SCRIPTURE BIOGRAPHIES. ABRAHAM. CHAPTER I. Birth at Ur of the Chaldees-Double Call from God-Migration from Haran-Entrance into the Land of Canaan. THE lofty range of mountains which culminates in Ararat slopes down southward into the great plain of Mesopotamia. Somewhere in the northern and upland regions of this district lay Ur of the Chaldees.1 Here, about 2000 B.C., Abraham was born; his father Terah being tenth in descent from Noah, as Noah was the tenth in descent from Adam. "And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran." "And Haran begat Lot, and died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees." "And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah." "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to 1 Ewald's History of Israel, vol. i., pp. 282, 283. See also Stanley's Jewish Church, vol. i., p. 5; Smith's Dictionary, art. "Ur." go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran." Whether the premature decease of Haran weakened the ties that bound Terah to Ur, or whether he shared in his son Abraham's faith, and was thus disposed to migrate with him, we cannot tell. We only know that when the proposal of migration was made, he not only acquiesced in, but promoted it. Under Terah's guidance the entire household removed to Haran. It may have been the attractiveness of "this cultivated district at the foot of the hills,"" 66 this beautiful stretch of country which lies below Mount Masius between the Khabour and the Euphrates " which prevailed; or the failure of the purpose to proceed may have sprung from the infirmities of age; however, it was here Terah remained and died. And here, too, Nahor and his family remained, taking so firm a hold, and spreading out so quickly and widely, that his descendants grew up into a community, broken up indeed much earlier, but at one time" as powerful as that of Israel." But Abraham had heard a voice from heaven saying to him, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, into a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee. in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abraham departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abraham was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran." 113 And Stephen, before the Jewish council, declared that "the 1 Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 129. Ewald, p. 310. God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land wherein now ye dwell." Accepting this statement, and assuming that the narrative in Genesis implies that Abraham did not leave Haran till Terah's death, as Abraham was then 75 and his father 205 years old, Terah must have been 130 at the time of Abraham's birth, who could not therefore have been the first-born, and must have been sixty years younger than his eldest brother. That this eldest brother was Haran appears more than probable from one of his daughters having married Nahor before her father's death. Josephus and Jerome, embodying the universal Jewish tradition, informs us that the daughters of Haran were Milcah and Sarah. If Iscah was thus, as has been generally believed, but another name for Sarah, as we know that she was ten years younger than Abraham, her father must have been by many years his senior. When Abraham was challenged by Abimelech, he said of Sarah, "And yet indeed she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother." If Haran were the eldest son, born when his father was seventy, and Abraham the youngest, born of a different mother, and Sarah were Haran's daughter, what Abraham said to Abimelech would be in accordance with the Jewish mode of speaking of family relationships. Lot, who is called the brother as well as the nephew of Abraham, would be literally his brother-inlaw. Otherwise it is difficult to see how the ages and the intermarriages can be made to harmonise. Adopting the above-stated order of birth among the three brothers, we understand how it was that Nahor's granddaughter, Haran's great-granddaughter, married Abraham's son. It is difficult otherwise to perceive how Isaac and Rebekah could have stood upon anything like the same level. On the other hand, it is alleged that the natural interpretation of the expression in Gen. xi. 26 is that Abraham was the eldest son, born when his father was seventy. The circumstance of Terah's death being related before that of Abraham's departure does not necessarily imply that the death preceded the departure, it being the practice of the narrator in the Book of Genesis to finish what he has to say about one individual before taking up the thread of the story as to another. Considering the circumstances in which it was made, Stephen's statement, it is thought, cannot be taken as authenticating anything more than what was the current Jewish tradition and belief, which ought not, in point of authority, to be set up against anything which the original record affirms or implies. There is nothing in that record giving countenance to the idea that Abraham was the youngest son, or that Iscah was another name for Sarah. Why not take Abraham's declaration to Abimelech as literally true-i.e., that Sarah was his father's daughter by a different mother? Why not give to the entire narrative in Genesis the first and most natural interpretation that would occur to any reader? Influenced by such reasons as these, Lange, Keil, Delitzsch, Kurz, Hengstenberg, Ewald, Alford, and others, have taken the primary announcement, And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran,” as indicating the order of birth among the sons. If they be right, one striking conclusion would follow-that Abraham left his father at Haran sixty years before Terah's death. Notwithstanding the high authorities already quoted in favour of this view, we confess our adherence to the older and more general belief. 66 "And Abraham took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten (the slaves they had acquired) in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came." Starting from Haran, it took Laban seven days to overtake Jacob at Mount Gilead, but he had no herds or baggage to retard him, and he was pursuing in swift march a fugitive. It might have taken Abraham and Lot double the time had they followed the same track. But we have some reason to believe that, after crossing the Euphrates, Abraham skirted the northern border of the great Syrian desert, passed through Damascus, and then followed the ancient road from that city to Egypt. This road brought him close to the valley that runs eastward and westward between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. The "Plain of Sichem" lay at the eastern opening of this valley into the Plain of Muknah. Here the first halt was made. The oaks of Moreh that clothed the base of Gerizim offered inviting shade and shelter. Beneath the wide-spreading branches of some patriarch of this grove the tent of Abraham was pitched. He was now in Canaan. How favourable must have been his first impressions of the land! Travellers of our time who have visited the scene of Abraham's first resting-place, about the identity of which there is no uncertainty, vie in praising its singular attractiveness. Stanley pronounces it to be "the most beautiful, perhaps it might be said the only very beautiful, spot in Central Palestine." It seems to have stirred even the somewhat phlegmatic Robinson into something like enthusiasm. "It came upon us suddenly," he says, “like a scene of fairy enchantment. We saw nothing to compare with it in all Palestine.' The writer may be permitted to echo their applause. For many days he had been looking up at the cold grey hills of Judah, and down into the stony, waterless valleys and river-courses. For eye and ear what greater surprise and refreshment than when riding up from the Well of Jacob into that lovely nook |