Serug reaching thirty years at the birth of Nahor stands as one link in the line of descent from Shem to Abraham. That line belongs to the generations after the Flood, whose lengths of life show a great falling off from the nearly thousand-year ages recorded from Adam to Noah. Across nine generations after the Flood the average span was 332 years. Within those generations it was uncommon for a son to die before his father.
Taken with the rest of that genealogy, this link helps fix a reckoning in which Shem was still living 150 years after the birth of Abraham and 50 years after the birth of Isaac, so that he was contemporary with Abraham and Isaac. That overlapping of lives made it possible for the knowledge God taught Adam to pass by direct communication from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham and Isaac to Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.
Serug reaching thirty years at the birth of Nahor stands as one link in the line of descent from Shem to Abraham. That line belongs to the generations after the Flood, whose lengths of life show a great falling off from the nearly thousand-year ages recorded from Adam to Noah. Across nine generations after the Flood the average span was 332 years. Within those generations it was uncommon for a son to die before his father.
Taken with the rest of that genealogy, this link helps fix a reckoning in which Shem was still living 150 years after the birth of Abraham and 50 years after the birth of Isaac, so that he was contemporary with Abraham and Isaac. That overlapping of lives made it possible for the knowledge God taught Adam to pass by direct communication from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham and Isaac to Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.