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The final section in Genesis' primeval history is a singular toledoth pointing to Israel. Ch. 10 depicts the spread of humankind through the earth while this passage particularizes the story to one specific line. Genesis is now ready to recount its patriarchal history. The sin of Adam has universalized, and humankind is impotent to retard its devastation. The Creator must become the Redeemer. The line of Shem, then, must be understood as the hope of the whole world.
A symbolic ten generations from Shem to Abraham neatly matches the ten generations from Adam to Noah (5:1-32). The number suggests completeness. God’s choice of this one line does not betray any special merit on the part of the family of Shem (cf. Dt 7:6-7). It is not even conclusive that he was firstborn of Noah’s sons. Though, in any case, God set aside the laws of primogeniture in the cases of Jacob (25:23) and Ephraim (48:19-20). Indeed, the choice was rather strange in view of God’s mandate to populate the earth, for the end of the toledoth announces that Sarah is barren (11:30)! That is where the hopeless conclusion of primeval history takes us. That is where patriarchal history must begin.