Genesis 11:31: Out of Ur for Canaan, and no further than Haran
Read it →Commentary on Genesis 11:31
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.
Whose call was it
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.
The God who called him
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 names tell the story
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.
Half the journey, part of the blessing
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.
When family holds you back
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 in the party
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.
Genesis and Acts agree
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.
Summary
- 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.
