And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
Arphaxad lived 403 years after he fathered Salah and had other sons and daughters. As part of the post-Flood genealogies in Genesis 11, this belongs to the generations after Noah when human longevity was decreasing from the nearly thousand-year ages lived by most patriarchs before the Flood. Together with the surrounding genealogies it measures that decline quantitatively, with the nine generations recorded after the Flood averaging 332 years of life compared with 912 years for the nine generations before it.
As one link in the dated genealogy from Shem to Abraham, its years for Arphaxad after begetting Salah help fix overlapping lifetimes stretching from Adam to Jacob. By that chronology Shem was still living 150 years after the birth of Abraham and 50 years after the birth of Isaac. In this way what God taught Adam could be communicated directly from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham and Isaac and on to Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.
Arphaxad lived 403 years after he fathered Salah and had other sons and daughters. As part of the post-Flood genealogies in Genesis 11, this belongs to the generations after Noah when human longevity was decreasing from the nearly thousand-year ages lived by most patriarchs before the Flood. Together with the surrounding genealogies it measures that decline quantitatively, with the nine generations recorded after the Flood averaging 332 years of life compared with 912 years for the nine generations before it.
As one link in the dated genealogy from Shem to Abraham, its years for Arphaxad after begetting Salah help fix overlapping lifetimes stretching from Adam to Jacob. By that chronology Shem was still living 150 years after the birth of Abraham and 50 years after the birth of Isaac. In this way what God taught Adam could be communicated directly from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham and Isaac and on to Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.