Genesis 11:25--12:1

11:25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

The Record of Terah

11:27 This is the account of Terah.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 11:28 Haran died in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans, ¹  while his father Terah was still alive. ²  11:29 And Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, ³  and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah; ⁴  she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 11:30 But Sarai was barren; she had no children.

11:31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (the son of Haran), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and with them he set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there. 11:32 The lifetime ⁵  of Terah was 205 years, and he ⁶  died in Haran.

The Obedience of Abram

12:1 Now the Lord said ⁷  to Abram, ⁸ 

“Go out ⁹  from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household

to the land that I will show you. ¹⁰ 

Genesis 12:7

12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants ¹¹  I will give this land.” So Abram ¹²  built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Genesis 22:20-23

22:20 After these things Abraham was told, “Milcah ¹³  also has borne children to your brother Nahor – 22:21 Uz the firstborn, his brother Buz, Kemuel (the father of Aram), ¹⁴  22:22 Kesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel.” 22:23 (Now ¹⁵  Bethuel became the father of Rebekah.) These were the eight sons Milcah bore to Abraham’s brother Nahor.

Genesis 28:2

28:2 Leave immediately ¹⁶  for Paddan Aram! Go to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and find yourself a wife there, among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother.

¹ sn The phrase of the Chaldeans is a later editorial clarification for the readers, designating the location of Ur. From all evidence there would have been no Chaldeans in existence at this early date; they are known in the time of the neo-Babylonian empire in the first millennium b.c.

² tn Heb “upon the face of Terah his father.”

³ sn The name Sarai (a variant spelling of “Sarah”) means “princess” (or “lady”). Sharratu was the name of the wife of the moon god Sin. The original name may reflect the culture out of which the patriarch was called, for the family did worship other gods in Mesopotamia.

⁴ sn The name Milcah means “Queen.” But more to the point here is the fact that Malkatu was a title for Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god. If the women were named after such titles (and there is no evidence that this was the motivation for naming the girls “Princess” or “Queen”), that would not necessarily imply anything about the faith of the two women themselves.

⁵ tn Heb “And the days of Terah were.”

⁶ tn Heb “Terah”; the pronoun has been substituted for the proper name in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁷ sn The Lord called Abram while he was in Ur (see Gen 15:7; Acts 7:2); but the sequence here makes it look like it was after the family left to migrate to Canaan (11:31-32). Genesis records the call of Abram at this place in the narrative because it is the formal beginning of the account of Abram. The record of Terah was brought to its end before this beginning.

⁸ tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lÿkha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18.

⁹ tn The initial command is the direct imperative (לֶךְ, lekh) from the verb הָלַךְ (halakh). It is followed by the lamed preposition with a pronominal suffix (לְךָ, lÿkha) emphasizing the subject of the imperative: “you leave.”

¹⁰ sn To the land that I will show you. The call of Abram illustrates the leading of the Lord. The command is to leave. The Lord’s word is very specific about what Abram is to leave (the three prepositional phrases narrow to his father’s household), but is not specific at all about where he is to go. God required faith, a point that Heb 11:8 notes.

¹¹ tn The same Hebrew term זֶרַע (zera’) may mean “seed” (for planting), “offspring” (occasionally of animals, but usually of people), or “descendants” depending on the context.

¹² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Abram) has been supplied in the translation for clarification.

¹³ tn In the Hebrew text the sentence begins with הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”) which draws attention to the statement.

¹⁴ sn This parenthetical note about Kemuel’s descendant is probably a later insertion by the author/compiler of Genesis and not part of the original announcement.

¹⁵ tn The disjunctive clause gives information that is important but parenthetical to the narrative. Rebekah would become the wife of Isaac (Gen 24:15).

¹⁶ tn Heb “Arise! Go!” The first of the two imperatives is adverbial and stresses the immediacy of the departure.