And Arphaxad lived thirty-five years, and begot Shelah.
Genesis 11 turns from the scattered nations at Babel to a quiet list of names. This verse is one link in that chain, and it raises three questions: why this family line, why the ages keep falling, and why Luke's list in the New Testament adds a name here.
This chapter follows one family thread only, and it has a destination in view.
We are now given a family line that ends with Abram. The next chapter follows it with the mighty principle of grace: God's call. That prepares the way on the outside. But Jehovah shines through this working and this revelation. Here we have the special line. It is no more an "endless genealogy" than the line from Adam to Noah in Genesis 5. We can count ten links in the chain in both chapters.
The choice is deliberate. The record drops the other branches without comment and carries this one forward.
From verse 10 the line of Shem is traced further than in Genesis 10:21-31. That earlier list goes as far as Joktan the son of Peleg and stops with his thirteen sons. The list in Genesis 11 carries on instead with Reu the son of Peleg, and passes over Joktan and his sons. The reason is clear. Reu's line leads to Nahor, Terah and Abram, and God had planned for Abram to be the father of a chosen people whom He would separate from the rest of the nations.
Little is said about the man named here. What matters is where his line leads.
Of Arpachshad we can say even less. He leads straight down to the time of promise, and that is what the Old Testament is almost entirely taken up with.
Arpachshad fathers Shelah at 35. Read the whole list and a pattern appears. Each generation lives a shorter life than the one before.
Compared with his father Noah and those before him, Shem's years show how human life was shrinking after the flood. Yet God let him live, well before the end of his six hundred years, into the days not only of Abram but of Isaac. Peleg, the fifth in this series, did not reach half of Shem's span. Nahor, the father of Terah, dropped to a hundred and forty-five years. So in God's ordering of things, man was coming by rapid steps to the normal length of life since the prayer of Moses (Psalm 90).
Shem's unusually long life had a purpose.
One remarkable fact shown in Genesis 11:10-26 is the long life of Shem. He outlived many generations of his own descendants, and that shows God's gracious purpose in giving him such a long life. He had seen the flood himself, and he was an honoured saint of God (Genesis 9:26). He lived on to tell of many of the things he had himself seen and heard.
The shrinking ages are not the only decline in this list.
Abram's descent from Shem shows him in the line of promise... But the promise itself expressed a grace in God that came before any personal claim at all on Abram's part. In the chosen line itself we have only a thin record of names and lengths of life. Even so, it is plain that there is decay, and that it never stops. No doubt the years of man's life were growing shorter everywhere, but here too there was no exception. Elsewhere we read that these men turned away from God, and that left every hope resting on His sovereign grace.
Luke's family list places a man called Cainan between Arpachshad and Shelah. The Hebrew text of this verse does not have him. The Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, does.
He is usually called the "second" Cainan, because an earlier Cainan is mentioned in Luke 3:37. What is striking is that his name does not appear in Genesis 10:24, Genesis 11:12 or 1 Chronicles 1:18 in the Hebrew, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Vulgate, the Syriac or the Arabic texts. But it is in the Septuagint, and from there it may have found its way into Luke's Gospel.
Commentators differ on how the extra name arose. Some think it came from the Septuagint into Luke. Others think later copies of the Septuagint took it from Luke, or that Luke drew it from a list not kept in the Old Testament.
- Line. The record follows one son of Shem and drops the rest, because Arpachshad "leads straight down to the time of promise."
- Length. Each name in the list lives a shorter life than the last. After the flood, man moves by rapid steps toward the normal span of Psalm 90.
- Legacy. Shem outlived many generations of his own family, so he could tell them first-hand what he had seen of the flood.
- Loss. The chosen line decayed in years and in faith, so every hope rested on God's sovereign grace.
- Later. Luke's list adds a name here that the Hebrew text lacks, and commentators differ on where it came from.
And Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Shelah four hundred and three years, and begot sons and daughters.
Genesis 11:13 is one line in a chain of ten names running from Shem down to Abram. It reads like bare bookkeeping: a father, a son, a number, and a crowd of unnamed children. Yet the shape of the record, its numbers, and its silences all carry meaning.
The same family appears twice in these chapters, and the two accounts are not duplicates.
The divine wisdom of the record is certainly not in question; but it is not man's way of working. God's design is stamped on this case, as on the other lists. There is no repetition here and no oversight, still less any clash between different documents or writers. And we can see that the plan in chapter 10 was not to follow Arphaxad's line past his grandson Peleg, Eber's son. It was to state the deeply interesting fact that Peleg's name refers to the division of the earth in his days. From there the record turns aside to Peleg's brother Joktan.
The text handles Arphaxad (spelled Arpachshad in the ESV) differently from the men around him. Compare him with Nimrod, the hunter who dominates chapter 10.
Notice that the inspiring Spirit led Moses to change his manner at this point. He brings in Arphaxad and his family as a kind of fresh start... In evil, a new departure was made with Cush and his descendants; here, for good, Arphaxad comes before us. Yet for now little is said of him, unlike Nimrod, who shot into prominence at once. Nimrod was not content to be a mighty hunter before Jehovah; then and afterwards he began to be mighty on the earth. Good is rare here below, and it grows slowly.
Of Shelah himself the Bible tells us almost nothing beyond his place in the chain. His name is the one clue we have.
Little can be said with certainty about Salah, or Salach, because the Bible is silent. He was the father of Eber, in the direct line of the chosen patriarch Abram, the man entrusted with the promise. The name means shoot or extension; but to treat it as a fiction on that ground ought to be too absurd even for sceptics to believe.
The 403 years are long by any standard we know. Yet they are already short next to the lives of the men before the flood. Read down the list and the numbers keep falling.
Compared with his father Noah and those before him, Shem's years mark the growing decline in human lifespan after the flood. Yet before he came near the end of his six hundred years, he lived on into the days not only of Abram but of Isaac. Peleg, the fifth in this series, did not reach half of Shem's total; and Nahor, the father of Terah, shrank to a hundred and forty-five years. So in God's providential arrangements man was coming by rapid steps to the lifespan that has been normal since the prayer of Moses (Psalm 90).
Another writer notes what the list leaves out. It never adds up the whole span of a man's life.
The whole span of the lives of the members of Shem's family is not noted, so that the Spirit would draw our attention to it there, in chapter 11. Here the change is the important thing.
Arphaxad had other children besides Shelah, and the verse names none of them. Whole branches of the family disappear into one phrase.
Divine purpose is the key... It explains why the general genealogy leaves out every detail outside the direct line of the chosen people, and above all outside the line of the Messiah — God's salvation, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel. The rest of their children, however many or however notable in human eyes, are simply merged into the "sons and daughters" they had.
The chain does not end in strength. It ends in a family that had turned to idols.
Here again we find ten names standing out. We have the same number in Genesis 5. Both genealogies, in chapters 5 and 11, end with a man to whom God reveals Himself, and with each one a new era in God's dealings begins — Noah and Abram. Notice the decreasing years of life. Shem was 600 years old, the grandfather of Abram only 148. The line of Shem was degenerating; some of the names show this. Terah (delay), the father of Abram, was an idolater. The descendants of Shem worshipped idols (Joshua 24:2). When the line of Shem had failed, God called Abram.
- Chosen line. Moses introduces Arphaxad's family as a fresh start on the side of good. The record says little about it, unlike Nimrod, who rose fast into prominence.
- Counted line. The record shows design, not accident. It drops the side branches. It gives the years after each birth, but never totals a man's life.
- Shrinking line. The 403 years are long, yet part of a steady fall from Noah's span toward the ordinary human lifetime.
- Narrow line. The record folds every other child of Arphaxad into "other sons and daughters." It follows only the line that runs to the chosen people and to the Messiah.
- Failing line. The line ends in Terah, an idolater. There God calls Abram and starts again.