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.