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God had promised that He would send a Redeemer, the seed of the woman (3:15), who would defeat Satan and bring salvation. Noah’s prophecy revealed that God would bless the world through the line of Shem, the “Semites” who were the ancestors of the Hebrew people (9:26-27). “Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber” (10:21 niv), and it’s likely that the word “Hebrew” comes from the name “Eber.”
Genesis gives us two genealogies of Shem, in 10:21-29 and in 11:10-26. The first genealogy lists all five of his sons and five of his grandsons, but then it focuses on the descendants of Arphaxad: Shelah, Eber, and Eber’s two sons Peleg and Joktan. It lists Joktan’s many sons but ignores Peleg’s descendants. But the genealogy in chapter 11 picks up Peleg’s side of the family and takes us through to Abraham. The genealogy in Genesis 5 takes us from Adam to Noah, and the one in Genesis 11 goes from Noah’s son Shem to Terah and his son Abraham.
Except that both lists have ten generations, the listing in 11:10-26 is different from the genealogy in Genesis 5. For one thing, it doesn’t contain the repeated phrase “and he died.” The emphasis is on how old the man was at the birth of his firstborn son. The people named in 11:10-26 didn’t live as long as the men named in Genesis 5. The list begins with Noah’s 950 years and dwindles down to Nahor’s 148 years. The post-flood generations were starting to feel the physical consequences of sin in the human body.
The important thing about this genealogy is that it records the faithfulness of God in watching over His people and fulfilling His promises. What to us is only a list of names was to God a “bridge” from the appointment of Shem to the call of Abraham. God has deigned to use people to help accomplish His will on earth, and people are fragile and not always obedient. But the “bridge” was built and the covenant promises sustained.