Avram’s Background, Birth; Gen. 11:26-32
This section begins in Genesis 11:27
and goes down to verse 32. This looks genealogical but it really isn’t, it is setting
the stage, telling us who Abraham was, what his background was, where he began,
and it gives us more information than what we might think initially. This is
the toledot
of Terah, i.e. this is what happened to the generations of Terah. “Now these are
the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat
Lot.” What we are told here is that in this pattern of writing the genealogies,
just as there are other genealogies that end with three names of three people,
so we have Noah gives birth to Shem, Ham and Japheth and here we have Terah
giving birth to Abram, Nahor and Haran. But this isn’t their birth order; it is
probably the order of their significance. Abram is mentioned first because he
is the most important and significant of the three sons.
Genesis 11:28, “And Haran died
before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.”
Now we know where they lived. It was a large cosmopolitan city in what is now
southern Iraq.
Genesis 11:29, “And Abram and Nahor
took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's
wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of
Iscah.” Apparently Haran died young. So Abram is going to marry a half-sister
and Nahor is going to marry his niece, Milcah who is the sister of Lot.
Remember that incest is not condemned at this point in history. The core issue
in incest is genetics and the damage it does to the product of a sexual union
between two people who are too closely related. But in the early history of the
human race this wasn’t a problem. Adam was created with all the genetic
combinations and possibilities for the entire human race. He gave birth to
various sons and daughters and they married each other. There were no problems.
This continued generation after generation until the Mosaic Law, the first
place in the Bible where there is a prohibition against the marriage of those
who are too closely related. The reason is very practical. By that time the
genetic pool had become diluted enough to where it became a problem and would
destroy the racial stock of the people. That is hard for us to understand
because we live 4000 years later and this has been taboo for so long that we
think of this as being something that is inherently wrong. But it wasn’t
inherently wrong or immoral initially; otherwise it wouldn’t have been going on
as long as it did.
Genesis 11:30, “But Sarai was
barren; she had no child.” This is the movement of the passage. This is why it
is important to think in terms of what the author is trying to communicate. We
have to look to see where the author is driving us. What is the point that he
is making? The point is that there are all of these people getting married and
having children but the line stops with Sarai. That sets the stage for the
whole Abraham story, because the focal point of the Abraham story is that God
promises him a seed. He promises him descendants as vast and innumerable as the
sands of the seashore and stars of the sky. This is going to be the source of
the savior, so this is the focal point; and there must be divine intervention
before Sarai can have a child.
Genesis 11:31, “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 with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to
go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.”
Genesis 11:32, “And the days of
Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.”
1 Kings 6:1, “And it came to pass in
the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out
of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the
month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.” This gives
us a firm date that everybody can agree on. That is, Solomon started
constructing the temple in 966 BC. If we simply add 480 to 966 we come to 1446 BC as the date of
the Exodus. That is a solid date. We know that the temple was dedicated in 966 BC. When we get
into secular history we can’t date anything with certainty, we don’t have God
giving us that benchmark date. Liberal theology comes along and says it doesn’t
accept that date. They say it isn’t literal and just take it as a
representative number, it represents X-number of generations, and they come up
with a date of 1260. They stick the Exodus in the middle of the 13th
century and then look around for a Pharaoh and say that the Pharaoh had to have
been on the throne for a long time because Moses was out of the country for a
while. So they end up posing Rameses II as the pharaoh of Egypt. Another
passages that confirms this is Judges 11:15-27. Jephthah is in conflict with
the Ammonites who were oppressing Israel. He argues that Israel has had
possession of the Trans-Jordan area for three hundred years. All would agree
that it was somewhere around 1100 BC when Jephthah defeated the Ammonites. Well, if that
was in 1100 and we add 300 to it, that is 1400. So that would mean the conquest
took place about 1400 BC. If the Exodus takes place in 1446 BC, they spend a
year at Sinai, that’s 1445 BC, and forty years in the wilderness, that’s 1405,
it is pretty close. So that is another confirmation in the text that we are
dealing with the period in the mid-fifteenth century. Furthermore, God said to
Abram as a prophecy in Genesis 15:13, “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be
a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall
afflict them four hundred years.” On top of that, Moses in Exodus 12:40-41 says
that it was 430 years between the time that Jacob entered Egypt and the Exodus.
That puts the birth of Jacob at about 1876. This date is another thing that is contested. The liberals
come along and say it was really only 215 years, and they base that on a verse
in the New Testament, in Galatians 3:17 where it sounds like there is only 430
years from Abraham to the Exodus. “And this I say, that the covenant, that was
confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty
years later …” Later than what? Notice what verse 16 says, “Now to Abraham and
his seed were the promises made.” God made the same promise about the land to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In fact, the last time that God reiterates the
promise to Jacob is in Genesis 45, just before they leave Canaan to go down
into Egypt. So if we date from that last promise to the law it is 430 years, as
stated in Galatians. Another evidence that there must be at least 400 years is
to just add up the key people. Levi is 44 years old when he enters Egypt. He
was 137 when he died, and that means he has 93 years in Egypt. His son Kohath
lived for 133 years. Obviously there is a little bit of overlap but not a lot.
Amram lives to be 137, and Moses eaves the land when he is 80. If we add all
these numbers up we come up with the number 443. Obviously there is some
overlap, so even if we take 100 years out for overlap we still have to have a
minimum of 350 between the time Jacob goes into the land and the giving of the
law. So this doesn’t support a short time in Egypt but a long time in Egypt.
That means that if the Exodus was in 1446 and 430 years is added to that, then
Jacob with about 70 with him entered into Egypt in 1876 BC. We know that
Isaac was born in 2066. He was 60 years old when Jacob was born. Genesis 25:6.
Since Abram was 100 years old when Isaac was born, then that means Abram was
born in 2166 BC.
Going back to look at our passage,
we know that it is in Ur, they are surrounded by idolatry, there is the worship
of the moon, the worship of the stars, the development of astrology; all of
this is going on. But the point of this introduction is that the line has a
dead end. It ends with Sarah. Her name means princess. Abram means exalted
father—not referring to him, it is referring to Terah. This tells us that
Terah was part of the nobility at the time in Ur. He was part of the
aristocracy under Nimrod. Nimrod would still have been very much alive. It is
clear just from the name of Abram and what we see of them that the wealth of
Abram was incredible. But Sarah is barren, and there is a doctrine in
Scripture, the doctrine of the barren woman. There are only a few women
mentioned who are barren, and it is not just because they can’t have children
but that God is doing something.
1)
The
significance of barrenness is not some sin on the part of the woman. With the
barren women in Scripture that are mentioned the barrenness is related to
something significant that God is going to do in their life.
2)
Sarah, Genesis
11:30; Rebekah, Genesis 25:21; Rachel, Genesis 29:31; the mother of Samson,
Judges 13; Hannah, the mother of Samuel, 1 Samuel 1; Elizabeth, the mother of
John the Baptist. The seventh woman whose womb gets introduced into Scripture
is Mary. The empty dead womb or the barren women is all a type of then fact
that God will bring a special life into the womb of Mary. With these barren
women their wombs are incapable of producing a child, and of even carrying a
child in the case of Sarah. It was just not physically possible. God is going
to perform a miracle in bringing life where there is death.
3)
There was a
spiritual significance to this. The absence of barren women was to indicate
Israel’s spirituality and God’s blessing on them. The presence of barren women
was to indicate that God was judging the nation. Exodus 23:26, “There shall
nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I
will fulfil.” If they obeyed the law there wouldn’t be any miscarriages and
there wouldn’t be any barren women. It was a sign. God would sovereignly
control this situation depending on the spiritual status of the nation.
4)
Thus, the
barren womb in these pictures portrays the emptiness and the lifelessness of
spiritually dead mankind. The barren womb is a picture of man in spiritual
death.
5)
In each of
these cases God miraculously brings forth life where there is death. It is a
picture of regeneration. Only God can solve the problem of spiritual death.
6)
Ultimately this
is a picture of the virgin womb of Mary that there a unique life would begin in
the womb of Mary who would solve the problem of everyone’s spiritual death, and
He would bring life where there was death and be the source of regeneration.