“(And his daughter [was] Sherah, who built Bethhoron the nether, and the upper, and Uzzensherah.)” (1Ch 7:24 AV)

I thought this was interesting that a woman was credited with the repair and building of two cities.  It is rather rare in the scriptures for a lady to get the credit for a civil or battle field project.  They are there.  But they are rare.  Not that ladies cannot accomplish these things.  They are more than capable. It simply was not their interest in life.  The cities mentioned post-date the life of Sherah.  From what I can glean from different commentaries, this Sherah was the granddaughter of Ephraim, son of Joseph.  If Israel was in Egypt for 470 years, this makes Sherah very old at the time of the Exodus.  Jacob was 147 years old when he died.  He was in Egypt 27 years before passing.  Joseph lived to be 110.  We don’t know how old Ephraim was when he died.  But it is not inconceivable that it would only be three generations that spent their time in Egypt if a generation lived 120-150 years.

Most commentators agree that it was not necessarily Sherah herself who built these cities, but her descendants.  This would make sense because one of the cities was named after her.  It would also take forty years wandering in the wilderness and all her generation would have dies off.  Including her. What might have happened is the first excursion into Canaan which the children of Israel rejected the idea of invasion, Sherah saw that area and had vision of cities being built there.  She came up with a dream and a plan to give to her children.  This dream continued into the next generation who then took her dream and made it a reality.  She got the credit because she was the one who had the vision to accomplish a work she would never participate in herself.

It just goes to show how valuable mothers are in transferring dreams to their children.  Fathers are often the ones who influence their children to dream dreams of accomplishments.  Mothers influence the importance of family. However, mothers can be just as important in motivating her children to accomplish things in life as Dad is.  And in this case, even more so!