Catholic Commentary
The Genealogy of Shem to Terah (Part 2)
18Peleg lived thirty years, and became the father of Reu.19Peleg lived two hundred nine years after he became the father of Reu, and became the father of more sons and daughters.20Reu lived thirty-two years, and became the father of Serug.21Reu lived two hundred seven years after he became the father of Serug, and became the father of more sons and daughters.22Serug lived thirty years, and became the father of Nahor.23Serug lived two hundred years after he became the father of Nahor, and became the father of more sons and daughters.24Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and became the father of Terah.25Nahor lived one hundred nineteen years after he became the father of Terah, and became the father of more sons and daughters.
Genesis 11:18–25 records the genealogy of Shem's descendants from Peleg through Nahor, tracing the ancestral line toward Abraham with progressively shortened lifespans. The passage documents the names, paternal ages, and total lifespans of each generation, showing a dramatic biological decline from the post-Babel world toward the birth of Terah, Abraham's father.
God threads His redemptive purpose through ordinary names and ordinary lives—each generation a faithul link in the chain toward Abraham, even if they never saw the promise themselves.
Commentary
Verses 18–19 (Peleg and Reu): Peleg, whose name means "division" (cf. Gen 10:25, where the earth was "divided" in his days — almost certainly a reference to the dispersion at Babel), fathers Reu at the age of thirty. The name Reu likely derives from a Semitic root meaning "friend" or "companion," and appears in later genealogical lists connecting Israel to its Mesopotamian roots (1 Chr 1:25). Peleg lives a total of 239 years — already a significant reduction from the antediluvian figures and from Shem's own 600 years. The post-Babel world is one of diminishing vitality, not merely in language and community, but in biological longevity.
Verses 20–21 (Reu and Serug): Reu fathers Serug at thirty-two and lives to 239 years total. The name Serug is known from extra-biblical sources: an ancient city called Sarugi existed near Haran in northern Mesopotamia, and Assyrian texts confirm population centers with names corresponding to several of these genealogical figures. This is a significant detail — the genealogy is not mythological invention but is rooted in the actual geography and ethnic memory of the ancient Near East. Catholic tradition, beginning with Eusebius of Caesarea and continued by St. Augustine in The City of God (Book XVI), treats these names as real historical persons who anchor Israel's story in universal human history.
Verses 22–23 (Serug and Nahor): Serug fathers Nahor at thirty and lives 230 total years. Nahor is also a geographical name: the city of Nahor is mentioned in the Mari texts and in Genesis 24:10 as a city in the region of Haran, Abraham's staging post before Canaan. The name thus bridges personal lineage and territorial memory, reminding the reader that ancestry is also landscape — these names mark the homeland Abraham will be called to leave.
Verses 24–25 (Nahor and Terah): The climax of this sub-unit. Nahor fathers Terah at the dramatically young age of twenty-nine — the youngest paternal age recorded in the entire Shemite line — and lives only 148 years total (29 + 119). The lifespan trajectory has been unmistakably descending: Shem (600), Arphaxad (438), Shelah (433), Eber (464), Peleg (239), Reu (239), Serug (230), and now Nahor (148). Something is accelerating. The genealogy is not simply recording history; it is building dramatic momentum. Terah, who will be introduced in v. 26 as the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, stands at the threshold of the most decisive moment in biblical history since the flood. The entire genealogy from Shem has been a corridor leading to this door.
Typological and Spiritual Senses: The Church Fathers discerned in genealogies more than biography. St. Augustine (City of God, XVI.10–15) reads the decreasing lifespans as a providential ordering — the world aging toward its need for redemption, its natural strength waning so that divine grace might the more clearly intervene. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Genesis, Homily 30) notes that the repetitive formula "and he became the father of more sons and daughters" underscores human fruitfulness even amid mortality, a fruitfulness that God is quietly directing. The narrowing line from Shem to Terah is typologically significant: just as the waters narrowed to find the ark, just as the twelve tribes will narrow to Judah, and Judah to the house of David, so the whole post-Babel world narrows through these few names toward Abraham — and ultimately toward the One who would be called the Son of Abraham (Matt 1:1).
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition reads genealogies not as incidental historical record but as instruments of divine pedagogy — what the Catechism calls the "economy of salvation" (CCC §1066), God's patient, ordered unfolding of his plan across generations. These verses exemplify what Vatican II's Dei Verbum §14 calls the Old Testament's role as the "preparation and proclamation" of the coming of Christ: each name in the line is a link in the chain of providential preparation.
St. Augustine's monumental treatment in The City of God (Books XV–XVI) frames this entire section of Genesis as the history of the civitas Dei — the City of God — advancing through the post-flood world. For Augustine, the Shemite genealogy is the spine of sacred history: "Through this line, the Seed was preserved by which all nations would be blessed." The decreasing lifespans he interprets not as textual corruption or myth but as divine pedagogy: human self-sufficiency is gradually humbled in preparation for the revelation of grace.
The Catechism teaches that God "chose Abraham and made a covenant with him and his descendants" (CCC §72) — but the genealogy of Genesis 11 reveals that this choice was not arbitrary or sudden. God had been threading his providence through generations before Abraham ever heard his name called. This anticipates the Catholic understanding of prevenient grace: God prepares the soul — and here, the family line — long before the moment of explicit call or conversion. Nahor's son Terah will himself begin the journey toward Canaan (Gen 11:31), suggesting that even the generation before Abraham was being drawn, imperfectly yet genuinely, toward the Promised Land. The Church Fathers (Origen, Homilies on Genesis 15) see in this a figura of how grace often begins its work in a family before it reaches its fullness in a single chosen vessel.
For Today
Contemporary Catholics can easily skip genealogies as the "boring parts" of Scripture — but these verses carry a profound spiritual invitation. Every name here represents a person who lived, loved, suffered, and died without seeing the promise fulfilled. Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor — they are the unnamed saints of sacred history, faithful conduits of a purpose larger than themselves. Their lives had meaning not because they were famous, but because they were faithful links in a chain God was forging.
This speaks directly to Catholics who feel their faith lives are unremarkable — who pray, raise children, attend Mass, and wonder whether any of it matters. The genealogy of Shem answers: it matters enormously. God works through ordinary human continuity. The sacrament of Marriage, the domestic Church, the passing on of faith from parent to child — these are precisely the "Peleg-to-Reu" moments of salvation history, the quiet connective tissue between great acts of God. Pope Francis reminds us in Amoris Laetitia (§16) that the family is "the setting in which a new life is not only born but also welcomed as a gift of God." These verses are that truth made genealogy.
Cross-References