On Genesis, Part 21: The Call of Abraham

On Genesis, Part 21: The Call of Abraham

The chronology of Genesis is quite important to us, since if the chronology conflicts with ancient history, from things which we can know with certainty from archaeology and ancient records, then we cannot defend the historical validity of Genesis. But if we carefully piece together a chronology from Biblical, archaeological and historical sources, as we hope to have done here, then we may establish the fact that the Biblical chronology does not conflict with ancient history, and therefore we can defend Genesis as being historical – so long as it is understood to be historical only within the context of the Adamic race, which is the White race. Doing that, we may also better understand the state of the world out of which Abram had been called. So in our last presentation here, The Tower of Babel, we hope to have demonstrated as facts both the date of the flood of Noah as having been several hundred years before the earliest records of the Sumerian language, and that there are no records of other languages which precede the division of languages described in Genesis chapter 11, an event which is stated to have happened in the days of Peleg.

So our date for the flood, as we can best reckon it, is about 3187 BC. The popular sources we have cited for the earliest appearance of the Sumerian language places it about 2900 BC. Our date for the life of Peleg is that he was born around the 2793rd year of Adam, and died about the 3132nd year of Adam. This places his life, as we reckoned it, to have been from about 2656 BC to 2317 BC, and the popular sources date the earliest record of the Akkadian language to 2500 BC, very close to the middle of that period and therefore with all certainty reflecting the truth of the statement that “in his days was the earth divided”, as we read in Genesis chapter 10 (10:25). No other Western or Near Eastern languages are attested before these, in spite of conjecture concerning findings such as the so-called Vinča symbols or other ancient relics. However concerning those things, we must also bear in mind that the Nephilim have an unbroken history in the Near East and in Anatolia which is of far greater antiquity than that of the original Genesis chapter 10 Adamic nations. Apparently, what we know as Sumerian may have also been their language. The cities of Sumer and the Levant had various kings from among the Nephilim, such as Gilgamesh or Og of Bashan. We hope to discuss the presence of the Nephilim further when we encounter passages which mention them in Genesis chapters 14 and 15.

As for our chronological thesis, we stated that the surest way to date these events, the flood and the dividing of the earth, was to calculate the year of the birth of Abram from the creation of Adam, and then to count backwards from the approximate date for the giving of the law at Sinai. So according to Paul of Tarsus in Galatians chapter 3, there were 430 years from the call of Abram and his receiving of the promises preceding the date of the Exodus and the giving of the law at Sinai, and then there were the first 75 years of Abram’s life before which he had received those promises. So if we estimate the date of the Exodus to 1450 BC, which is not perfect but which is certainly within reason, then counting back 430 years, we can see that Abram was called by Yahweh about 1880 BC, and he was born 75 years before that, which is 1955 BC. According to that reckoning, if the Exodus was 1450 BC, which is close enough, and if he was born in the 3494th year of Adam, as we have determined here from the Septuagint chronology, then that year must be 1955 BC. Matching 1955 BC to the number of years Abram was born after Adam, we can deduce earlier dates, such as that of the flood and also of the lifespan of Peleg which we have already proposed here.

To establish 1450 BC as an approximate date for the Exodus, I am now going to cite a few passages from my commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, where I had last discussed the subject at length.

First, from part 14 of my Hebrews commentary, titled The Faith of History, which was presented here on December 23rd, 2016:

With this there are many scoffers who try to dispute whether the children of Israel were ever slaves in Egypt for “four hundred years”, as the Judaized denominational Christians claim. First, discussing Galatians chapter 3 here some 16 months ago, we determined that Paul had reckoned a period of 430 years from the call of Abraham to the giving of the law at Sinai. Of that period, it is determined from Scripture that there were about 215 years from the call of Abraham to the time when Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, and from then the children of Israel were actually in Egypt for the next 215 years, originally as guests, where they could not have been held in bondage for more than two hundred years. In our Galatians presentation, we elucidated the corroborating evidence for all of this from the genealogies and other aspects of Scripture.

As it is explained in both Exodus chapter 6 and 1 Chronicles chapter 6, Moses was only the fourth generation from Levi, the line of descent being Levi, Kohath, Amram and then Moses. So Moses was only the second generation of those born in Egypt, as Kohath was already born and among those who went to Egypt with Jacob. If Moses was 80 at the time of the Exodus, which is apparent, and if the patriarchs were still having their sons at the age of 70, which was the case with Abram’s grandfather Terah, even then no more than 220 years could have possibly elapsed from the time when Jacob went to Egypt to the time of the Exodus. So in that manner we establish our calculation of 215 years in that 2016 presentation of Hebrews, with which we shall now continue:

Furthermore, in our presentation of Acts chapters 6 and 7, given here over three years ago, we illustrated that the entire period of that 200 years of captivity was during the time of the 18th dynasty, where we wrote the following:

Regardless of the mainstream academic contentions over the pharaoh and the time of the Exodus, which generally place it in the 19th Dynasty and at the time of Ramses, both the testimony of Josephus and an honest study of the chronology of the period tell us that an 18th Dynasty pharaoh named Thutmose, whom Josephus calls Tethmosis, was the pharaoh of the Exodus. There were four pharaohs by this name, and they were all related. Thutmose I and Thutmose II were the third and fourth pharaohs of this dynasty. Hatshepsut was fifth, and it is very likely she who drew Moses out of the water, thereby giving him a form of her family name. The sixth and eighth pharaohs of this dynasty were Thutmose III and IV. The death of one more Thutmose, who never became pharaoh, led to the ascension of his brother Akhenaten. It was during the reign of Akhenaten that the Amarna Letters were written. These archaeological relics were written to Akhenaten by various kings of the land of Canaan and in them it is apparent that they had beseeched him for protection from the invading Hebrews.

When I made that presentation, I did not have a copy of Manetho, the earlier historian whom Flavius Josephus had cited, so I thought to obtain one. Manetho was mentioned by Josephus in many places in regard to Egyptian history. So presenting part 15 of our Hebrews commentary, which was titled Sons or Bastards, a week later on December 30th I wrote the following:

Furthermore, discussing Paul’s description of Moses and the events of the Exodus, we elucidated the fact that five ancient historians, four of them pagans, had accepted the accounts of Moses and the Exodus as being historical in nature. Three of these are Flavius Josephus, a Judaean, and the pagan Greek writers Strabo of Cappadocia and Diodorus Siculus, both of whom wrote before the time of Christ. None of these witnesses were Christians, and none of them, not even Josephus, were what we may fairly consider to be Jewish. Then from Josephus, we saw that a pagan Egyptian writer of the 3rd century BC named Manetho also accepted Moses and the Exodus account as being historical, and correctly dated it to the pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. Finally, through Diodorus Siculus, we saw that another pagan Greek writer in Egypt named Hecataeus of Abdera had also accepted the accounts of Moses and the Exodus as being historical. Although the version of the Exodus account given by Hecataeus was more accommodating to the Egyptians, now we can say that so was the version given by Manetho, which is something that Josephus had overlooked.

Since our previous presentation in this series we have acquired a copy of the Loeb Classical Library volume of the fragments of Manetho, which was first published in 1940. While most all of Manetho’s original work is now lost, the fragments of his writing which survive show that other ancient writers had also cited him regarding his accounts of the Exodus. Theophilus of Antioch, a Christian of the late 2nd century AD, in an apologetic work entitled Apology to Autolycus, had cited Manetho and wrote that: “Moses was the leader of the Judaeans [using the Greek word found in all of the Hellenistic writings], as I have already said, when they had been expelled from Egypt by King Pharaoh whose name was Tethmosis. After the expulsion of the people, this king, it is said, reigned for 25 years and 4 months, according to Manetho’s reckoning.”

So we see in this two things which Josephus did not provide for us in his own citations of Manetho: first, that Manetho’s version of the Exodus account had the same perspective favorable to the Egyptians which we had seen in the account given by Hecataeus of Abdera that was cited by Diodorus Siculus. Secondly, and just as importantly, the account of the number of years in the reign of Tuthmose corroborates our assertion that Manetho must have referred to Tuthmose III, the only pharaoh with the name who had reigned for so long a time. By the popular accounts, Tuthmose III ruled Egypt for nearly 55 years, until 1425 BC. So where Manetho informs us that Tuthmose lived 25 years after the Exodus, our chronology of the period and our approximate dating of the event to 1450 BC are once again fully vindicated.

The fact that all of these ancient writers had accepted an Egyptian version of Moses and the Exodus also helps serve to prove that the Exodus was indeed a historical event, regardless of which perspective one may choose to believe, the Biblical or the Egyptian. The fact that it happened some time around 1450 BC also agrees with the mention of the invading Habiri, or Hebrews, by certain of the rulers of city-states in Canaan in the Amarna letters which date to the rule of pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt for about 18 years, from about 1353 or 1351 BC. In the intervening hundred years, the children of Israel wandered 40 years in the Arabian desert, spent several more years in their journeys during which they fought many battles east of the Jordan, and established themselves on the plains of Moab for at least several years before finally invading Canaan at Jericho. Then after they invaded, the process of occupying the land was gradual and took many decades. So with this we should discern that the invasion of Canaan by Israel, which the Scripture also describes as a gradual process, was also historical.

When we publish this presentation at Christogenea, we will present a chart with this chronology of Genesis, from Adam through the time of the call of Abram, which improves on a similar chart which had been made by Clifton Emahiser. Clifton did not include the popular reckoning of years BC in his chart, or information such as the time of the flood or the division of nations. In our last presentation we also noted that our dates for the births of the patriarchs from Shem forward differ with those of Clifton by two years. This is because when he made his chronology, Clifton merely used the date calculated by the statement that “Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth”, which is found in the final verse of Genesis chapter 5. However from other statements in Genesis, we demonstrated that Japheth was the eldest of Noah’s sons, and seeing the age of Shem after the flood, with the birth of Arphaxad, it is apparent that Shem was two years younger than Japheth, and he was most likely born in the 502nd year of the life of Noah, rather than the 500th, which is when his older brother was born. This we had explained at length in the closing paragraphs of our presentation on The Book of the Race of Adam.

At the end of The Tower of Babel presentation, we hastily calculated the date for the flood at 3183 BC, however that date shall be corrected here to 3187 BC. I do not remember what may have caused me to err, but four years are insignificant on a Biblical time scale. Perhaps I was using a 1454 BC date for the Exodus, which may or may not be more accurate and which is found in some other sources.

Concluding that last presentation, we let off in Genesis chapter 11 with the birth of Peleg and his own first son, Reu, or as it is in the Septuagint, Ragau. So we shall repeat those verses here:

16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: 17 And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. 18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: 19 And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.

In the Septuagint account, Eber was born when Salah was 130 years old, and that is the 2659th year of Adam. Peleg was born when Eber was 134 years old, according to the Septuagint, which is the 2793rd year of Adam. According to our method of tying this chronology to 1450 BC, which may be off by a handful of years but which is sufficient for our purposes, Peleg lived from about 2656 BC to 2317 BC, and as we read in Genesis chapter 10, in the days of Peleg the nations were divided. So our chronology will reckon that division at the midway point in the life of Peleg, to about 2486 BC. The division was probably a long process, and may have begun several centuries earlier, but it must have been completed by about that time. According to the Septuagint, Reu was born when Peleg was 130 years old, in the 2923rd year of Adam.

So now we shall proceed with Genesis chapter 11:

20 And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug: 21 And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.

The name רעו, Reu or Rau, is defined by Strong’s as friend (# 7466). It is related to ריע or rea (# 7454) and other similar words which may also mean companion or associate. This last word was translated as neighbor in Leviticus 19:18 and elsewhere, although in that passage the word neighbor is equated to one of the children of one’s own people. The root verb is ריעה or reah, which is defined by Strong’s (# 7462) as to tend a flock, i.e. pasture it… where it is apparent that one’s friend is someone of one’s own flock. The name Serug שרוג or sherug is from a verb which means to entwine, and Strong’s defines it as tendril, like the shoots of a climbing plant that entwines itself around a tree or some other structure. So there are lessons for proper society even in the names of these patriarchs, that one should be entwined with ones friends, with one’s own people.

According to the Septuagint, Reu was 132 years old when Serug was born. So here it is the 3055th year of Adam, or 2394 BC. With the birth of Salah, and the reckoning of Cainan, the discrepancy with the Masoretic Text had grown to 936 years. Adding to that the differences in the ages of the patriarchs Salah, Heber, Peleg and Reu when their eldest sons were first born, that difference widens to 1,336 years.

22 And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor: 23 And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.

The name נחור or Nahor (# 5152) is related to a verb by Strong’s, נחר or nachar (# 5170) which is defined as to snore or snort. Once again, the Septuagint has 130 years as the age of Serug when he begot Nahor. So Nahor was born in the 3185th year of Adam, or about 2264 BC. The discrepancy with the chronology of the Masoretic Text is now 1,436 years.

24 And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: 25 And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.

The name תרח, Terah or Terach (# 8646) is not defined by Strong’s, however Gesenius wrote that it comes from an unused root word, meaning a word which was not used in Scripture, which means delay. [1] Spelled Tarah in the King James Version, it is the name of one of the stops of the children of Israel as they wandered in the desert following the Exodus, in Numbers chapter 33 (33:27).

According to the Septuagint, Nahor begot Terah when he was 179 years old, in the 3364th year of Adam, or 2085 BC. The discrepancy with the chronology of the Masoretic Text is now 1,586 years. So even without the 130-year interpolation of Cainan, for which we have followed the Septuagint and the Gospel of Luke, the discrepancy would still be 1,456 years. That is a significant difference when attempting to reconcile the Bible and what we may know of ancient history, and nearly every Judeo-Christian commentator makes the primary mistake of following the Masoretic Text chronology in this regard. Even Bertrand Comparet had followed the Masoretic chronology in many of his sermons, along with many other Christian Identity pastors. This will be our last comment here on the differences in the chronologies, unless for some unforeseeable reason it is necessary to do so later in Genesis. However we hope to have demonstrated that an examination of the ages of the patriarchs helps us to understand Genesis and properly relate it to both history and archaeology.

[1 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, p. 874.]

26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Here we have a situation similar to that of Noah where the final passage in Genesis chapter 5 merely says that Noah was 500 years old when he begot Shem, Ham and Japheth. But Noah only began to have his children at 500 years, and here, Terah only began to have his children at 70 years, which is also 70 years in the Septuagint as well as in the Masoretic Text. Moreover, Abram is the youngest of these three sons, and we must turn to other Scriptures to determine more precisely the time when he was born.

In the final verse of this chapter, we read that Terah died after he and his family, including Abram, had gone to Haran from Ur of the Chaldees. He was 205 years old when he died. After that, Abram was called by Yahweh to leave Haran, and in Genesis 12:4 we read that he was 75 years old when he received that call. Since we cannot determine how long it was between the time when Terah died and the time when Abram departed Haran, we can only use those ages, and deduct 75 from 205, to determine that Terah was about 130 years old when Abram was born. Terah may have been a little older, if Abram had been kept at Haran for any significant time after his father died, but from the text, we cannot tell whether or not he was, so we have to assume that this figure is somewhat accurate. Therefore, with Terah having been at least 130 years old when Abram was born, then Abram was born around the 3494th year of Adam, or about 1955 BC.

In a commentary on Genesis found among the Dead Sea Scrolls we read the following, in part: “Terah was one hundred and forty years old when he left Ur of the Chaldees and went to Haran and Abram was seventy years old. And Abram dwelt five years in Haran. Then Terah died sixty years after Abram went out to the land of Canaan”. [2] This we must reject, as it suggests that Abram was 70 years old when his father was only 145 years old, and that conflicts with the account of their ages as well as the general narrative here in Genesis. In the final passages of this chapter of Genesis it is clear, that Abram already took a wife and was at like age with Nahor who also took a wife around the same time, but that his brother Haran was much older than either of them, as he already had grown children by the time that his brothers took wives. So Haran was the oldest son of Terah, and Nahor and Abram were born much later. Therefore it is fully apparent, as we have already explained, that Terah was at least 130 years old when Abram was born.

If Abram spent five years in Haran after Terah died, then Terah would have been 135 years old when Abram was born, but we must work under the presumption that he was 130 because any addition of years, even if it is evident that there should be one, can only be grounded in conjecture. Some short but indeterminate time after the death of Terah at age 205, Abram was said to be 75, or 130 years younger than his father.

[2 The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, p. 354.]

27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. 28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

Abram’s brother Nahor has the same name as his grandfather. Abram, who was apparently the youngest of the sons here, is mentioned first because it is he who is chosen to carry on the Adamic family line, in preference over his brothers. The name אברם or Abram means high father or exalted father. Just as Shem was placed in order before the elder Japheth and given a name which means name in the sense of distinguished, or famed, Abraham’s given name of Abram also was prophetic of the role which he was destined to fulfill in history, since whether modern White Europeans know it or not, the day is coming when they will indeed know that Abraham is the father of their race, just as Paul of Tarsus had also explained in Romans chapter 5.

Here is the first time that Ur of the Chaldees, or properly, Ur of the Kasdim, is mentioned in Scripture. The ancient city of Ur was on the west bank of the Euphrates, just opposite ancient Sumer in lower Mesopotamia. It is not necessarily the land of Terah’s nativity, but Terah must have been there for quite some time, since his eldest son Haran was born there, and therefore Nahor and Abram were also very likely born there.

29 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. 30 But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Here it is evident that Haran was the eldest son of Terah, since Haran already has several grown children, namely Lot, Milcah and Iscah, while Nahor and Abram are just now taking their wives. But we are not told explicitly the name of the father of Sarai, who later becomes known as Sarah. The word for daughter used here to describe Milcah is singular and does not describe Sarai, so she was evidently not a daughter of Haran, and neither could she have been a daughter of Nahor as he has also just taken a wife. It is also plausible, that Terah had more than one wife, and even that Nahor and Abram are sons of a wife other than the mother of Haran, since Haran is as many as 60 years older than Abram. This is not incredible, since Abraham himself had children at an advanced age, with Keturah, long after the birth of Isaac. Perhaps it is plausible that Sarai was the daughter of yet another wife, but that, and anything else which may be imagined, is only conjecture. Sarai was only 10 years younger that Abram when they married, according to the narrative which is provided in later chapters of Genesis, where she is described as having been 90 when Abraham was 100. Certain apocryphal books engage in other conjectures as to her identity. Other sources identify Sarah with the Iscah mentioned here in this verse, but that is also conjecture and it is refuted by the text of the verse itself.

Here it is also evident, that Haran was named after a word which was similar to the name of the city in which his father and brothers sought to settle after his death. So perhaps Terah was originally from Haran in Padanaram. If that is not true, then for some otherwise unknown reason, after the death of Haran, Terah decided to settle in Padanaram. When Abram later leaves Haran, Nahor stays behind, and his descendants in Padanaram provide wives for Isaac and Jacob in subsequent generations. This move to Haran is some time around, or not long before, Abraham’s 75th year.

31 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 go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

The Hebrew word for the given name Haran is הרן or hrn, he-resh-nun (# 2039), while the Hebrew word for the place name Haran is חרן or chrn, het-resh-nun (# 2771). The difference is whether the initial letter is read as an he, a soft ‘h’, or as an het, a hard ‘ch’, since in writing it is evident that the two letters may be confused. But evidently the place name would have been better spelled as Charan in English. Strong’s defines Haran as mountaineer, and Charan as parched. Gesenius agrees with both of those Strong’s definitions. [3] These words were distinguished in this same manner in this passage in the Septuagint, where Haran is spelled Αρραν, but the name of the city, Charan, is spelled Χαρραν.

Biblical Haran, which is now generally called Harran, is in northwestern Mesopotamia, in what is now modern Turkey, about 55 miles east of the Euphrates River, 92 miles east and slightly south of the modern Turkish city of Gaziantep, and just over 110 miles northeast of the modern Syrian city of Aleppo. It is very close to the eastern edge of the region generally known as Padanaram, or Aram Naharaim, and it was evidently considered to be a part of that region in Scripture. Later, in Genesis chapter 28, where Jacob was “gone to Padanaram” in verse 7, he “went toward Haran” in verse 10. When he arrived, he said to certain men, as the King James Version has it in Genesis chapter 29, “My brethren, whence be ye?” and they answered “Of Haran we are”, in verse 4 of that chapter. Having called these men brethren, Jacob seems to have understood that these men were Hebrews. So here it is safe to conclude that while Terah may have sojourned in Ur of the Chaldees for a long time, and that is where his son Haran was born, and evidently also Abram himself, that his kin were originally Hebrews from the mountainous areas to the north, and from the Plain of Aram or Padanaram. For that reason we read of Jacob in Deuteronomy chapter 26 that “5 … A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.” There will be another indication of this in the opening verse of chapter 12.

It is difficult to know otherwise who the early occupants of Haran were, outside of the fact that Abram’s own brother and his descendants had dwelt there for at least several generations, and down through the time of Jacob and perhaps much longer. But Laban and his family also drop from the narrative of Scripture after Genesis chapter 31. According to popular sources, both Ur and Haran had very ancient temples to the moon god, Sin, which have been discovered by archaeologists and which suggests that there were even stronger links between the two cities. [4]

[3 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, pp. 232, 306; 4 Harran, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harran, accessed July 12th, 2023.]

32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

This concludes Genesis chapter 11, and as we have explained, unless there is a substantial but unprovided space of time between the event of Terah’s death and the call for Abraham to depart from Haran in the very next verse in chapter 12, then Terah must have been 130 years old when his son Abraham was born.

The chart which follows reflects the patriarchal ages and dates which we have calculated from the Septuagint:

Before we commence with Genesis chapter 12, first we shall give a summary of a few important dates from our chronology. The Flood of Noah occurred some time around 3187 BC, and the division of the nations in the days of Peleg must have been completed some time between 2656 and 2317 BC, so if we take the halfway point of his lifespan we can estimate that event at 2486 BC. Then Abram was born approximately 1955 BC, and his calling by Yahweh was around 1880 BC. Jacob went to Egypt about 1665 BC, shortly after which the book of Genesis comes to a close, and the Exodus occurred in 1450 BC, which is the estimated anchor date for all of these other calculations. They can be off a few years either way, but they cannot be off significantly.

So with this, it is also evident that there were about 700 years between the flood and the division of the nations, during which the events which are described in Genesis chapter 11 had unfolded. Then from there, it is perhaps another 600 or so years before the call of Abram, and there is nothing in Scripture which informs us as to what was transpiring in the wider world during most of that quite lengthy period of time.

Now we shall commence with Genesis chapter 12, and the call of Abram.

1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

The wording of the statement, “get thee out of thy country, and from the kindred, and from they father’s house” also seem to suggest that the inhabitants of Haran must have been Hebrews. Abram had moved there only with his own immediate family, and “father’s house” is sufficient to describe them. But it was also Abram’s country, and its inhabitants were his kindred. So they must have been Hebrews.

The Adamic society of this time, which was about 1880 BC, was entirely corrupted. The Akkadian empire had already collapsed, and Canaanite kingdoms such as those of the Hittites and the Hurrian Mittani were in the process of becoming powerful empires, which would compete with Egypt and subject Assyria and the rest of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Anatolia for some centuries. The Amorites had established themselves at Babylon and had begun to develop their own empire only about two decades before the call of Abram, and that may have been the reason for Terah’s having moved to Padanaram. But perhaps about a century or so later Haran and the rest of Padanaram would also be ruled by Canaanites, becoming subject to the Mitanni kingdom. When we discuss verse 5 of this chapter, we hope to explain the plausible circumstances for why Yahweh had Abram settle at Bethel, although there were also Canaanites there.

But we cannot ever know why Yahweh chose Abram as the vessel by which He would preserve His creation. As Paul of Tarsus had explained at length, Abram was deemed righteous because he believed God, in Romans chapter 4. But that belief could only follow after God had already chosen him. There in that chapter, Paul had written “1 Now what may we say that our forefather Abraham has found concerning the flesh? 2 For if Abraham from the rituals has been deemed worthy, he has reason to boast, but not towards Yahweh. 3 Indeed, what do the writings say? ‘That Abraham trusted Yahweh, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’” A little later in the passage Paul wrote: “11 And he received a sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith he had in uncircumcision, in regard to his being the father of all those who are believing, in a state of uncircumcision, for them also to be accounted that righteousness; 12 and father of circumcision to those not from circumcision only, but to those who walk in the footsteps of the faith our father Abraham had in uncircumcision.”

Ostensibly, the faith in which Abraham had walked is another expression of the fact that Abraham had believed God. He merely believed the words which Yahweh had told him here in these first three verses of Genesis chapter 12, and the proof of his belief is the fact that he immediately acted on those words, as it is described here in verse 4 of this chapter. This must be all Abraham had believed, since there is nothing else which was provided him by Yahweh for him to believe, or which would cause him to believe. Therefore the faith of Abraham for which he was accredited as having been righteous was simply that he had believed what Yahweh had told him in verses 1 through 3 of this chapter of Genesis, and everything which follows is predicated upon that alone.

Until this time, it is evident that Abram was a pagan, since his fathers and his brothers were pagans. This we read in Joshua chapter 24: “2 And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.” The flood in that passage is a reference to the Euphrates River, since Haran is north of that river from Palestine to the south. Further proof that Nahor and his descendants were pagan is in the episode of the household gods of Laban, which were stolen from him by his daughter Rachel, whom Jacob had married, when he left the house of Laban with his daughters, to take them to Canaan. As the account goes in Genesis chapter 31, when he realized his household gods were missing, Laban had pursued and caught up with Jacob on the road. But Rachel hid the gods so that they could not be found, and Jacob did not know that she had taken them. The possession of these idols was so important to Laban, that before he was compelled to return without them, he asked Jacob to make an oath never to come north in order to harm him, and Jacob agreed. Then the two parted ways, and the idols which Rachel had stolen fell out of the narrative of Scripture. However in the course of that event, as it is described in verse 32 of the chapter, when Jacob had spoken to Laban, Rachel’s father, he had made another oath, where he said “With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live…” A short time later, Rachel died prematurely after giving birth to her second child, Benjamin.

In an Akkadian legal document discovered at the site of ancient Nuzi in northern Mesopotamia, we read the following, in part, from Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament: “(2) Sale-Adoption: The tablet of adoption belonging to Nashwi, the son of Ar-shenni: he adopted Wullu, the son of Puhi-shenni. As long as Nashwi is alive, Wullu shall provide food and clothing; when Nashwi dies, Wullu shall become the heir. If Nashwi has a son of his own, he shall divide (the estate) equally with Wullu, but the son of Nashwi shall take the gods of Nashwi. However, if Nashwi does not have a son of his own, then Wullu shall take the gods of Nashwi. Furthermore, he gave his daughter Nuhuya in marriage to Wullu, and if Wullu takes another wife he shall forfeit the lands and buildings of Nashwi. Whoever defaults shall make compensation with 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold.” In a footnote for that passage we read the following: “Possession of the household gods marked a person as the legitimate heir, which explains Laban's anxiety in Genesis 31:26 ff. to recover his household gods from Jacob. It is to be noted too that Laban binds Jacob in verse 50 to marry no other wives besides his daughters, just as Wullu is bound in our text.” [5]

Without a doubt, we agree with the conclusions made in that footnote. But our purpose for repeating it here is only to show that the descendants of Nahor, Abram’s brother, were pagans just as well as Abram’s fathers had been pagans, which we see is attested in Joshua chapter 24. Abram would have been raised holding the same general beliefs as his father and his brothers, however for some unexpressed reason he was chosen by Yahweh, and that reason is not explicitly revealed in Scripture.

[5 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 219-220.]

2 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:

As we have already said, that name Abram, which Abraham had already been given at birth, means exalted father in Hebrew. Here the promise of God ensures that Abram would indeed live up to the name. There is one more promise:

3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

In the understanding which Abraham must have had at that time, the only understanding that a man in his historical context could have had, the reference to “all the families of the earth” could only have been a reference to the other Genesis chapter 10 nations of the surrounding lands. In Genesis chapter 10, only two chapters prior to this promise, we read of the sons of Noah in verse 32: “These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.” Once again, the word translated as earth here means land, and in Scripture it cannot possibly ever refer to the entire planet, or to anyone who is from outside of the context of the book of Genesis. Whatever traditions may have come down from the more ancient patriarchs may be reflected in those paganized versions of the myths of creation and antiquity which are found in the many extant Mesopotamian tablets and inscriptions, but it cannot be assumed that they reflect the full beliefs of all of the Genesis 10 families, many of whom are not represented, or their beliefs are not represented, in surviving inscriptions.

While Abram could only have understood this promise within the context of his own time, in the understanding of Paul of Tarsus, looking at the Genesis account through Christian eyes, the reference to “all the families of the earth” was a prophetic statement which referred to the future twelve tribes of Israel, the descendants of Jacob who inherited the promise to Abraham that his seed would inherit the earth. This is what Paul had meant where he wrote, in Galatians chapter 3, that “6 Just as ‘Abraham had trusted Yahweh, and it was accounted to him for righteousness’ 7 then you know that they from faith, they are sons of Abraham. 8 And the writing having foreseen that from faith Yahweh would deem the Nations righteous, announced to Abraham beforehand that “In you shall all the Nations be blessed.” 9 So those from faith are blessed along with the believing Abraham.” Yet where Paul mentioned “they from faith”, he must have meant they from of the faith of Abraham, and the promise which Abraham had believed is the substance of that faith, that “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great”.

Paul explains this further in Romans chapter 4 where he wrote: “13 Indeed, not through the law is the promise to Abraham or to his offspring, that he is to be the heir of the Society, but through righteousness of faith.” Then further on Paul defines the substance of that faith and he wrote: “16 Therefore from of the faith, that in accordance with favor, then the promise is to be certain to all of the offspring, not to that of the law only, but also to that of the faith of Abraham, who is father of us all; 17 (just as it is written, “That a father of many nations I have made you,”) …” and then he qualifies that even further and wrote of Abraham: “18 who contrary to expectation, in expectation believed, for which he would become a father of many nations according to the declaration, ‘Thus your offspring will be.’” Paul then qualified what he meant by “contrary to expectation” by explaining that Abraham, and especially Sarah, should not have expected an heir from his own seed, being of such an advanced age. Having said that, Paul further explained, a little farther on in the same passage, that “22 for that reason also ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness.’” So, according to Paul, the faith of Abraham is fulfilled “just as it is written” here in Genesis, in this chapter and in the more specific promises which follow, nearly all of which are without condition. They from of the faith are those who are the fulfillment of the promises, just as it is written: the literal seed, the offspring of Abraham, through Jacob Israel.

That is what Abraham had believed, that is how he believed it, and he was considered righteous because he believed it. While he is never recorded as having expressed the belief, he exhibited his belief in his actions, so we read in the very next verse of Genesis chapter 12:

4 So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

Here we shall pause, and Yahweh willing, we shall return to our commentary and the sojourn of Abraham in the near future.