Genesis 11

Genesis 11:10-32

XVIII OF SHEM AND TERAH Genesis 11:10-32“These are the generations of Shem” (Genesis 11:10-16). This is the seventh section of Genesis. In Genesis 10:21-31, we have a general account of the Shem families as a part of the human race at large. There are but two discriminating statements in that general account:

That Shem was the ancestor of the Hebrews.

That at Peleg’s birth the earth was divided.

This was only 101 years after the flood, for Arphaxad was born two years after the flood, then thirty-five years to the birth of Shelah, thirty years to Eber, thirty-four years more to Peleg; total from flood, 101 years.

This division at this time, designating Europe and northern Asia for Japheth, Africa for Ham, and southern Asia for Shem, explains more particularly the sin of one trend of migration and the attempted concentration at Babel two or three centuries later. The confusion of tongues and subsequent dispersion was the divine method of enforcing the previous division. In the last chapter this division, in order of arrangement, was placed after the confusion of tongues, not because it was then ordained, but then enforced.

It may be asked, Why does the author, having given the descendants of Shem in the tenth chapter, now devote a special section to the generations of Shem? The reply is obvious: The first account was to show that all the human race was derived from the three sons of Noah, including Shem. Hence all the Semitic families are recited. But this section looks to only one branch of the Shem family, disregarding all others, in order to lead up to the call ‘of Abraham, through whom a newly developed purpose of God will be brought out, namely, the isolation of one nation from all others, to become the depository of revelation and the means of race redemption. This selection of the Hebrews alone from among all the nations leads to another question: Why this partiality? Were the Hebrews better than the other nations?

This is a fundamental and vital question. It is very important that we should have clear views on it.

The selection of this nation in its beginnings and throughout all of its developments for thousands of years in human history was an act of divine sovereignty.

Neither in the beginning nor in any subsequent development was it based on any merit or superior excellence in the elect people. It was wholly of grace.

Its design of good to the subject of the election was only incidental. The beneficent object was redemption for all the families of the earth through the agency of one. Upon these several points the teachings of both Testaments are uniform. We should, therefore, here and now, ground ourselves upon the bedrock of one of the most important of all the Bible doctrines. The chosen people themselves continually forgot it and had to suffer in every age terrible reminders of it. And the now favored Gentiles of gospel days to whom the kingdom has passed need the same reminder, as Paul shows in the letter to the Romans. That it may be clear to us that from the beginning God loved the whole world, and throughout the whole workings of his providence looked to the redemption of all, let us, before we enter upon the history of Abraham, glance briefly at the scriptural foundation of the doctrine.

At the time of the call of Abraham, the world had gone astray as before the flood. They had openly disregarded the divine division of the earth and the mandate to occupy and subdue it. In brazen defiance they had determined to concentrate and guard against punitive punishment by erecting a tower whose top would reach to heaven. In heathen tradition this is called the efforts of the giants when the Titans “Pelion on Ossa piled.” Nimrod, the leader, had become one of the Gibbor, i.e., mighty men, men of renown, like the children born of the ill-assorted marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men, who provoked the flood. God had promised not to send another flood; not thus again to destroy the world. His present remedy was to separate them into nations with diverse tongues, and then select one nation as a messenger and vehicle of mercy to all.

All the families had gone into idolatry with here and there an exception like Melchizedek and Job. Look at the Scriptures.

Abraham’s country: “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt of old time beyond the river, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the 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” (Joshua 24:2-3).

To the same purport is the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: “Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek Jehovah: look into the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many” (Isaiah 51:1-3).

The testimony is the same concerning Jacob: “And thou shalt answer and say before Jehovah thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous” (Deuteronomy 26:5).

“And not only so; but Rebekah also having conceived by one, even by our father Isaac – for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger” (Romans 9:10-12).

The same principle governed in the selection of Jerusalem, the Canaanite city, as a religious capital; it had no natural sanctity. “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah unto Jerusalem: Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was thy father, and thy mother was a Hittite” (Ezekiel 16:3). The prophet goes on to compare that city to a newly born cast-off, foundling child, which Jehovah had found, purified and adopted when, as said the prophet: “No eye pitied thee, to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, for that thy person was abhorred, in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee weltering in thy blood, I said unto thee, Though thou art in thy blood, live; yea, I said unto thee, though thou art in thy blood, live” (Ezekiel 16:5-8).

It is true concerning this nation, as saith the psalmist:

Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt: Thou didst drive out the nations, and plantedst it. Thou preparedst room before it, And it took deep root, and filled the land. The mountains were covered with the shadow of it, And the boughs thereof were like cedars of God. It sent out its branches unto the sea, And its shoots unto the river. – Psalms 80:8-11 But again the question is propounded: “Son of man, what is the vine-tree more than any other tree; the vine-branch which is among the trees of the forest?”

When this nation failed to serve the divine purpose as a vehicle of salvation to all the world, the kingdom of God was taken from it and given to the Japhethic nations, who could bring forth fruit, and they in turn would thereby incur the responsibility which once rested on the Jews. See Paul’s parable of the olive tree (Romans 11:17-21). His conclusion of the whole matter is sublime: ‘Tor God hath shut up all into disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God I how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out I For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto him are all things. To him be the glory for ever, Amen" (Romans 11:32-36).

In a word, God called and sanctified the Hebrew nation with a view to make them the means of salvation to all the nations, and located them in Palestine on the Mediterranean, which washed the shores of Europe and Africa, that they might reach both Ham and Japhath. We are now prepared to advance to

THE OF TERAH (Genesis 11:27)This section extends to Genesis 25:12. It is the life of Abraham, the most illustrious personage in ancient history, and, if we except our Lord himself, the most illustrious in the religious history of the world. He occupied a prominent place in the literature and traditions of many nations. He is a prominent figure in the world’s three greatest religions, viz.: Jewish, Christian and Mohammed. His native place was Ur of the Chaldees, in lower Mesopotamia, the lowlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates, not far from their entrance into the Persian Gulf. While it was in the territory assigned to Shem, it had been overrun by the Hamites and was abandoned to idolatry.

Terah, Abraham’s father, was an idolater. We have seen how his lineage was traced back to Shem through ten generations. At Abraham’s first appearance in history he is seventy years old and married, but childless. His father is now 200 vears old. When the previous record says, “ Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran" (Genesis 11:26), it is like a similar statement concerning Noah (Genesis 5:32,) and means the eldest of the three sons, which would be Nahor the eldest in this case, who was much older than Abram. Terah was 130 years old when Abram was born and died when Abram was seventy-five.

Compare Acts 7:4, and Genesis 12:4.

His elder brother, Haran, is dead, but his son, Lot, a nephew of Abraham, survives. There is another brother living, Nahor, who is married to his niece Lot’s sister. Abraham’s wife is probably also his niece, a sister of Lot. Possibly the Iscah of Gen 11:29, is the same as Sarai. In later history Abraham says of his wife: “And moreover she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife” (Genesis 20:12). And he also calls Lot his brother (Genesis 13:8), so the genealogical records, in their loose usage, might call Sarah his sister, the daughter (granddaughter) of his father. It is possible that she may have been the daughter of Terah by a second wife.

THE FOR A LIFE OF ABRAHAMThis is of course mainly scriptural. While every passage in either Testament, referring to him, should be studied the principal scriptures are: Genesis 11:27- 25:11; John 8:33-59; Joshua 24:2; Isaiah 51:1-2; Acts 7:1-8; Romans 4:1-25; Galatians 3:5-18; Galatians 4:21-31; Hebrews 7:1-6; Hebrews 11:8-19; James 2:21-23. The very many times in the Old Testament that Jehovah calls himself the God of Abraham, or refers to his “covenant with Abraham,” give him a significance far above any other Old Testament saint, and the New Testament references confirm it, making him the father of all the faithful.

The second source of material is Jewish tradition in apocryphal literature and the Talmud, much of which is quite fanciful but some of it very interesting. A passage in the book of Judith, particularly, will be considered later.

The third source of material is the Koran, and other Mohammedan traditions.

The fourth is the books of travel bearing on the geography of the migration of Abraham, together with the vast contributions of modern archeology. These two furnish the geographical and historical background of the scriptural story. Fifth, all the good Bible dictionaries and commentaries will aid you in making out for yourself in a well-connected life of Abraham.

Sixth, W. J. Deane’s Life and Times of Abraham is one of several valuable monographs. Abraham’s high place in history may be gathered from his relation to the world’s three greatest religions, viz.: Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan.

THE PLACE OF ABRAHAM’S BIRTHIs specially designated as “Ur of the Chaldees.” The exact location of Ur has been much disputed. The passage in Joshua 24:2-3, would naturally place it east of the Euphrates, and Stephen’s speech, Acts 7, would locate it between the Tigris and Euphrates, above their junction. These passages are: “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor: and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac” (Joshua 24:2-3). “And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said unto him: Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran, and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell” (Acts 7:2-4).

The advocates of modern research insist on locating Ur below the juncture of these rivers, and on the west side near the coast. Their argument is very plausible but contradicts Joshua and Stephen. You may see the difference by a look at the map.

Modern archeological research has brought to light so much information on the countries in which Abraham lived, or through which he traveled, that we know their religions, their arts and sciences, their laws, their customs, their dress, their field, vineyards, crops, herds and pastures, the business followed their wars their civilization and their home life almost as well as if he had lived in Europe or America, only a hundred years ago.

UR OF THE The idea that persecution was the impulse prompting Abraham’s departure from Chaldea arises from an interpretation of the word, “Ur,” i.e., “by fire,” suggested by the Latin version of Neh 9:7 : Qui elegisti Abram et eduxisti eum de igne Chaldeorum i.e., “Who chose Abram and led him from the fire of the Chaldeans.” This is supported by a passage in the Apocryphal book of Judith (Jdt 5:6-8): “This people are descended from the Chaldeans, and they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers which were in the land of Chaldea. For they left the way of their ancestors, and worshiped the God of heaven, the God whom they knew. So they cast them out from the face of their gods and they fled into Mesopotamia and sojourned there many days.” Josephus says that Terah left Ur because of the grief for Haran his son, and the tradition is that Abram received the call from God, and his family turned with him to Jehovah worship; that the Chaldeans persecuted them and that Haran in his father’s presence was cast into a fiery furnace and burned to death. And the tradition says that this is what is meant by Isaiah 29:22 : “The Lord redeemed Abram,” that is, from persecution. We often find that God" uses two methods in causing man to move in the right direction: He holds out an incentive before him and kindles a fir7 of persecution behind him.

His appearance in history is due to a remarkable event, the call of God. The deacon Stephen, in his defense before the Sanhedrin, says, “Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I will shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran; and from thence, when his father was dead, God removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell” (Acts 7:2-4). So that the call came when Abram was seventy years old in Ur of the Chaldees. The statement of Stephen as to the place where the call was received is confirmed by Jehovah’s own words in a later manifestation: “I am Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it” (Genesis 15:7).

And by the statement in Nehemiah: “Thou art Jehovah, the God who didst choose Abram, and who broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham” (Nehemiah 9:7). And while Terah, as the father, seems, according to Genesis 11:31, to head the migratory movement, the migration was the result of the call to the son. The mightier destiny of a child oftentimes shapes the movement of a parent.

In the next chapter we will take up “The Call and Migration.”

1. At what point in. Genesis does race history cease?

2. What two discriminating statements in the general account of the Shem families as a part of the human race at large?

3. How long after the flood to the division of the earth and how obtained?

4. Why does the author, having given the descendants of Shorn, in Genesis 10, now devote a special section (Genesis 11:10-26) to his generation?

5. Why the partiality of selecting and favoring one nation? Ans.: Not because it was better than any other nation, but he did it according to his own will and purpose.

6. What three elements in the selection?

7. What was the moral condition of the earth when Abraham was called?

8. Cite a scripture to show there was no excellence in Abraham’s country.

9. None in Abraham himself.

10. None in Jacob.

11. None in Jerusalem as a city.

12. That when the city and nation failed to be world conservators, both perished.

13. That when the Gentiles, who now have the kingdom, also fail a like fate awaits them.

14, How does Abraham rank among the men of the world?

15. He is prominent in what three of the world’s greatest religions?

16. How old at his appearance in history?

17. How old was his father?

18. How many sons had Terah and which the eldest?

19. What akin were Abraham and his wife?

20. Where do you find mainly the material for a life of Abraham?

21. What relation does he sustain to God’s people of all ages?

22. What the second source of material for a life of Abraham?

23. The third source?

24. The fourth?

25. The fifth?

26. The sixth?

27. What and where his native place?

28. What has modern archeological research contributed to an understanding of his time?

29. What theories advanced concerning Abram’s departure from Ur, and what credit given them by the author?

30. What was the real cause of his appearance in history?

31. What scriptural record of his call reaches farthest back?

32. What was Terah’s relation to this movement, and the philosophy of it?