Genesis 11:10 records that Shem was 100 years old when he gave birth to Arpachshad two years after the flood, making him 98 at the time of the flood; and that he lived for another 500 years after this, making his age at death 600 years.

The children of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Aram, Arpachshad and Lud, in addition to daughters. In the New Testament, Luke lists the genealogy of Jesus from Adam through Shem, Abraham and David (see: Luke 3:23-38, Heli and the Spiritual Significance of Luke 3:23).).

Although both Jews and Arabic peoples derive their origins from Shem, the name Semitic is now almost exclusively used to refer to Jews.

Terms like "Shemites" and "sons" of an eponymous "father" in general, are not supported outside of religious studies by modern historical scholarship. In the Ancient Near East (and in the Aegean), the earliest attempts at arriving at an ethnology that would explain the contemporary sense that there were relative similarities and differences among neighboring or distant tribes, was expressed in terms of genealogy; an approach reflected in terms like "Semite" and "Hamite". Neither "Semite" nor "Hamite" are broadly used now, and are sometimes perceived as offensive, because of their "racial" connotations.

However, the adjectival forms "Semitic" and "Hamitic," are more accepted, though the vague term 'Hamitic' dropped out of mainstream academic use in the 1960s. "Semitic" remains an indispensable technical term for, in particular, the Semitic languages, as a subset of the Afro-Asiatic languages, which show the common linguistic heritage of Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic (see also: Aramaic of Jesus), Phoenician, Akkadian, and Ethiopic languages.