Genesis 10:24

Summary

The verse states a two-generation genealogical link: Arpakhshad fathered Shelah, and Shelah in turn fathered Ever (Eber). It is a continuation of the linear genealogy following Shem's line in Genesis 10.

Key words

• ya.Lad ("he fathered", H3205) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular; the perfect aspect marks the action as a completed, single fact, repeated twice to link three names in succession.
• 'et- (H0853) — the direct object marker, untranslated in English/Spanish, but grammatically signals that the following proper name is the object being fathered, not the subject.
• 'ar.pakh.Shad ("Arphaxad", H0775) — proper name, masculine, functioning as the subject of the first yalad clause.
• She.lach ("Shelah", H7974) — proper name appearing twice: first as object (with 'et-) of Arphaxad's fathering, then as subject of the second yalad clause.
• ve. ("and", H9002) — the conjunction opening each clause, producing the paratactic (simple additive) chain typical of these genealogical lists.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two parallel clauses joined by ve. ("and", H9002): [subject] + yalad + 'et- + [object]. In the first clause, 'ar.pakh.Shad is the subject and Sha.lach the object, marked explicitly by the particle 'et- (H0853), which has no lexical meaning but grammatically flags the direct object of the verb. The second clause repeats the same structure, but now She.lach shifts role — it becomes the subject, having been the object one clause earlier — and 'E.ver (H5677G) becomes the new object. This chiastic repetition of a name (object in one clause, subject in the next) is the standard device that creates a chain of descent in the biblical genealogical lists, without needing any additional connecting vocabulary beyond ve. and the repeated verb yalad.

The verb yalad (H3205) appears both times in the qal perfect, a verb form used in Biblical Hebrew for completed actions; here it functions as the standard genealogical formula "X fathered Y," treating each birth as a discrete, closed event in a fixed sequence rather than as an ongoing or repeated process.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXXSWETE) inserts an additional generation not present in the Hebrew: it reads "Arphaxad ἐγέννησεν τὸν Καινάμ, καὶ Καινὰμ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Σάλα" ("Arphaxad fathered Kainam, and Kainam fathered Sala"), adding Kainam between Arphaxad and Shelah/Sala, where the Hebrew moves directly from 'ar.pakh.Shad to Sha.lach. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) follows the shorter Hebrew sequence (Arphaxad → Sale → Heber) but phrases the second link differently, using "de quo ortus est Heber" ("from whom Heber was born") rather than repeating a verb equivalent to genuit ("he fathered") as the Hebrew repeats yalad.