The Descendants of Shem to Abraham 11:10–26:  This linear genealogy opens with a toledoth formula and recounts the lineage of Noah’s son Shem. Following the Table of Nations (ch. 10), this genealogy focuses on the line that leads from Noah to Abraham, through whom God would build his own people. The list consists of nine persons as it points to a tenth person (Westermann, Genesis 1–11, p. 560) and probably does not include every ancestor from Shem to Terah. The list establishes that the era from Noah’s leaving the ark to the call of Abraham was 365 years. The pattern is person a was x years old when he fathered person b; person a lived y years and fathered sons and daughters. For example, Shem was one hundred years old when he fathered Arphaxad; afterward he lived five hundred years and ha…