And Terah lived seventy years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
The closing line of Shem's family record names one father and three sons. Two questions sit inside it: why is Abram named first when the chapter's numbers say he was not the eldest, and what was his family like?
Genesis moves in blocks, each headed by a line of "generations." This verse ends one block and opens the way for another.
In Genesis 10 we have "the generations of the sons of Noah," but there side by side rather than in succession... The moral cause is explained in Genesis 11:1-9; after which we find "the generations of Shem" in verses 10-26, and those "of Terah" to complete the picture, and make way for Abram, the man of God's choice, call, and promise. Here we have, unlike any before, at least two genealogies side by side: the nations separate from one another, and the man separated to God with blessing and promise in him, and his seed natural or spiritual.
The same shape appears in the earlier list of chapter 5, and the comparison is instructive.
Here again we find ten names prominent. The same number we have in Genesis 5. Both genealogies in chapters 5 and 11 end with a man to whom God reveals Himself, and with each a new era begins — Noah and Abram. Notice the decreasing years of life. Shem was 600 years old, the grandfather of Abram only 148. The line of Shem was in decline; some of the names show this.
Read straight through, the verse seems to make Abram the firstborn of a seventy-year-old father. Later verses will not allow it.
Verse 26 might lead us to assume that Abram was Terah's eldest son, born when his father was 70 years old. But the chapter states plainly that Terah died in Haran aged 205 years. Verse 4 of the next chapter is just as plain: Terah was dead (see Acts 7:4) when Abram left Haran, and Abram was 75, not 135 as we should have expected. So the conclusion appears to be this. Terah's family started when he was 70, and Abram was not born till he was 130. He is mentioned first in verse 26 because Terah's other children were of small importance compared with him. These things should teach us that God cares about moral and spiritual matters rather than chronological ones.
Commentators differ on which son was the eldest. One reading of the family details settles it, and explains several later relationships.
Haran was really the eldest; Nahor, the second son of Terah, married Haran's daughter Milcah, his own niece; and Abram was the youngest of the three. Lot was Haran's son, as Sarai (or Iscah) was his daughter... The eldest and the youngest sons of Terah were sixty years apart, and they had different mothers, as Abram shows. That difference made this possible and explains the matter.
This is not a slip in the record but a way of writing that Scripture uses more than once.
This verse is a striking example of the way Scripture writes, which men are apt to mistake. It says Terah lived seventy years and had Abram, Nahor, and Haran. It said the same of Noah: he was five hundred years old, and Noah had Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Scripture gave the father's age before naming any of the sons. In neither case did the elder son come first; he came last. Other Scriptures prove this beyond just doubt. In both cases the first place marks the special and spiritual honour God put on each.
Precedence here is a gift, not a birthright.
Abram then, though the youngest son, took precedence in God's mind and word because of the grace God showed him. "The last was made first" — a principle Scripture applies often... In him God began a new headship. Fallen Adam was head of all mankind as they are; Abram is head of the faithful. Scripture says of him: "he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness."
Terah's household was not a godly one.
This is the first notice the Bible gives of idolatry. It comes not when idolatry began, but when it had corrupted the immediate ancestor of Abraham. Before the flood the world was full of open evil, but we never hear of people serving other gods. And after the flood we find no hint of it, until Scripture speaks this way of the fathers in Terah's day.
Nothing in this family explains what came next. God moved first.
It was in sovereign grace that God thus appeared. Even the line of Shem, the father and kindred of Abraham, were idolaters. Grace gives, not finds, what is good. And the God of glory did more than appear. He appeared to Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia — at the farthest point of his distance from "the land," and among idolaters.
The result was a new division in the world.
To preserve a testimony to Himself, God called Abram right out of the evil, to become a pilgrim and a stranger in the earth. Under God's government mankind was already divided into nations. Now it would see a division of another kind: a godly seed separated from the mass of the ungodly. This was a division produced by divine grace.
- Decline — Shem's line runs down through shrinking lifespans to Terah. The list ends with a family that served other gods.
- Grace — God found nothing good in that house. Grace gives what it does not find, and it reached Abram at his farthest distance from the land.
- Honour — The dates show Abram was not the eldest. He stands first because of the honour God put on him: the last was made first.
- Separation — Out of that idolatrous household God begins a new line of the faithful. Grace alone produced this division in mankind.
And these are the generations of Terah Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begot Lot.
This verse opens the family record of Terah, a man of Ur with three sons and one grandson. It reads like a bare list of names, yet commentators see the start of something new here: God acting by the call of one man.
Genesis is built out of "generations" sections. This one is among the longest.
The generations of Terah begin with verse 27, and do not end until we reach the death of Abraham in Genesis 25. As to Terah himself, we learn at the end of our chapter that Ur of the Chaldees was his home. Late in his life he left Ur to go to the land of Canaan, but stopped at Haran on his way.
The verse names Abram first. That is not the order of their births.
The order of the three sons of Terah reverses that of nature. Abram was in no sense the head of the family after the flesh, not even when his brother Haran died. Comparing the dates and facts makes it clear that Abram was the youngest of all. Haran was born when Terah was seventy; Abram not until Terah was one hundred and thirty. His foremost place therefore was due to the choice of God.
Stories grew up later that made Abram look great. Kelly sets them aside and keeps to what Scripture says about Terah and his three sons.
That Terah and his family served other gods, we know on divine authority… Truth needs neither fables nor extra miracles to exalt man. It humbles even those whom it blesses to God's glory. Stephen says in Acts 7:2: "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran." Here is the truth of God in its simple, sure and satisfying light… Of Terah we are told nothing that gives happy confidence. Of Haran, father of Lot and of Milcah, we only learn that he died in front of his father Terah in the land where he was born, in Ur of the Chaldeans. He never reached the town of Haran, the halfway stop in the journey. He died before any of them left their Chaldean home. Nahor, it is clear, did not give up Ur for the town of Haran until later; but once there, he stayed.
The verse ends by naming Lot, Haran's son. One writer notices what is missing from his start.
The first notice of Lot is in "The generations of Terah," where we learn that he was the son of Haran, Abram's brother… Lot does not appear to have had any concern of soul about this separation from Ur. The call of the Lord had come to Abram (Genesis 12:1), and at the start Terah made the first move… Terah took Lot along. Then Lot moved about under Abram's influence, content to be carried to Canaan in Abram's faith, or taken down to Egypt when Abram's faith failed.
Terah's family travelled together, but God spoke to only one of them. Kelly quotes Isaiah 51:2 in an older translation, which reads "God called him alone."
Wholly distinct was Abram, but it was the sovereign call of God that made him so. "Look to Abraham your father," says the prophet, "and to Sarah who bore you; God called him alone, and blessed him and multiplied him." Terah was of no account in this, nor even Lot, though he is called a "righteous man" in his day. But Abram was called "alone," whoever might go with him, or share more or less in the blessing that was his rich portion.
Four hundred years of patience came first. One writer describes what God then did — and what He did not do.
For over four hundred years God bore with this world. Then the God of glory appears to a man on earth and begins to act on a completely new principle: the sovereign call of God. It does not set aside the government of the world. It makes no suggestion about improving or reforming the world, or correcting its evil. It leaves the world just as it is. But it asserts God's supreme claim on one person, whom He chooses in sovereign grace and calls out of the world.
- Record. The verse opens "the generations of Terah," a section that runs all the way to Abraham's death in Genesis 25.
- Reversal. Abram stands first in the list, yet he was the youngest son. His place came from God's choice, not from birth.
- Ruin. Terah's household in Ur served other gods. Nothing in Abram's background explains what came next.
- Rescue. Out of that family God called one man, and Scripture stresses that He called him alone.
- Reach. God does not reform the world. He leaves it as it is and calls people out of it by sovereign grace.