Genesis 11:31-32

The Migration of Terah to Haran, and his Death. (P.)

31. they went forth with them The words, as they stand, are meaningless. The Syriac reads "and he went forth with them." Better as LXX, Sam. and Lat. "and he brought them forth," which only requires the omission of one letter. Another conjectural emendation is "and they went forth with him."

No reason for the migration is here assigned. Later tradition attributed it to religious causes. Cf. Jdt 5:6-9, "This people are descended of the Chaldeans. And they departed from the way of their parents, and worshipped the God of heaven, the God whom they knew: and they cast them out from the face of their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia, and sojourned there many days. And their God commanded them to depart from the place where they sojourned."

Ur of the Chaldees Heb. Ur Kasdim. "Ur" is the Uruof the inscriptions denoting a town and region. The town is generally believed to have been discovered in the mounds of the modern El-Muḳayyarin S. Babylonia, on the right bank of the Euphrates, more than 100 miles S. E. of Babylon. It was the principal seat of the worship of the moon-god, Sin, in S. Babylonia. Its position enhanced its importance in early times. It stood on the main route between Arabia and Syria; and the river Euphrates in those days must have flowed close to its walls. "Kasdim" = "of the Chaldees," has been added (evidently for purposes of distinction from other similar names), here and in Genesis 11:28; Genesis 15:7; Nehemiah 9:7; Jdt 5:6. The Chaldeans, who dwelt in the south of Babylonia, became predominant in the 7th century b.c.; but their name does not appear in the inscriptions until long after the time of Abram.

"Orbeing the Hebrew word for "light," the rendering "in the fire of the Chaldees" (Jerome, Quaest., ad loc., in igne Chaldaeorum) gave rise to fantastic legends, which related how Haran perished in, and how Abram was ordered by Nimrod to be cast into, the furnace.

Haran LXX Χαῤῥάν, Gr. Κάῤῥαι, Lat. Carrhae, where Crassus fell in battle with the Parthians. The name of a town distant 550 miles N., or N.W. from Ur; and one of the principal towns in Mesopotamia, situate on the left bank of the river Belikh, 70 miles N. from its confluence with the Euphrates on its eastern bank. The name is spelt differently from the Haran of Genesis 11:26. It would be better to pronounce it "Ḥarran," like the Assyrian Ḥarranu, meaning "a road." The name implies its strategical importance as the converging point of the commercial routes from Babylon in the south, Nineveh in the east, and Damascus in the west.

Ḥarran, like Ur, was a centre of the worship of the moon-god, Sin. The two traditions, which derive Abram from Ur and from Haran, unite in connecting his home with a shrine of the moon-god, the one in Babylonia, the other in Mesopotamia.

The journey to Canaan from Ur would describe, by the ordinary caravan route, a great curve passing through Babylon N.W. to Ḥarran; thence 60 miles westward to Carchemish on the Euphrates; from Carchemish S.W. to Damascus, and from Damascus south into the land of Canaan. This curve is necessitated by the great desert which separates the river system of the Tigris and Euphrates from the hill country to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan.