this verse. If Rodanim was indeed the original spelling of the name, Greeks on the island of Rhodes are probably meant.