Genesis 11:15
וַֽיְחִי־שֶׁלַח אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת־עֵבֶר שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנֽוֹת׃ ס
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַֽיְחִי־שֶׁ֗לַח אַחֲרֵי֙ הוֹלִיד֣וֹ אֶת־עֵ֔בֶר שָׁלֹ֣שׁ שָׁנִ֔ים וְאַרְבַּ֥ע מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָ֑ה וַיּ֥וֹלֶד בָּנִ֖ים וּבָנֽוֹת׃ ס
καὶ ἔζησεν Σάλα μετὰ τὸ γεννῆσαι αὐτὸν τὸηἜβερ τριακόσια τριόκοντα ἔτη, καὶ ἐγέννησεν υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατέρας, καὶ ἀπέθανεν.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Vixitque Sale, postquam genuit Heber, quadringentis tribus annis: et genuit filios et filias.
Después del nacimiento de Héber, Selá vivió cuatrocientos tres años más, y tuvo otros hijos e hijas.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y vivió Sala, después que engendró á Heber, cuatrocientos y tres años, y engendró hijos é hijas.
And after he had become the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse states that Shelah lived 403 years after the birth of his son Eber, and that during this period he fathered additional sons and daughters. It belongs to the genealogical chain in Genesis 11 tracing descent from Shem to Abram.
Key words
- va-yechi ("and he lived", H2421) — narrative vav plus qal verb, opening the formulaic pattern used throughout this genealogy: "and X lived."
- acharei ("after", H0310A) — construct form governing the following infinitive, marking the time reference point (after the birth of Eber).
- holido ("his fathering", H3205) — hiphil infinitive with the causative sense of the root "to bear/beget," plus 3ms pronominal suffix "his," meaning literally "his causing-to-be-born," i.e., "his fathering [him]."
- sha·losh shanim / arba me'ot shanah ("three years" / "four hundred year", H7969, H8141, H0702, H3967) — the number is split across two clauses (3 + 400), a common Hebrew construction for compound numerals, joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).
- va-yyoled ("and he fathered", H3205) — hiphil narrative form of the same root as holido, now finite rather than infinitive, closing the verse with the general statement of further offspring.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence is built in two parts joined by narrative vav-chains. The first part gives Shelah's lifespan after a specific event: acharei holido et-Ever ("after his fathering Eber") functions as a temporal clause using the infinitive construct form of the hiphil verb holido, with the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) preceding the proper name Ever ("Eber", H5677G). The numeral construction shalosh shanim ve-arba me'ot shanah ("three years and four hundred year[s]") places the smaller number before the larger, a pattern found repeatedly in the genealogical lists of Genesis 5 and 11; the noun "year" appears once in the plural (shanim) and once in the singular (shanah), matching Hebrew numeral agreement rules rather than indicating a grammatical inconsistency.
The second clause, va-yyoled banim u-vanot ("and he fathered sons and daughters"), uses the same hiphil root as holido but in the finite narrative form, closing the formula with a general statement of additional offspring beyond Eber, without naming them.
Differences between versions
The Vulgate (quadringentis tribus annis, "four hundred three years") and Spanish RV1909/SBLIBRE render the compound numeral as a single figure (403), matching the Hebrew's 3+400 sum. The LXX (Swete) gives τριακόσια τριάκοντα ("three hundred thirty") years, a numeral that differs from the Hebrew total of 403. The Hebrew text ends with u-vanot ("and daughters"), while the LXX adds καὶ ἀπέθανεν ("and he died"), a closing phrase not present in the Hebrew word-by-word data given here.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.