What is the significance of Mesopotamia in the Bible?

This name signifies 'midst of the rivers.' It is the district lying between the rivers Euphrates and the Upper Tigris, especially in the N.W. It is first mentioned as the abode of Nahor and his family. Isaac's wife came from thence, and Jacob served Laban there. Mention is made of but one king of Mesopotamia, Chushanrishathaim, who ruled over Israel — no doubt a part of them — for eight years. Judges 3:8-10. Mesopotamia became absorbed in the great nations, belonging successively to the Assyrians, Medes and Persians, Greeks, and Romans, and then the Turks, it is now Iraq. Gen. 24:10; Deut. 23:4; 1 Chr. 19:6; Acts 2:9; Acts 7:2. See ARAM-NAHARAIM.

"The God of glory," begins Stephen, "appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran." Thus all for him was found in One who by this marvelous vision drew him to Himself. We know that he and his were serving other gods in that land beyond the flood, (that is, Euphrates, Joshua 24:2). They were involved in the idolatry in which, even then, the whole land was immersed; and there and thus grace met him. He was not the heir of privilege; and for him the glory dwelt not in any place made with hands, but apart from the world, in which he became by the revelation henceforth a pilgrim. From the land of his birth God called him out, and from his kindred; and the land to which He called him was one unknown. Faith every way was a necessity to him; slow as he might be, and was, to sever the ties of nature, which were but hindrance to him. After his father was dead, God removed him to the land which was to be his own.

'The God of glory' is no mere Hebraism for 'glorious God', but directs the heart from the beginning to One altogether above the world not only in Himself but in His purposes, whatever His ways meanwhile on the earth. 'Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood [river] in old time, even Terah the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods' (Joshua 24:2). 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. Not only did the God of glory appear: it was to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia and thus when he was at the farthest point of his distance from 'the land', as well as in idolatrous associations. How little the Jews understood the God of glory or His servant Moses! Stephen, full of grace and power, did. Nothing was more foreign to him than 'speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God.'

Even Abraham, blessed as he was, moved slowly in the path of faith at first. He did not quit Mesopotamia to dwell in Canaan all at once. Before this he dwelt in Haran. He got out of his land, but not so quickly 'out of his kindred', so that there was a remarkable delay in coming into the land which God was to show him. 'Then came he out of [the] land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran; and thence, after his father died, He removed him into this land in which ye now dwell' (ver. 4).

"The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia. What unanswerable evidence of sovereign grace! To overlook it springs from a wicked heart of incredulity in turning away from a living God, and hardens the soul in self-sufficiency, so that His voice is distasteful, disliked, and dreaded. Yet had they not often heard and read Joshua's testimony (Joshua 24:2-3)? "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, our fathers dwelt of old time beyond the river, Terah father of Abraham and father of Nahor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from beyond the river, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac." Assuredly it was not Stephen who slighted Jehovah's call of him who was to be dignified pre-eminently as "the friend of God." It was many centuries before the law, far away from Canaan, expressly before he dwelt in Haran; it was in Mesopotamia, infamous as the mother of idolatries, and the prison to which idolatrous Judah was sent, judicially, captive, for that sin.

Accordingly, thus accused, Stephen answers the appeal of the high priest, "Are these things so?" And in his wonderful discourse (Acts 7), on which I can but touch, he sets before them the prominent facts of their history, which bear on God's question with the Jews at this moment. God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never gave him actually to possess this land. Why, then, boast of it so much? Those who, according to nature, vaunted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings, were clearly not in communion with God, or even with Abraham. Spite of the love and honour that God had for their forefathers, he never possessed the land. Why, then, set such stress on that land?

The first great truth we learn in the opening portion of Abraham's history is the blessed character of the call of God. 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 then we discover that which distinguishes the call from every other call, it comes from God — the God of glory. In this world with its cities and towers reaching up to heaven here is nothing that speaks of God, but only that which exalts and displays the glory of man. "The God of glory" speaks of another scene in which there is nothing of man but everything that displays God. This is the God who, in wonderful grace appears to a man who was living in a world estranged from God and sunk in idolatry. It is then the glory of the One that appears to Abraham that gives such importance to the call, and gives faith its authority and power to answer to the call.

GENESIS 12 - 36. — This, however, was not allowed. Another judgment comes upon them. They are scattered, and the whole human social order is awfully broken up. But Abram is called out to find his fellowship with God, apart from the world. His family dwelt in Mesopotamia beyond the Euphrates. He came from the stock of Shem, but was a worshipper of idols, as all the nations were. But sovereign grace distinguishes him, and the God of glory calls him forth from kindred, from home, and from country.

Aram is the last of the sons of Shem. His name was generally given to the high table-land north-east of Palestine, though applied also more widely in combination with other terms, as will presently be pointed out. In the A.V., following the Septuagint and the Vulgate, "Syria" represents that general use. In the largest sense it comprehended not only the watershed of the Jordan and the country north, west, and east, but that which stretched to the Tigris, with Armenia on the north down to Arabia on the south. In the S.E. quarter it is designated Aram-Naharaim, that is, Syria of the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, translated "Mesopotamia" in Gen. 24:10, Deut. 23:4, Judges 3:8, 10. After 1 Chron. 19:6, we have no longer that name, as the country so named passed under the dominion first of Assyria, and last of Babylon where it attained its supreme place. In early days it was the country where Nahor and his family had a city after leaving Ur (the modern Musheir) of the Chaldees or Kasdim, a Cushite race.

ARAM-NAHARAIM signifying 'Aram of two rivers,' Gen. 24:10; Deut. 23:4; Judges 3:8; 1 Chr. 19:6, translated 'Mesopotamia.' The two rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris. The district would be the highlands from whence the rivers issue to the plain, and the district between the two rivers without extending to the far south.

A cultivated district in Mesopotamia, in which was the city of Nahor, to which Terah and his family migrated from Ur of the Chaldees; and from whence Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, the wives of Isaac and Jacob, were obtained. Gen. 25:20; Gen. 28:2-7; Gen. 31:18; Gen. 33:18; Gen. 35:9, 26; Gen. 46:15. It is strictly Paddan-aram, signifying 'table land of Aram.' Mesopotamia is the translation of Padan-aram both in the LXX and the Vulgate. In Gen. 48:7 it is simply PADAN.