Genesis 11:28-31

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.

Genesis 12:1

The Obedience of Abram

12:1 Now the Lord said ⁵  to Abram, ⁶ 

“Go out ⁷  from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household

to the land that I will show you. ⁸ 

Nehemiah 9:7

9:7 “You are the LORD God who chose Abram and brought him forth from Ur of the Chaldeans. You changed his name to Abraham.

Acts 7:2-4

7:2 So he replied, ⁹  “Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our forefather ¹⁰  Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in Haran, 7:3 and said to him, ‘Go out from your country and from your relatives, and come to the land I will show you.’ ¹¹  7:4 Then he went out from the country of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God ¹²  made him move ¹³  to this country where you now live.

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 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.

⁶ 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.

⁷ 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.”

⁸ 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.

⁹ tn Grk “said.”

¹⁰ tn Or “ancestor”; Grk “father.”

¹¹ sn A quotation from Gen 12:1.

¹² tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³ tn The translation “made him move” for the verb μετοικίζω (metoikizw) is given by L&N 85.83. The verb has the idea of “resettling” someone (BDAG 643 s.v.); see v. 43, where it reappears.