And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
28. This and the following verse are taken from J, and commence the personal history of the patriarch.
Haran died ] This may indicate a tradition that the hill people, or families who joined the main body of the Terahites, lost their separate existence and became completely merged in the house of Terah.
The grave of Haran was shewn in the days of Josephus ( Ant. i. 151).
in the presence of his father ] i.e. while his father Terah was still alive.
in the land of his nativity ] To these words is appended the explanation, “in Ur of the Chaldees,” very possibly added as a gloss by a later hand, as in Gen 15:7. Abram in Gen 24:4; Gen 24:7; Gen 24:10 refers to Haran, or Aram naharaim, as the land of his nativity; and that region is generally treated as the home of the ancestors of the Israelites. It is clear, however, that, beside the tradition which ascribed the origin of Israel to Mesopotamia, there was also another which derived them ultimately from S. Babylonia. See Gen 11:31.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
i.e. In the presence and during the life of his father.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
28. Urnow Orfa; that is,”light,” or “fire.” Its name probably derivedfrom its being devoted to the rites of fire-worship. Terah and hisfamily were equally infected with that idolatry as the rest of theinhabitants (Jos 24:15).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And Haran died before his father Terah,…. In his father’s presence, before his face, in his life time, as Jarchi; he seeing him, as Aben Ezra: it does not so much respect the time of his death, that it was before his father, though that is true, as the place where he died, his father being present there at the time this was;
in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees; Ur, which Ben Melech renders a valley, was the place of his birth, as it was of Abram’s; it was in Mesopotamia, that part of it next to Assyria being called the land of the Chaldeans; hence these are spoken of as the same by Stephen, Ac 7:2 mention is made by Pliny b, of a place in those parts called Ura, which seems to be the same with this: Eupolemus c says,
“that Abram was born at Camarine, a city of Babylon, some call Urie, and is interpreted a city of the Chaldeans;”
now Camarine is from , “Camar”, to heat or burn, and Ur signifies fire, so that both words are of the same signification: Josephus d says, that Haran died among the Chaldeans, in a city called Ur of the Chaldees, where, he adds, his grave is shown to this day: the Jews e have a fable concerning the death of Haran; they say that Terah was not only an idolater, but a maker and seller of images; and that one day going abroad, he left his son Abraham in the shop to sell them, who, during his father’s absence, broke them all to pieces, except one; upon which, when Terah returned and found what was done, he had him before Nimrod, who ordered him to be cast into a burning furnace, and he should see whether the God he worshipped would come and save him; and while he was in it, they asked his brother Haran in whom he believed? he answered, if Abraham overcomes, he would believe in his God, but if not, in Nimrod; wherefore they cast him into the furnace, and he was burnt; and with respect to this it is said, “and Haran died before the face of Terah his father”; but Abraham came out safe before the eyes of them all.
b Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 24. c Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 17. p. 418. d Antiqu. l. 1. c. 6. sect. 5. e Shalshalet, fol. 2. 1, 2. Jarchi in loc.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
28. And Haran died. Haran is said to have died before the face of his father; because he left his father the survivor. It is also said that he died in his country, that is, in Ur. The Jews turn the proper name into an appellative, and say that he died in the fire. For, as they are bold in forging fables, they pretend that he, with his brother Abram, were thrown by the Chaldeans into the fire, because they shunned idolatry; but that Abram escaped by the constancy of his faith. The twenty-fourth chapter of Joshua (Jos 24:1,) however, which I have cited above, openly declares, that this whole family was not less infected with superstition than the country itself. I confess, indeed, that the name Ur is derived from fire: names, however, are wont to be assigned to cities, either from their situation, or from some particular event. It is possible that they there cherished the sacred fire, or that the splendor of the sun was more conspicuous than in other places. Others will have it, that the city was so named, because it was situated in a valley, for the Hebrews call valleys ארוים ( Uraim (337)) But there is no reason why we should be very anxious about such a matter: let it suffice, that Moses, speaking of the country of Abram immediately afterwards declares it to have been Ur of the Chaldeans.
(337) Vide Schindler, sub voce אור, col. 42, line 54; but it is doubtful whether any clear evidence of such a meaning of the word can be adduced. — Ed
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(28) Haran died before his father.Heb., in the presence of his father. This is the first recorded instance of a premature death caused by natural decay.
In Ur of the Chaldees.Ur–Casdim. A flood of light has been thrown upon this town by the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions, and we may regard it as certain that Ur is now represented by the mounds of the city of Mugheir. When first we read of this city, it was inhabited by a population of Accadians, a Turanian race, sprang probably from an early offshoot of the family of Japheth; but in course of time it was conquered by men of the Semitic family, who from thence overran the whole of Shinar, or Babylonia, and expelled from it the descendants of Cush. Mr. Sayce (Chald. Gen. p. 20) puts this conquest at some very uncertain date, two or three thousand years before Christ; but the establishment of a powerful monarchy under a king named Lig-Bagas, and the consolidation under his sway of several petty kingdoms, into which Chaldea had been previously split up, he places with some confidence at 3,000 years before the Christian era (ibid., p. 24). Now, there are in our museums inscribed bricks and engraved cylinders actually from the library of Lig-Bagas, and we learn that the Accadian literature was still older; for many of the works found at Agan are translations from it: and thus all those difficulties as to the antiquity of the art of syllabic writing which used to exist when men had nothing better to judge by than Egyptian picture-writing have passed away. Abraham migrated from a town which was then a famous seat of learning, and where even the ordinary transactions of life were recorded on tablets of terra-cotta. Very probably, therefore, he carried with him bricks and cylinders inscribed with these ancient records. We are no longer, therefore, surprised at the striking similarity between the narratives in the Book of Genesis prior to the migration of Abraham and those preserved in the cuneiform inscriptions. But the believer in inspiration cannot fail to be struck also at their dissimilarity. The cuneiform inscriptions are polytheistic, acknowledging twelve superior gods, and of gods inferior a countless multitude. The Semitic race is accused of adding to these a number of goddesses, chief among whom were Beltis, the wife of Bel, and Istar, the planet Venus. Of all this there is no trace in the Biblical records; nor is there in the whole Chaldean literature anything so grand and Divine as the thoughts expressed in the opening words of Genesis: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
As Ur is an Accadian word, we must reject all Semitic interpretations of its meaning; we must further add that Mr. Rawlinson gives reasons for believing that its early importance was due to its being a great maritime emporium (Anc. Mon., i. 27). It was, we read, a walled town, and the great port for the commerce of the Persian Gulf, while round it lay a marvellously rich country, said to be the original home of the wheat-plant, and famous for its dates and other fruits. Its being called Ur-Casdim, Ur of the Chaldees, shows that they had already won it from the Accadians when Terah dwelt there. Its subsequent name, Mugheir, probably means mother of bitumenthat is, producer of it.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
MIGRATION FROM UR, Gen 11:28-32.
28. And Haran died before his father Terah That is, in the presence of Terah, or it may mean before, as a designation of time, (see Gesenius,) since the phrase refers to both place and time . If Haran were, as we suppose, the eldest son, there is a special reason why his death should here be mentioned . Terah, as the head of the family tribe, adopts Lot, his grandson, in the place of Haran, his son, as heir to the chieftainship, and then, perhaps, saddened at his loss, under a providential leading, resolves to emigrate from his native land. Abram, as we learn from Act 7:2, had already heard a divine call to break loose from the idolatries that surrounded him, and in which it seems that Terah’s family were involved, for Joshua says to the Israelites: “Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood [Euphrates] in old time and they served other gods . ”
Jos 24:2, note .
Ur of the Chaldees Ur was a city, or district, of the , Kasdim, Kardi, Kurds, or Kaldees, a people not mentioned in the table of nations, Genesis 10, under this name, but whose native name, Accad, as it appears in the Babylonian inscriptions, is mentioned in Gen 10:10, as designating a city in the land of Shinar, the beginning of the (Hamite) kingdom of Nimrod . The primitive Chaldees were an Hamitic people, descendants of Cush, famous as the builders of the first cities, inventors of alphabetic writing, and discoverers in science, especially in astronomy . The name was afterward applied (as in Daniel) to a sect of astrologers and philosophers, who inherited the science and astrologic arts of the ancient Chaldees, and transmitted them in the Cushite language, although dwelling among Shemitic peoples. These Chaldeans of the time of Daniel were thus a learned aristocracy, who had their schools, corresponding to modern universities, (Strabo, 16:1, 6,) at Orchoe and Borsippa, and also (Pliny, H. N., 11:26) at Babylon and Sippara. Chaldea is the great alluvial plain of the Euphrates and Tigris, stretching from the mountains of Kurdistan to the Persian Gulf, about 400 miles in length, and about 100 in breadth, ascending on the east to the chalky limestone wall of the great table-land of Iran, and descending on the west to the Arabian desert. Covered for many centuries with the mighty cities, and teeming with the vast populations, of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, the whole plain fertilized through a network of canals branching from the two great arterial rivers, it is now a desert, with swamps and marshes and pools, the dwelling-place of lions and jackals and wolves, although in early spring it seems a wilderness of flowers. The great plain is ridged here and there along the courses of ancient canals, and dotted with mounds of earth-covered ruins, from which now and then a solitary mass of ragged brickwork rises into the malarious air. Ur is supposed by Rawlinson to be the Hur of the Babylonian inscriptions, the modern Mugheir, in lower Chaldea, about six miles west of the Euphrates. Orfa, in upper Chaldea, is a rival site, but this place is too near Haran, being only a day’s journey distant. On the rude bricks of Mugheir are found legends of Urukh, king of Hur, the most ancient inscriptions known, unless it be those of a king called Kadur-mapula, found in the same region, who is likely to have been the Elamite Chedorlaomer of Genesis 14. The ruins of a Chaldean temple dedicated to the moon, built in stages like the Tower of Babel, (see above, p. 162,) and composed of sun-dried and kiln-burnt bricks cemented with bitumen, are yet found at Mugheir, whose inscriptions are deemed by Assyrian scholars to show an antiquity higher than Abram’s call. This venerable temple, now nearly 4,000 years old, when it stood in massive magnificence, a monument of Chaldean idolatry, we may probably regard as the very shrine where the family of Terah worshipped; and they turned away from its splendours at the divine call to wander to a far land, there to dwell in tents for centuries, that they might learn to teach mankind the lessons of the ONE only GOD. Whether Terah himself had these higher motives is doubtful. See on Gen 11:31.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 11:28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
Ver. 28. And Haran died before his father Terah. ] The Hebrews say he died a martyr, being burnt with fire by his countrymen the Chaldees, because he would not worship the fire, which they had made their god. Martyrdom came early into the world, as we know in Abel, who as he was the first that died, so he died for religion. Now if this be true of Haran, as the Jewish doctors will have it; then he had, for aught we know, the maidenhead (as a certain martyr phrased it) of that kind of martyrdom. The first that were burnt for religion, since the Reformation, are said to be Henry and John, two Augustinian monks at Brussels, anno 1523, under James Hogostratus the Dominican Inquisitor. The executioner, being demanded whether they recanted in the flames, denied there was any such thing; but said, that when the fire was put to them, they continued singing the creed, and Te Deum , till the flame took away their voice. All this Erasmus testifieth, a though he was no Lutheran; and thereupon maketh this good but wary note, Damnari, dissecari, suspendi:, exuri, decollari, piis cum impiis sunt communia: damnare, dissecare, in crucem agere, exurere, decollare, bonis iudicibus cum piratis ac tyrannis communia sunt. Varia sunt hominum iudicia, ille foelix qui iudice Deo absolvitur . Our protomartyr in Queen Mary’s days was Reverend Master Rogers; he gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife, and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking at her breast, met him by the way as he went toward Smithfield. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly held out to the death, and so received a crown of life. b Neither hath God left himself without witness among the very heathens. For in the city of Lima, in Mexico, not two months before our coming there, saith Captain Drake, c twelve persons were condemned by the Spaniards there for profession of the gospel; of which, six were bound to one stake and burnt; the rest remained yet in prison, to drink of the same cup within a few days.
a Erasm., lib. xxiv., epist. 4.
b Act. and Mon., fol. 1356.
c The World Encompassed, by Sir F. Drake p. 59.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
before his father. The first death so recorded. Ur = the Uru or “city” of the cuneiform texts. Now = Mugheir on W. bank of Euphrates.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Ur: Gen 15:7, Neh 9:7, Act 7:2-4
Reciprocal: Gen 11:31 – they went Job 1:17 – The Chaldeans Isa 23:13 – land