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.
And Haran died before the face of his father Terah in the land of his nativity at Ur of the Chaldeans.
The family record of Terah opens with a death, not a birth. One of his three sons dies in front of him in Ur of the Chaldeans — the city Scripture ties to the worship of other gods, and the city God later calls Abram out of.
Ur was not a neutral address. One writer traces where Scripture first speaks of this sin, and whose household it names:
In Joshua 24 we read that Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.'" This is the Bible's first notice of idolatry. And it comes not when idolatry began, but when it had already corrupted Abraham's own father. There was plenty of open evil in the world before the flood, but of serving other gods we never hear. After the flood there is no hint of it either, until Scripture speaks this way of the fathers in Terah's day.
The verse fixes Haran in place. He never travelled the road his father and brother would later take, and he left the story before it started:
Of Haran, the father of Lot and of Milcah, we learn only this. He "died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans." He never reached Charran, the halfway stop in the migration. He died before any of them left their shared Chaldean home.
Readers naturally want a cause of death, and later Jewish legends supplied dramatic ones. The same writer treats the gap in the record as a discipline for us rather than an invitation to invent:
We need not guess about Haran's death. It is enough to learn from this note of Scripture how unusual it was for a son to die in front of his father, in the land of his birth. If the hidden details held any divine lesson, our God in His goodness would have given us that too. Imagining, or accepting the imaginations of others, is unbelief just as much as hesitating over what the inspired word says. Where Scripture stops speaking, let us learn to be silent.
Verse 27 lists Abram first, yet the dates show the birth order ran the other way. That reversal is read as a signal of how Abram came by his position:
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 dates and facts makes it clear that Abram was the youngest of all. Haran arrived when his father was seventy; Abram not until his father was one hundred and thirty. His leading place, therefore, was due to the choice of God.
Where God found Abram says as much as the call itself:
It was in sovereign grace that God appeared like this. Even the line of Shem, the father and relatives of Abraham, were idolaters. Grace gives what is good; it does not find it. 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 in idolatrous surroundings.
Haran's death leaves his son Lot in the household. Whose faith carried Lot after that?
There is no sign that Lot himself was stirred in soul about leaving Ur. The call of the Lord had come to Abram (Genesis 12:1), and at the start Terah seems to have taken the lead. Terah, Abram and Lot all left the land and city where "they served other gods" (Joshua 24:2). Abram went at the call of God. Terah, it seems, was moved by Abram's call. Lot was taken by Terah, then moved about under Abram's influence — content to be carried along to Canaan in Abram's faith, or taken down to Egypt when Abram's faith failed.
- Ur — the family lived where Scripture first records people serving other gods, and Terah's household was among them.
- Grave — Haran dies in his father's presence, in his own city, before the family moved a step toward Canaan.
- Silence — Scripture gives no cause of death. If the missing details held a lesson, God in His goodness would have told us. Guessing is unbelief, not devotion.
- Grace — God appears to Abram, the youngest son, inside this idol-serving family and at the farthest point from the land. Grace gives what is good; it does not find it.
- Company — Haran's death leaves Lot travelling on Abram's faith: carried to Canaan by it, and taken down to Egypt when it failed.
And Abram and Nahor took wives the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, a daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah.
This verse drops two marriages into a family list. It looks like bare record-keeping. Yet these few names set up the story that follows: who leaves home, who stays, and through whose family God keeps working.
The verse spends its words on wives, not achievements. One writer sees God's care here for the closest of human ties, written into a word that lasts for ever.
God takes a kind interest not only in the people who deal with Him but in their relationships — above all in marriage, the most important of all natural ties for a human being. Those on both sides here may not have known Him yet. But He knew the end from the beginning, and in His providence He guided those who would play an important part in the future dealings of His grace. He records it in His word, which lasts for ever. In this way He shows how serious it is to all who fear Him, as they take their own steps here below. Above all, He wants them to seek His guidance.
Nahor marries the daughter of his own brother Haran. That makes her his niece. The gap in ages between Terah's sons is what makes such a match possible.
Verse 32 tells us that Terah lived two hundred and five years. His eldest son was born when he was seventy, so that son could not have been Abram. Genesis 12:4 tells us that Abram was only seventy-five when he left Haran, after Terah's death... It would seem from the history that Haran was the eldest son, born when his father was seventy. From this we can understand how Nahor married Haran's daughter Milcah, his niece... We also see more clearly how the granddaughter of Nahor became the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son.
The verse names a second daughter of Haran and then says nothing more about her. An old suggestion tried to fill the silence.
Daughter of Haran, the brother of Abraham. Genesis 11:29. According to Josephus, the Jews believed she was Sarai, Abraham's wife.
Commentators differ. One reports the tradition. Another weighs Abram's own later words in Genesis 20:12 and finds it unconvincing.
Still, I cannot help believing that Abram's words to Abimelech (Genesis 20:12) point more naturally to Terah as Sarah's father by a second and later wife, since she was ten years younger than her husband. Scripture does not hide facts that clashed with the law given at a later day. But it is easy to see why the Jews might try to soften or remove what was discreditable by a so-called tradition.
Milcah stays behind when Abram leaves. So why does the verse name her at all?
Milcah, who was Nahor's wife, is also mentioned, because her descendants come into the history of God's ways later on.
That line runs on to the woman who becomes Isaac's wife.
Of Milcah we hear very little. She was Haran's daughter and Nahor's wife, and as Genesis 22 and 24 tell us, mother of Bethuel and seven other sons. Bethuel was the father of Laban and Rebekah, about whom Scripture says so much there and later on. We know nothing more about Iscah than that she too was Haran's daughter.
The verse marries off both brothers in one sentence. Then their paths split.
Nahor, however, another of Terah's sons, did not come under this influence. He was comfortably settled at home with his wife, and at home they stayed, when Terah, Abram, Sarah and Lot set out from the land of their fathers.
Nahor's life is not a disaster. It grows in every way but one.
Nahor is not moved in this day when God is at work. He and his wife remain in Mesopotamia, and they do well there. They have children; goods and property increase. They make an easy and respectable journey across the world; but they do not grow in the knowledge of God, and bear no testimony, or at best a small and unclear testimony, to His name.
- Registered — God records marriage in a word that lasts for ever. He guides people who may not yet know Him into parts His grace will later use.
- Related — Nahor married Milcah, his brother Haran's daughter and so his niece. The wide age gap between Terah's eldest and youngest sons makes the match understandable.
- Reported, not resolved — Iscah is named and then dropped. An old tradition made her Sarai. Abram's words in Genesis 20:12 point instead to Terah as Sarah's father by a later wife.
- Reaching forward — Milcah appears because her line runs to Bethuel, then to Laban and Rebekah, who becomes Isaac's wife.
- Ruled by response — Abram and Nahor start in the same house and the same verse. One leaves home; the other does well there and bears little testimony to His name.
And Sarai was barren she had no child.
Genesis traces the line of Shem name by name down to Abram. Just as God is ready to build a nation, the record stops on a closed womb: everything that follows rests on a couple who cannot have children.
Scripture does not hide the difficulty. It states the fact and lets it stand for years. One writer notes how long the pain lasted, and what it led to in the end.
It is said here that Sarai was barren; she had no child. And this remained a painful fact for many years. Yet she was still to bear Abram's heir, the child of promise. That came after long patience of faith, mixed here and there with some impatience of unbelief. God said his offspring would be named through Isaac. Isaac is a picture of the "Child born" and of the "Son given," at whose name every knee will bow and every tongue confess. He even pictures Him in being received back from the dead, in figure.
The picture here is not only about childbearing. It says something about every one of us by nature.
The barren woman is in Scripture the type of nature's ruined and helpless condition. There is no ability to do anything for God — no power to bring forth any fruit to Him; all is death and barrenness. Such is the real condition of every child of Adam. He can neither do anything for God nor for himself, as regards his eternal destiny. He is emphatically "without strength"; he is "a dry tree," "a heath in the desert." Such is the lesson taught us by the barren woman.
The emptiness is not only in Sarai's womb. Abram's family worshipped idols. Neither its religion nor its ability to produce an heir offered God anything to build on.
The call of God goes out in sovereign grace, separating to Himself a man no better than his fellows but openly caught up in the idolatries of his fathers.
The family line that leads to Abram gives no ground for confidence either.
In the chosen line itself we have only a thin record of names and lifespans. Even so, it is plain that there is decay, and that it never stops. Elsewhere we read that these men fell away from God, which left every possibility of hope to His sovereign grace. The root of all the blessing that follows is here and only here.
Years later God promises Abram a son. By then Abram has long known what nature says. One writer traces his faith back to that impossibility.
At the time when God promised him an heir Abraham was childless... Every evidence of nature said he could never have an heir. Yet he believed the promise of God that he would have one. So the faith that lays hold of God as the One who gives life to the dead was already there in him, in seed form.
That is the shape of all real faith. It does not calculate from what it can see.
If he reasoned from himself and Sarah, the promise of God was beyond hope, and even against it. But he believed in hope, because God had declared he would have as many descendants as the stars and the sand. Faith reasons from God and His word, not from self or circumstances.
The story does not end in loss. Later Scripture calls the barren woman to sing, and it matters which woman that is.
"Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married." ... The law knew nothing of praise. Hagar's son was born of the flesh. Sarah's child was the child of God's grace and power... When the barren woman bears a child, nothing but praise can express it.
- Barren. Sarai had no child. That painful fact stood for many years, and nature offered no way forward.
- Bankrupt. The barren woman pictures our ruined and helpless condition. We have no power to bring forth fruit for God. We are "without strength."
- Because. The line was in decay and the family in idolatry. That left every possibility of hope to the sovereign grace of God — the root of all the blessing that follows.
- Believing. Abraham reasoned from God's word, not from himself. The faith that grasps God as the One who gives life to the dead was already in him, in seed form.
- Bearing. God calls the barren woman to sing. Her child is the child of His grace and power, and only praise can answer that.
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 together out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to go into the land of Canaan, and came as far as Haran, and dwelt there.
Genesis 11 ends with a family leaving Ur for Canaan — and stopping halfway. Three questions shape everything that follows: who received the call, why the journey stalled, and what the delay cost.
Terah's name heads the sentence, not Abram's — and commentators treat that order as the key.
The call of the Lord was not to Terah but to Abraham, whom God called to go out from his kindred as well as his country. Here we learn that he failed. For "Terah took Abram his son," and so on. This was no right answer to the call of God. The result was that for the time it came to nothing. They "went forth together," kindred and all, "to go into the land of Canaan." But into the land of Canaan they did not come. They "came to Haran" and "settled there." But Haran was no more Canaan than Ur of the Chaldeans.
Stephen's account in Acts 7 tells us who appeared to Abram, and where.
From Stephen's address, recorded in Acts 7, we learn that "the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia." Here we see what sets this call apart from every other call. It comes from God — the God of glory. This world builds cities and towers reaching up to heaven. Nothing in it speaks of God; it only exalts and displays the glory of man. "The God of glory" speaks of another scene where there is nothing of man but everything that displays God. This is the God who, in wonderful grace, appears to a man living in a world estranged from God and sunk in idolatry.
The father's name and the town's name both fit what happened there.
Terah lives up to his name ("delay"), and ends his days at Haran, called after his dead son. Natural things hold him fast, though death is written on them, and memory only keeps his loss fresh. "Haran" means "parched," yet there he stays (and Abram with him) until he dies. Then we see that Terah had been holding back the very man he had led. Now Abram rises up in the power of a divine call — a call that had come to him, and to him alone, from the start.
Abram did leave Ur. He gave up a great deal. But leaving is not the same as arriving.
Abraham came to Haran. He did not get into Canaan at once. He took with him something God had called him away from. God had commanded him to leave his kindred and his father's house. There was a reserve in his heart, and so he got only part of the blessing. He lost his home and his country for very little, while he was only halfway toward where God had sent him.
What kept Abram at Haran was not an enemy but a loved relative.
How many of us have been held back for a time by some loved relative. We fail to take the separate path that fits the call of God. The call reaches the believer. He accepts that it is true, but he delays his answer because a close relative is not ready for that separate place. The soul clings to the hope that after a little waiting the relative will see the call, and then both can act together. Faith cannot lift nature up to its own level, though nature can drag down and hinder the man of faith. People can raise many pleas to excuse this halfway halt, but in reality it puts the claims of nature above the call of God.
Lot travels as a passenger, carried along by natural ties rather than by a call of his own.
Here we find nature trying to follow a divine call which it had never understood, and had never heard for itself. The greatness of the One who had called Abram had not touched Lot's heart, and neither had the greatness and power of the call of the God of glory.
Some have claimed Stephen's account contradicts Genesis on when Terah died. Commentators answer that there was more than one call.
If we look carefully at the accounts of Abraham's call, we never find the phrase "the call," because there was clearly more than one. Stephen says the God of glory appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. The effect was that he left his country, and perhaps many of his kindred. But his father went with him, and Sarah, and Lot, and they lived in Haran. They stayed there long enough to gain souls in Haran. Then it seems God called him to leave his country, kindred, and father's house, and come into a land He would show him. The effect of this call was that he left Haran.
- Called — the God of glory appeared to Abram alone, in Ur. No one else in the house had heard that call.
- Compromised — "Terah took Abram" reverses the order. The man God had not called took the lead, and the answer came to nothing for a time.
- Halted — Terah means "delay," Haran means "parched." The family stopped at a name that described them.
- Cost — a reserve in the heart buys only part of the blessing. Abram gave up home and country but never reached Canaan, and Lot came along without ever hearing the call.
- Completed — death removed the hindrance. Then Abram left Haran for the land God would show him.