Our glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran." Is the Angel of the Lord identifying as God? 133 Although it may appear from a superficial reading of the account in Genesis (11:31-12:1) that God called Abraham while in Haran, thereby contradicting Stephens account that God called Abraham in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, the two accounts can be harmonized by noting that Genesis 11:27-32 is a parenthetical account of Terah introduced by a waw disjunctive, and that Genesis 12:1, introduced by a waw consecutive, carries on the main narrative which was discontinued in Gen. 11:26. Bruce Waltke, Unpublished Class Notes, Dallas Theological Seminary, pp. Terah is the one who told the people to leave Ur Kasdim in the book of Genesis, not Abram. One year? Why did God allow Lots daughters to later have sex with their father? 5: The fact that Genesis 11:10-31 is the record made by Shem. 3, app.). And that brings us to the second reason. At Shechem, God promised to give this land to Abram (12:7). Even to Noah He revealed Himself before the flood as one who was present on the earth. Abram died at the ripe old age of 175 (25:7-8), a much shorter time than Shem (11:10-11) or Arpachshad (11:12-13). All rights reserved. 5.) So, according to that oral history, Abe one day waited for Terah to go out of Terah's idol-making shop, and then Abe smashed all the idols except the biggest one that stood prominently in the corner of the shop. (Note: The force of this difference cannot be set aside by the objection that the New Testament writers follow the usage of the Septuagint, where is rendered . They followed the Euphrates River, with their herds, to the Paddan Aram region. Theologically, Genesis chapter 12 is one of the key Old Testament passages, for it contains what has been called the Abrahamic Covenant. Terah traveled 150 miles out of his way. Terah's Descendants. Terah is mentioned in Jesus' genealogy in Luke 3:34. Terah may have told Abraham why he was leaving Ur and why he decided to settle in Haran. There may well have been political or economic factors which made such a move expedient, apart from any spiritual considerations. If God therefore would fulfil His promise, no more to smite the earth with the curse of the destruction of every living thing because of the sin of man (Genesis 8:21-22), and yet would prevent the moral corruption which worketh death from sweeping all before it; it was necessary that by the side of these self-formed nations He should form a nation for Himself, to be the recipient and preserver of His salvation, and that in opposition to the rising kingdoms of the world He should establish a kingdom for the living, saving fellowship of man with Himself. Do you believe it? Christian faith grows. Do you know that after Abram entered the land of Canaan it was another 25 years until he had his son, Isaac? Benjamin of Tudela (p) speaks of it as in being in his time, and as two days journey from the entrance into the land of Shinar or Mesopotamia; and says, that in that place where was the house of Abraham, there is no building on it, but the Ishmaelites (the Mahometans) honour the place, and come thither to pray. Bob is a pastor/teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel in Richardson, Texas, and has contributed many of his Bible study series for use by the Foundation. Much of Abrams blessing was to come in the form of his offspring, but there was also the blessing that would come in the form of the Messiah, who would bring salvation to Gods people. Once in the land of Canaan, the route taken by Abram is noteworthy. He quoted the shopworn saying, God said it. - Thus, walking in faith, the patriarchs were types of faith for all the families that should spring from them, and be blessed through them, and ancestors of a nation which God had resolved to form according to the election of His grace. I see Terah took Abram, Lot & Sarai to go to Canaan, & died on route in Haran, seemingly before God spoke to Abram to leave his country. One purpose of the genealogy of chapter 11 is that it informs us that men were living shorter lives, and having children younger. I am greatly distressed by the glamorizing of heroes, especially by Christians. Abram was a man like you and me. He obeyed unquestioningly the commands of God, from whom he received repeated promises and a covenant that his "seed" would inherit the land. This explanation of the order of events is confirmed by the statement of Stephen: "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran. Why did Terah died in Haran? Can a VGA monitor be connected to parallel port? ------------------------------------------------------------. May God enable us to grow in grace as we walk the path which He has ordained, and as we continue to study the growth of the faith of Abram over many years. - From these varying forms of appearance it is evident that the opinion that the Angel of the Lord was a real angel, a divine manifestation, "not in the disguise of angel, but through the actual appearance of an angel," is not in harmony with all the statements of the Bible. Terah, Jewish literature records, was a craftsman who made idols. Through all of his experiences he must come to see God as the origin of all that will endure. Stagers, Genesis, p . (m) Geograph. Even if we render this passage, with Delitzsch, "making His messengers of winds, His servants of flaming fire," the allusion, as Delitzsch himself observes, is not to the creation of angels; nor can the meaning be, that God gives wind and fire to His angels as the material of their appearance, and as it were of their self-incorporation. This seems to be upheld by Scripture: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and served other gods'" (Josh 24:2). (5) The Christian walk is simply doing what God has told us to do and believing that He is leading us as we do so. How utterly irreconcilable this fact is with the opinion that the Angel of Jehovah was a created angel, is conclusively proved by Revelation 22:9, which is generally regarded as perfectly corresponding to the account of the "Angel of Jehovah" of the Old Testament. Having called Abram, it was God Who providentially brought Abram to the point of leaving home and homeland and entering Canaan. Had Abrams spiritual life depended solely upon his faithfulness, the story of Abram would have ended very quickly. And, most important, I can find hope for a person like myself. The need for spiritual purity surpassed the need for genetic purity at this particular point in time. Abram came from a pagan home. Genesis 11:31 tells us that Ter'ah took Abraham, Lot, and Sarai, and began the journey to Canaan, perhaps out of grief for the loss of his son Haran, but certainly before the call on Abraham. Now Abram obeyed God by faith and entered into the land of Canaan, but only after considerable preparatory steps had been taken by God. Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup, Ticket smash for [status-review] tag: Part Deux. . Secondly, the Angel of God was recognised as God by those to whom He appeared, on the one hand by their addressing Him as Adonai (i.e., the Lord God; Judges 6:15), declaring that they had seen God, and fearing that they should die (Genesis 16:13; Exodus 3:6; Judges 6:22-23; Judges 13:22), and on the other hand by their paying Him divine honour, offering sacrifices which He accepted, and worshipping Him (Judges 6:20; Judges 13:19-20, cf. The appearances of the angel of Jehovah (or Elohim) cannot have been essentially different from those of Jehovah (or Elohim) Himself; for Jacob describes the appearances of Jehovah at Bethel (Genesis 28:13.) Paul chose Abraham as the finest example of a man who is justified before God by faith apart from works (Romans 4). It is probable that the revelation Abram had received from heaven was the means of removing this cloud from his mind, and restoring in him the knowledge and worship of the true God. Genesis 21:16-21. 63-64. The angel of God, who shows the sacred seer the heavenly Jerusalem, and who is supposed to say, "Behold, I come quickly" (Revelation 22:7), and "I am Alpha and Omega" (Revelation 22:13), refuses in the most decided way the worship which John is about to present, and exclaims, "See I am thy fellow-servant: worship God.". The faith to which we are called is not faith in a plan, but faith in a person. Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, in Mount Ebal (Joshua 8:30). (h) Ut supra. Secondly, consistent with this approach, the author does not stress the timing of Abrams obedience. vol. The dispersion of the descendants of the sons of Noah, who had now grown into numerous families, was necessarily followed on the one hand by the rise of a variety of nations, differing in language, manners, and customs, and more and more estranged from one another; and on the other by the expansion of the germs of idolatry, contained in the different attitudes of these nations towards God, into the polytheistic religions of heathenism, in which the glory of the immortal God was changed into an image made like to mortal man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things (Romans 1:23 cf. Hist. But it was not the lot of Terah to enter the land, where he would only have been a stranger. Terah ends up dying in Haran. 135. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his Conclusion If the city which Abram was told to leave was great, the home he left behind seems to have been less than godly. (3) The Christians walk is a pilgrimage. Why was Abraham promised land that belonged to others (Genesis 12)? Why are non-Western countries siding with China in the UN? Ancient Mesopotamia was a region centered upon the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. This view was adopted by many Romish theologians, by the Socinians, Arminians, and others, and has been defended recently by Hoffmann, whom Delitzsch, Kurtz, and others follow. Did God give an oath to Isaac as alluded in Psalms 105:8-10? The sovereignty of God in salvation is beautifully illustrated in the call of Abram. The name must not be confounded with that of Haran, the father of Lot, as really it is in the Heb. Thank God our spiritual lives are ultimately dependent upon His faithfulness and not ours. But it seems in Genesis only the call to leave Haran is recorded. In attempting now to determine the connection between the appearance of the Angel of Jehovah (or Elohim) and the appearance of Jehovah or Elohim Himself, and to fix the precise meaning of the expression Maleach Jehovah, we cannot make use, as recent opponents of the old Church view have done, of the manifestation of God in Genesis 18 and 19, and the allusion to the great prince Michael in Daniel 10:13, Daniel 10:21; Daniel 12:1; just because neither the appearance of Jehovah in the former instance, nor that of the archangel Michael in the latter, is represented as an appearance of the Angel of Jehovah. It is true that from the very beginning God had manifested Himself visibly to men; but in the olden time we read nothing of appearances, because before the flood God had not withdrawn His presence from the earth. Does With(NoLock) help with query performance? Do not expect that God will indicate each turn in the road with a clearly marked sign. Consequently, Terah was 130 years old when Abraham was born (205 -75 =130). Why did Lot offer up his daughters to be gang raped? (k) Ibid. While not all Bible students agree on the location of Ur,129 most agree that it is the Ur of southern Mesopotamia, on what used to be the coast of the Persian Gulf. In Genesis chapter 11, we are told that Terah, his son Abram, his grandson Lot and his daughter-in-law Sarai left their hometown called the Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the Land of Canaan. On the form in which God appeared, in most instances, nothing is related. The second promise of the Abrahamic Covenant was that of a great nation coming from Abram. Still, there may have been some tradition in the family, or knowledge handed down from patriarchal times, which made them look upon Canaan as their land of hope; and the expedition of Amraphel, king of Shinar, and others against the south of Palestine, recorded in Genesis 14:1-16, and confirmed by our large present knowledge of these popular movements, shows that we must not assume that, far removed from one another as were Babylonia and Canaan, therefore they were lands mutually unknown. God called him to leave that city and to exchange his townhouse for a tent. Prayerful conversation with the true and living God, also, while it was fast waning in the land of the Kasdim, seems to have been still maintained in its ancient purity in some parts of the land of Kenaan and the adjacent countries. Who the messenger or angel of Jehovah was, must be determined in each particular instance from the connection of the passage; and where the context furnishes no criterion, it must remain undecided. Terahs migration was partly perhaps a movement of a tribe of the Semites northwards (see Note on Genesis 11:28), made restless by the Elamites, who about this time overran Western Asia; but chiefly it had a religious motive: for Ur was the especial seat of the worship of the moon-god, Sin; and though Terah had not attained to the purity of Abrahams faith, yet neither was he altogether an idolater. But as we look back upon it, we can see that God was leading all the way. The mid-life crisis would have been past history for him. But this important difference has been overlooked, that according to Greek usage, denotes an (any) angel of the Lord, whereas according to the rules of the Hebrew language means the angel of the Lord; that in the New Testament the angel who appears is always described as without the article, and the definite article is only introduced in the further course of the narrative to denote the angel whose appearance has been already mentioned, whereas in the Old Testament it is always "the Angel of Jehovah" who appears, and whenever the appearance of a created angel is referred to, he is introduced first of all as "an angel" (vid., 1 Kings 19:5 and 1 Kings 19:7). When Terah died, Abraham was free to set out from Haran on his way to Canaan. 24. Shem had converted Abe. And the guidance vouchsafed had for its object the calling forth of faith in response to the promise, which should maintain itself amidst all the changes of this earthly life. Beside this, we frequently read of appearances of the "angel of Jehovah" (Genesis 16:7; Genesis 22:11, etc. While what was to be left behind was crystal clear, what lay ahead was distressingly devoid of detail: to the land which I will show you.. The early Church regarded Him as the Logos, the second person of the Deity; and only a few of the fathers, such as Augustine and Jerome, thought of a created angel (vid., Hengstenberg, Christol. Those who first read the book of Genesis were about to take possession of the land which was promised Abram. - Terah takes the lead in this emigration, as the patriarch of the family. God has said that all men are sinners, deserving of, and destined to eternal punishment. James referred to Abraham as a man who demonstrated his faith to men by his works (James 2:21-23). Ur was in the southern part of Mesopotamia, and was the starting point for Abraham's journey to Canaan. The Hebrew word for "served" can also mean to "work," hence the tradition that Terah was a craftsman who made idols. In particular, I want to underscore the process which God employed to strengthen Abrams faith and make him the godly man he became. Hence, they all abode in Haran for the remainder of the five years from the date of Abram's call to leave his native land. daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they The obstacles were largely overcome by the initiative of God in the early stages of the life of Abram. It tells us that verses 27-32 of chapter 11 are parenthetical,133 and not strictly in chronological order. Having said this, I do not wish to glorify Abrams faith either, for as we shall see, it was initially very weak. The tent is thus the symbol of the pilgrim. Terah, Abraham's father, was grieving for his son Haran. The command of God to Abram is, in effect, a reversal of what man attempted at Babel. God called him in Ur, but Abram did not leave his fathers house or his relatives. But the opinion of the early Church has been vindicated most thoroughly by Hengstenberg in his Christology.). Think of it. Thanks for contributing an answer to Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange! In addition to this, He performs miracles, consuming with fire the offering placed before Him by Gideon, and the sacrifice prepared by Manoah, and ascending to haven in the flame of the burnt-offering (Judges 6:21; Judges 13:19-20). How unlike mans ways are from Gods. The form of the Angel of Jehovah, which was discernible by the senses, varied according to the purpose of the appearance; and, apart from Genesis 21:17 and Genesis 22:11, we have a sufficient proof that it was not a real angelic appearance, or the appearance of a created angel, in the fact that in two instances it was not really an angel at all, but a flame of fire and a shining cloud which formed the earthly substratum of the revelation of God in the Angel of Jehovah (Exodus 3:2; Exodus 14:19), unless indeed we are to regard natural phenomena as angels, without any scriptural warrant for doing so. The call of Abram is recorded for us in Genesis 12:1: Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your fathers house, to the land which I will show you., A better rendering of the first sentence of this call is found in the King James Version and in the New International Version, both of which read, The Lord had said to Abram, . Abraham was the tenth generation from Noah through Shem and was born 352 years after the Deluge, in 2018 B.C.E. Abram had two brothers, Nahor and Charan (often anglicized as "Haran"), but Charan died. The force of these facts has been met by the assertion, that the ambassador perfectly represents the person of the sender; and evidence of this is adduced not only from Grecian literature, but from the Old Testament also, where the addresses of the prophets often glide imperceptibly into the words of Jehovah, whose instrument they are. Pharaoh, for example, was blessed by exalting Joseph. The Christian life is not knowing exactly what the future holds, but knowing Him Who holds the future. Terah, it seems, decided to stay in the northern Mesopotamian "city of Haran," (no connection with his son Haran) rather than continue the journey to Canaan, which was the family's original intent. Such will be the case as we can look back upon our lives from the vantage point of time. We must confine ourselves to the passages in which "the Angel of Jehovah" is actually referred to. Stephen clarifies the time that Abram was first called of God. For the election of God was not restricted to the separation of Abram from the family of Shem, to be the father of the nation which was destined to be the vehicle of salvation; it was also manifest in the exclusion of Ishmael, whom Abram had begotten by the will of man, through Hagar the handmaid of his wife, for the purpose of securing the promised seed, and in the new life imparted to the womb of the barren Sarai, and her consequent conception and birth of Isaac, the son of promise. Outside the Land, it was given to Abraham only to hear the Divine voice (v. 1); but here, in the land destined to be specifically dedicated to the service of the Lord, he was also vouchsafed the privilege of a Divine vision. U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1964), II, p. 328. (Antiqu. 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