According to theBible,Shelah/Shela (Hebrew:שֵׁלָה,Modern: Shela,Tiberian: Šēlā, meaning "petition"[1]) was the third son ofJudah, and was born atChezib,[2] which can be identified with an unknown town in the vicinity ofMareshah.[3]
According to the book of Genesis, God had killed Shelah's two older brothers,Er andOnan.[4] Judah was unwilling to allowTamar, who had been successively Er's and Onan's wife,[4] to be married to Shelah.[5] Judah's concern was that Tamar might becursed and Shelah might die if married to her. So Judah told her to wait until Shelah had grown up.[5] When Shelah came of age, Judah neglected to marry him to Tamar.[6] In theBook of Chronicles,Shelah is identified as the name of a clan, containing a subclan namedEr.
According1 Chronicles 4:21–23, the sons of Shelah were:
The descendants of the last four sons were potters who dwelt at Netaim and Gederah and worked for the king.
According to somebiblical scholars, the description ofShelah is aneponymousaetiological myth concerning fluctuations in the constituency of thetribe of Judah, withShelah representing the newest clan to become part of the tribe.[7][8] The Book of Chronicles' description ofEr as a descendant of Shelah, suggests thatEr was in reality the name of a clan that was originally equal in status to theShelah clan, but was later subsumed by it.[7][8]
Professor Aaron Demsky argues that the genealogy of Shelah is an allegory of the history of Shelanite clans inShephelah (i.e. Judean foothills). Remnants of the Er clan joined the Shelanites and founded the city of Lecah, which was the alternative name forLachish. Later, the Laadah clan founded Mareshah, a town of secondary importance to Lachish. The families of Beth Asheba lived in a town of the same name and produced clothing for the priesthood and aristocracy, usingbyssus cloth. The Jokim clan founded Chozeba, which was synonymous with the Chezib near Mareshah. The Joash and Saraph clans lived with theMoabites. The last Shelanite clans to emerge consisted of the residents of Lahem or Lahmas. The last four clans worked for the king, who was most likelyHezekiah.[3]
In 701 BC,Sennacherib destroyed important Shelanite cities. Survivors fled to Jerusalem and assimilated with the local populace after thereturn of Babylonian exiles[3] in c.a. 538 BC.[9][10] According to Demsky, the author of the Book of Chronicles considered the Shelanite clans to be inferior to other Judahite clans, based on their positioning in the biblical text.[3]
Scholars have argued that the Tamar and Shelah narrative has a secondary role in either promoting the institution oflevirate marriage, or presenting an aetiological myth for its origin;[7] Shelah's role in the narrative would thus be as the example of a brother refusing to perform levirate marriage.[7]John Emerton regards the evidence for this as inconclusive, thoughclassical rabbinical writers argued that this narrative concerns the origin of levirate marriage.[11]
| Judah | Daughter of Shuah | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Er | Tamar | Onan | Shelah | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Perez andZerah | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shelah | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (descendant) Er | (descendant) Laadah | (descendant) Jokim | (descendant) Joash | (descendant) Saraph | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
