John Calvin Commentary Genesis 11:10

"These are the generations of Shem. Shem was a hundred years old, and begat Arpachshad two years after the flood." — Genesis 11:10 (ASV)

These are the generations of Shem. Concerning the descendants of Shem, Moses had said something in the previous chapter, Genesis 10:1; but now he combines the names of the men with the length of their respective lives, so that we would not be ignorant of the age of the world.

For unless this brief description had been preserved, people today would not have known how much time intervened between the deluge and the day in which God made His covenant with Abraham. Moreover, it should be observed that God counts the years of the world from the descendants of Shem as a mark of honor, just as historians date their annals by the names of kings or consuls.

Nevertheless, He has granted this not so much on account of the dignity and merits of the family of Shem, as on account of His own free adoption; for (as we shall soon see) a great part of the descendants of Shem apostatized from the true worship of God. For this reason, they deserved not only that God should expunge them from His calendar, but also that He should entirely remove them from the world.

But He esteems His election—by which He separated this family from all peoples—too highly to allow it to perish on account of human sins. Therefore, from the many sons of Shem, He chooses Arphaxad alone; and from the sons of Arphaxad, Selah alone; and from him also, Eber alone, until He comes to Abram, whose calling ought to be considered the renewal of the Church.

As for the rest, it is probable that before the century was completed, they fell into impious superstitions. For when God charges the Jews that their fathers Terah and Nahor served strange gods (Joshua 24:2), we must still remember that the house of Shem, in which they were born, was the special sanctuary of God, where pure religion ought to have flourished most. What then do we suppose must have happened to others who, from the very beginning, might seem to have been separate from this service to God?

This truly reveals not only the prodigious wickedness and depravity but also the inflexible hardness of the human mind. Noah and his sons, who had been eyewitnesses of the deluge, were still living. The account of that history ought to have inspired people with no less terror than the visible appearance of God Himself.

From infancy, they had been imbued with those elements of religious instruction concerning how God was to be worshipped, the reverence with which His word was to be obeyed, and the severe vengeance that remains for those who would violate the order He prescribed. Yet they could not be restrained from being so corrupted by their vanity that they entirely apostatized.

In the meantime, there is no doubt that holy Noah, with his extraordinary zeal and heroic fortitude, would have contended in every way for the maintenance of God’s glory. He sharply and severely inveighed, indeed, fulminated against the treacherous apostasy of his descendants. And while all ought to have trembled at his very look, they were still not moved by any rebukes, however loud, from continuing in the course into which their own fury had driven them.

From this mirror, rather than from the senseless flatteries of sophists, let us learn how fruitful the corruption of our nature is. But if Noah and Shem, and other such eminent teachers, by contending most courageously, could not prevent the prevalence of impiety in the world, let us not wonder if today also the unbridled lust of the world rushes to impious and perverse modes of worship, against all the obstacles presented by sound doctrine, admonition, and threats.

Here, however, we must observe in these holy men how firm the strength of their faith was, how indefatigable their patience, and how persevering their cultivation of piety, since they never gave way, despite the many causes of offense with which they had to contend. Luther very properly compares the incredible torments by which they were necessarily afflicted to many martyrdoms.

For such an alienation of their descendants from God affected their minds no less than if they had seen their own bowels not only lacerated and torn but cast into the mire of Satan and into hell itself.

But while the world was thus filled with ungodly people, God wonderfully kept a few under obedience to His word, so that He might preserve the Church from destruction.

And although we have said that the father and grandfather of Abraham were apostates, and that, probably, the defection did not first begin with them, yet, because the Church, by the election of God, was included in that race, and because God had some who worshipped Him in purity and who survived even to the time of Abraham, Moses deduces a continuous line of descent and thus enrolls them in the catalogue of saints.

From this we infer (as I observed a little earlier) how highly God esteems the Church, which, though so small in number, is yet preferred to the whole world.

Shem was a hundred years old. Since Moses has placed Arphaxad third in order among the sons of Shem, the question is asked: how does this agree with his having been born in the second year after the deluge? The answer is easy.

It cannot be exactly ascertained from the lists Moses provides at what time each was born, because sometimes priority of place is assigned to one who was nevertheless later in the order of birth. Others answer that there is nothing absurd in supposing Moses to declare that after the completion of two years, a third son was born. But the solution I have given is more genuine.