Комментарий к Берешит 11:11

ויולד בנים ובנות, the Torah does not mention even once the word וימות, “he died,” something that appears with the report of each of the generations preceding the deluge. The reason why the Torah mentioned the death of those generations was because each of them died before the main subject of the entire chapter had been reached, i.e. the destruction of life on earth by the deluge. The people in the generations from Noach onward are considered as having been forerunners fo a positive development, as opposed to their predecessors who simply died before everybody else died also. In our chapter the thrust of the story is to show that eventually a towering personality such as Avraham emerged on earth, so that those who preceded him may be viewed as paving the way for Avraham’s eventual emergence on the stage of history. Avraham’s greatness is enhanced by the relatively insignificant lives of his predecessors.

ויחי שם...ויולד בנים ובנות, “Shem lived, etc., and begat sons and daughters.” No mention is made of these people dying, as the Torah invariably stated with the ten generations preceding Noach. The reason is that the earlier generations died, decomposed and no trace of them was left after the deluge. Seeing that their memory was blotted out on account of there being no visible reminder that they had ever lived, the Torah made mention of their lives and deaths. These later generations were all buried and their burial sites remained intact. Seeing that Noach was the founder of these last ten generations, and he was also partially a member of the first ten generations, his death is mentioned, as with his death a major segment of human history had been concluded. Some commentators believe that seeing the first human being brought death into the world, the Torah not only mentioned Adam’s death but also the death of those who but for his sin might never have died. Generations subsequent to Noach were born into a different kind of universe than Adam had been placed in; therefore there was no need to stress that these people died after having lived the number of years mentioned in the Torah.

ויחי שם אחרי הולידו את ארפכשד, “After having sired Arpachshad, Shem lived for another 500 years.” The formula preceding the death of the members of the earlier generations familiar to us as: ויהיו כל ימיו, “all of the years of his life were, etc.,” is absent now seeing that the life-spans of the antediluvian generations had closely approached 1000 years, something no longer the case after the deluge. (Compare Psalms 90,5 זרמתם שנה, “You let their years flow past as if they had only slept.” According to David, normal life spans in his time amounted to 70, maximum 80 years; verse 10 in the same chapter) There was therefore no need for the Torah to add the words: “all their days.”

ויולד בנים ובנות, “he sired sons and daughters.” The earth filled up with human beings after the deluge, According to an opinion quoted in B’reshit Rabbah as well as in Sanhedrin 69, it was not unusual for eight year olds to be able to ejaculate semen which produced fetuses. When people who had left behind adult children died, their death is often described as שכיבה, “lying down,” whereas when they did not leave behind adult children they are described as “having died,” i.e. וימת. An example of the former is King David, (Kings I 2,10), whereas an example of the latter is his uncle Yoav, or, according to a different manuscript, Job, who did not leave behind adult sons.