Person · 1658–2096 AM · 2103 BCE — 1665 BCE
Arpachshad אַרְפַּכְשַׁד
son of Shem, the first generation born after the Flood
"Shem was a hundred years old and begot Arpachshad two years after the Flood" (Bereshit 11:10). With this verse the Torah begins a new count: the world after the Flood is reckoned from him.
He lived four hundred and thirty-eight years—half the span of the generations before the Flood, but three times what men will live ten generations later. The shortening runs down this line evenly and visibly: from over four hundred in the first to a little over a hundred in Nachor.
From him to Abraham are eight generations, and the Torah names every one with his years.
On the timeline
1658 · 2103 BCEThe Line of Shem: Arpachshad, Ever, Peleg and the Division of the Earth1657 · 2104 BCEThe Sons of Noah and the Spread of the Nations
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereshit 11:10–26 — the ten generations from Shem to Abraham: age at each son's birth and the years lived after
- I Chronicles 1:17–27 — the same line from Shem to Abram, repeated in the Writings
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.