MESHECH

(Meʹshech) [a drawing out, or skinning].

1. One of the sons born after the Flood to Japheth, the son of Noah. (Gen. 10:2; 1 Chron. 1:5) The name evidently extended to his descendants and the land of their settlement. The prophet Ezekiel regularly mentions Meshech along with Tubal, indicating that they were located to the N of Palestine. They are described as exporting slaves and copper to Tyre and as being warlike and as either allies or subjects of ‘Gog of Magog’ in his prophesied vicious campaign against “the mountains of Israel.” (Ezek. 27:13; 32:26; 38:2, 3; 39:1, 2; see GOG No. 2.) Meshech is mentioned independently of Tubal at Psalm 120:5, evidently as representing an aggressive, barbarous people.

About a thousand years after the Flood Assyrian inscriptions begin to mention a people called the Mushku occupying an area in Asia Minor to the W of Assyria. Assyrian Emperors Tiglath-pileser I, Tukulti-Ninurta II, Ashurnasirpal II and Sargon all mention conflicts with them. The fact that the Mushku are frequently mentioned along with the Tabali (evidently the Biblical Tubal) gives reason for believing that the name Mushku derives from Meshech. Herodotus later refers to the Moʹskhhoi and the Ti·ba·re·noiʹ in the same manner.

Many scholars suggest that the Mushku are to be related with the Phrygians, who apparently dominated much of western and central Asia Minor about the close of the second millennium B.C.E. King Mita of Mushku, referred to by Assyrian Emperor Sargon, is construed as being identical with King Midas of Phrygia, described in Greek tradition as ruling in the same period.

It is generally agreed that in a later period the Mushku moved farther toward the N. Some suggest that the name of the Mushku is to be traced on to that of the later Muscovites of Russia.

2. Meshech appears in the Masoretic text at 1 Chronicles 1:17 as a descendant of Shem, but the corresponding genealogy at Genesis 10:23 reads “Mash.”