According to the Bible, Shelah/Shela () was the third son of Judah, and was born at Chezib, which can be identified with an unknown town in the vicinity of Mareshah.
Biblical narrative
According to the book of Genesis, God had killed Shelah's two older brothers, Er and Onan. Judah was unwilling to allow Tamar, who had been successively Er's and Onan's wife, Judah's concern was that Tamar might be cursed and Shelah might die if married to her. So Judah told her to wait until Shelah had grown up. In the Book of Chronicles, Shelah is identified as the name of a clan, containing a subclan named Er.
According , the sons of Shelah were:
- Er, the father of Lecah
- Laadah, the father of Mareshah.
- The families of the house of the linen workers of the house of Ashbea
- Jokim, the men of Chozeba
- Joash
- Saraph
- Jashubi-Lehem
The descendants of the last four sons were potters who dwelt at Netaim and Gederah and worked for the king.
According to some biblical scholars, the description of Shelah is an eponymous aetiological myth concerning fluctuations in the constituency of the tribe of Judah, with Shelah representing the newest clan to become part of the tribe. The Book of Chronicles' description of Er as a descendant of Shelah, suggests that Er was in reality the name of a clan that was originally equal in status to the Shelah clan, but was later subsumed by it. 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.