Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and became the father of Shelah. Arpachshad lived four hundred three years after he became the father of Shelah, and became the father of more sons and daughters.”
(Genesis 11:12-13)

Noah was 637 years old when Shelah was born. Arphaxad lived 48 years after Isaac was born. Salah was another who outlived Abram.

The sage Ibn Ezra writes: ‘ויולד בנים ובנות, the Torah does not mention even once the word וימות, “he died,” something that appears with the report of each of the generations preceding the deluge. The reason why the Torah mentioned the death of those generations was because each of them died before the main subject of the entire chapter had been reached, i.e. the destruction of life on earth by the deluge. The people in the generations from Noach onward are considered as having been forerunners fo a positive development, as opposed to their predecessors who simply died before everybody else died also. In our chapter the thrust of the story is to show that eventually a towering personality such as Avraham emerged on earth, so that those who preceded him may be viewed as paving the way for Avraham’s eventual emergence on the stage of history. Avraham’s greatness is enhanced by the relatively insignificant lives of his predecessors.’

Torah: A Women’s Commentary writes: ‘Until we come to Abraham, this genealogy mentions no wives, whereas it mentions the birth of (unnamed) daughters along with sons (until v. 26). In both respects it resembles the pre-Flood genealogy of Genesis 5. Such mention of daughters is atypical of other ancient Semitic genealogies.’