Javan's sons — the forerunners of the Greeks and Ionians — are Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittites, and the Rodanites. Javan (Hebrew: Yavan) is the ancestor of the Greek-speaking world; the Hebrew name for Greece to this day is Yavan. Tarshish is often associated with a western maritime trading destination — possibly Sardinia or Spain — and appears in the story of Jonah (1:3) as the direction of maximum flight from God. Elishah is possibly associated with Cyprus or parts of Greece. Isaiah 66:19 includes Javan in the list of distant nations to whom God will send survivors to declare his glory. The specific inclusion of the Greek-ancestral line is significant: the New Testament was written in Greek, and the gospel spread first through the Greek-speaking world. The line from Javan to the New Testament is the line from this verse to the Great Commission.

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