What Does Genesis 11:11 Mean?

After Shem became the father of Arphaxad, he lived 500 more years and had other sons and daughters. Shem's 500 additional years after Arphaxad make him extraordinarily long-lived even by the post-Flood genealogy's standards. If the genealogy is presented sequentially, Shem would have been alive during the entire patriarchal period through to the time of Jacob. He is connected by direct living memory to the Flood, to Noah, and possibly to the period when Abram was a young man in Ur of the Chaldeans.

The detail of "other sons and daughters" appears in each entry of this genealogy, as it did in chapter 5. The named son who carries the covenant line is never the only child; he is one among many. Every generation of the Shemite covenant line was surrounded by siblings and cousins who lived out their lives in the same world without carrying the specific genealogical designation the scripture tracks. This should produce humility in those who trace their identity through any particular line: being selected for a role is not the same as being the only one with dignity or value.

Shem's extraordinary post-firstborn lifespan is part of the notable decline in longevity that characterizes the post-Flood genealogy. The pre-Flood figures in chapter 5 lived into the 900s; Shem lives to 600 total. His descendants will live shorter and shorter lives until the patriarchal lifespans settle into the centuries and then into the scores of years that characterize the historical period. Whatever the reason for the decline, it reinforces the chapter 5 refrain: even the longest-lived eventually die, and their mortality is the frame within which God's promises must still be trusted.