Genesis 11:10 ¶
These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and
begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: 11
And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat
sons and daughters. 12 And Arphaxad
lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: 13 And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four
hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 14 And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
15 And Salah lived after he begat Eber
four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 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. 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. 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. 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.
26 And Terah lived seventy years, and
begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
From
this passage, if my math isn’t wrong, Shem, the son of Noah, lived to see
Abram’s birth. Genesis 10:25 showed us that it was in Peleg’s time the earth
was divided. Assuming this refers to the scattering at Babylon that took place
between 101 and 310 years after the Flood. Check my math and let me know if you
think I’m wrong. It happened within Peleg’s lifespan. According to 9:28 Noah
himself lived 350 years after the Flood so he would have been alive as well.
Genesis
11:27 ¶ 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. 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. 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. 32 And the days
of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Terah
took his family, Abram and Lot, his grandson, Abram’s nephew, and left Ur, an
ancient city in the general geographical area of Babylon. It was a coastal city
near the mouth of the Euphrates then although it is well inland now due to the
coastline shifting over thousands of years. Ur was a metropolis with its patron
god as Sin, in Akkadian, the moon god. A bull was one of his symbols. Remember
what was said about the alphabet earlier. Some Christian writers have put forth
that Sin, who was known to Ur as the god of wisdom pictured as an old man with
a long, flowing beard, eventually became Allah, the god of the Muslims. Early
archaeologists found in Sin’s temples the crescent moon as a symbol of his
presence. I have done an extensive study, for a non-scholar, on the etymology
of Allah which, while not politically correct, I think should give one pause
about who a great many of the religious adherents of the world actually
worship.
The
entire family is led by their father Terah to Canaan, to Haran, either named
later after Haran, or perhaps Haran was named after the town. The reason for
this we will find out next.
Chapter
12
12:1
¶ 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: 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: 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.
What
had been brought about in the land of Babel, Babylon, was a religion
counterfeit to the true worship of God. It was not long after men and women
left the ark of Noah. What I said in my comments on 4:16 bears repeating a
little at this point.
From Cain’s time the ancient city had become
religious entity, a type of church, started all at once with invited families
who would share in the same worship and the same gods as can be seen in
Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men,
although the individual family would have its own singular worship and gods which
represented their lars familiaris or familiar spirits (see Leviticus 20:27),
the guiding divinities of ancestors dead.[1]
It is likely that Cain’s false religion was carried on through his city and it
is possible and likely that Shem, Ham, and Japheth would be worshipped as
venerable ancestors in different names under the confusion of languages long
after their death.
In addition, each home in the ancient world
was to have a sacred flame which was the religious center of the home and must
not be permitted to go out.[2]
This eternal flame, like the lamp in the tabernacle in Exodus 27:20, must never
go out. This was a counterfeit city in the ancient world, a city of man’s
creation, man’s poor attempt to replace what God intended. Cain’s false religion,
which infected the rest of human history after the Flood, began to be expressed
by his brethren in his city, Enoch, and the eventual religion of the
city-states of Canaan, Greece, and the worship of Rome and India would have
begun there, reinforced by Babylon after the Flood.
The
king of an ancient city was also the high priest, who offered up sacrifices,
and was the highest religious authority. This is evident in a number of ancient
writers such as Aristotle, Euripides, and Demosthenes. Sometimes there were two
kings, a most famous example being Sparta of Greece or the two consuls or Rome
and, we will see later, perhaps in ancient Canaan.[3] This is the world that Abram moved and lived
in, a world awash in everyday religious ritual, a world that had no problem
believing in a distant God the Creator but also a whole pantheon of gods that
were much closer to him and had more of a role in his daily home life. Every
man or group of men desired to have a personal god, it would seem, to make up
for the lost relationship with their Creator, which their ancestors had
willfully eliminated in disobedience. Perhaps also this worship of gods
represented the power the sons of God who had come to earth, mated with women,
and produced giants, the mighty men of renown worshipped in deities whose
presence on earth had been remembered and spoken of by Noah and his three sons
and their wives.
Some
things to note about the ancient world include that from this earliest time
human relationships, such as a family, were a religion symbolized by the meal
they would take together. Also, in their minds all authority must have some
connection with this religion. Law was just another part of religion. In
addition, it should be noted that two cities were religious associations that
did not share the same gods. When war was made it would be made, not only
against the soldiers, men, women, and children of a city but against its crops,
its slaves, its gods.
Here
is the reason for the family leaving Ur. Abram is commanded to do something
very brave, to leave the protective confines of the gods of the hearth, of the
family, where the dead were worshipped, where the eldest son had no choice but
to inherit his father’s property, and his gods, and the father and the son were
joint owners of what the father possessed.
Here,
now, God calls Abram to come away, not only from a city, but from an entire
worldview, to renew the relationship with the one who created him, something
lost to mankind as the darkness spread to every corner where men and women had
been scattered. He is called to obey God, to leave this world while living in
it.
He
promises to make of Abram a great people and that he will be a blessing to the
entire world. Those who curse him God will curse and those that bless him God will
bless. Now begins a process of God turning mankind back to Himself. He will use
Abram as the conduit through which this blessing will pass. Abram’s journey out
of Ur does not end in Haran.
[1] Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion,
Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (1864, repr. Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, 2006), 134.
[2]
Ibid., 25.
[3]
Ibid., 173.
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