to die (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
before
פְּנֵ֖יpe.Nei
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct
father
אָבִ֑יו'a.Viv
H1
father · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Terah
תֶּ֣רַחTe.rach
H8646
Terach · proper noun, a man's name
land
בְּאֶ֥רֶץbe.'E.retz
H776
the earth (at large · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
nativity
מוֹלַדְתּ֖וֹmo.lad.To
H4138
nativity (plural birth-place) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Ur
בְּא֥וּרbe.'Ur
H218
Ur · preposition + proper noun, a place name
Chaldees
כַּשְׂדִּֽיםkas.Dim
H3778
a Kasdite · proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 15:7 And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.
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 for…
Nehemiah 9:7 Thou art the LORD the God, who didst choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham;
Acts 7:2-4 And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he d…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 11:27–end
Here begins the story of Abram, whose name is famous, henceforward, in both Testaments. We have here,
I. His country: Ur of the Chaldees. This was the land of his nativity, an idolatrous country, where even the children of Eber themselves had degenerated. Note, Those who are, through grace, heirs of the land of promise, ought to remember what was the land of their nativity, what was their corrupt and sinful state by nature, the rock out of which they were hewn.
II. His relations, mentioned for his sake, and because of their interest in the following story. 1. His father was Terah, of whom it is said (Jos 24:2) that he served other gods, on the other side of the flood, so early did idolatry g…
Ur--now Orfa; that is, "light," or "fire." Its name probably derived from its being devoted to the rites of fire-worship. Terah and his family were equally infected with that idolatry as the rest of the inhabitants (Jos 24:15).
Adam Clarke on Genesis 11:26
And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran - Haran was certainly the eldest son of Terah, and he appears to have been born when Terah was about seventy years of age, and his birth was followed in successive periods with those of Nahor his second, and Abram his youngest son. Many have been greatly puzzled with the account here, supposing because Abram is mentioned first, that therefore he was the eldest son of Terah: but he is only put first by way of dignity. An in stance of this we have already seen, Gen 5:32, where Noah is represented as having Shem, Ham, and Japheth in this order of succession; whereas it is evident from other scriptures that Shem was the youngest so…
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, Acts 7:2 mention is made by Pliny (b), of a place in those parts called Ura, which s…
The Church Fathers
(Chapter 11, Verse 28) And Haran died before his father in the land of his birth, in the region of the Chaldeans. As we read, in the region of the Chaldeans, in Hebrew it is written, in Ur of the Chaldeans, that is, in the fire of the Chaldeans. However, the Hebrews relate a legend from this occasion: that Abraham was thrown into the fire because he refused to worship the fire that the Chaldeans worship, and with God's help, he was freed and escaped from the fire of idolatry. This is written in the following passages, that Terah went out with his family from the region of the Chaldeans, for which it is written in Hebrew, from the burning of the Chaldeans. And this is what is now said: Aran died before the sight of his father Thare in the land of his nativity, in the fire of the Chaldeans: namely, because he did not wish to adore the fire, he was consumed by the fire. But the Lord spoke afterwards to Abraham: I am the one who brought you out of the fire of the Chaldeans.
Moreover, Aran begot Lot, and Aran died before his father Thare in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. What is said before Thare may designate both presence and time; time, evidently, because he died before his father; presence, indeed, because he passed away before him, that is, in his presence. Finally, some Codices have that he died before the face of his father Thare. That what is said in Ur of the Chaldeans seems to be the name of the place where he was buried; whose tomb, as Josephus reports, is shown today, from which it seems that the same Aran had been of some great excellence or dignity. Moreover, because among the Hebrews Ur means Fire, they narrate that he was consumed by the fire of the Chaldeans; because clearly, recognizing the true God with Abraham, his elder brother, he refused to worship the fire which they worshipped; and thus, both being cast into the fire by the Chaldeans, he was consumed by the flames; but Abraham, by the merit of his higher faith, was delivered by the Lord: hence it speaks to him subsequently: I am the Lord, who brought you out of the fire of the Chaldeans; and on account of this dissension of Abraham, although he escaped the fire, he could not dwell among the Chaldeans; but with his kindred, he was transferred by his parent to another land: with which agree the words of Achior, the leader of all the Moabites and Ammonites, who, as a renowned man, could not ignore what had happened in the nearby and related people, indeed from whom he himself had sprung: for speaking of the people of Israel to Holofernes, the leader of the Assyrian army, he says: This people is from the lineage of the Chaldeans: they first dwelt in Mesopotamia because they refused to follow the Gods of their fathers, who were in the land of the Chaldeans. Forsaking therefore the ceremonies of their fathers, which were among the multitude of gods, they worshiped the one God of heaven, who also commanded them to leave there and dwell in Haran (Judith 5:6).
Dictionary and topics
Haran — (1.) Heb. haran; i.e., “mountaineer.” The eldest son of Terah, brother of Abraham and Nahor, and father of Lot, Milcah, and Iscah. He died before his father (Gen. 11:27), in Ur of the Chaldees. (2.)…
Mesopotamia — The country between the two rivers (Heb. Aram-naharaim; i.e., “Syria of the two rivers”), the name given by the Greeks and Romans to the region between the Euphrates and the Tigris (Gen. 24:10; Deut.…
Nahor — Snorting. (1.) The father of Terah, who was the father of Abraham (Gen. 11:22-25; Luke 3:34). (2.) A son of Terah, and elder brother of Abraham (Gen. 11:26, 27; Josh. 24:2, R.V.). He married Milcah,…
Terah — The wanderer; loiterer, for some unknown reason emigrated with his family from his native mountains in the north to the plains of Mesopotamia. He had three sons, Haran, Nahor, and Abraham, and one…
Ur — Light, or the moon city, a city “of the Chaldees,” the birthplace of Haran (Gen. 11:28, 31), the largest city of Shinar or northern Chaldea, and the principal commercial centre of the country as well…
Chaldea · Abraham a native of — Abraham a native of
Fatherless · Exemplified: Lot — Exemplified: Lot
Genealogy · To Abraham — To Abraham
Haran · 1. Father of Lot and brother of Abraham — 1. Father of Lot and brother of Abraham
Orphan · .Lot — .Lot
Shem · General references — General references
Terah · The father of Abraham — The father of Abraham
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 (Joshua 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…
The genealogical data in Gen 11:27-32 prepare the way for the history of the patriarchs. The heading, "These are the generations of Terah," belongs not merely to Gen 11:27-32, but to the whole of the following account of Abram, since it corresponds to "the generations" of Ishmael and of Isaac in Gen 25:12 and Gen 25:19. Of the three sons of Terah, who are mentioned again in Gen 11:27 to complete the plan of the different Toledoth, such genealogical notices are given as are of importance to the history of Abram and his family. According to the regular plan of Genesis, the fact that Haran the youngest son of Terah begat Lot, is mentioned first of all, because the latter went with Abram to Cana…
The call of Abram occurred in Ur of the Chaldeans (15:7; Acts 7:2-4), the main city of Sumer in Mesopotamia near the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The family had moved there perhaps generations before the call. Their ancestral home (“native country,” Gen 12:1) was apparently near Haran, in the region of the descendants of Shem (11:10-26); thus they settled there when they left Ur (11:31) and were later described as “Arameans” (Deut 26:5). • land of his birth: The same Hebrew phrase is repeated in 12:1 (“native country”), making Ur, not Haran, the location of Abram’s call (see 15:7; Neh 9:7; Acts 7:2).
Rashi on Genesis 11:28
על פני תרח אביו IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS FATHER TERAH — meaning during his father’s lifetime (Genesis Rabbah 38:13). The Midrashic explanation is that he died through his father. For Terah accused his son Abram before Nimrod of having smashed his idols to pieces, and he cast him into a fiery furnace. Haran waited and said to himself, “If Abram proves triumphant I will be on his side; if Nimrod wins I shall be on his”. When Abram was saved they said to Haran, “Whose side are you on?” Haran replied, “I am on Abram’s side”. They therefore cast him into the fiery furnace and he was burnt to death. It is to this that the name of the place Ur-Kasdim (fire of the Chaldees) alludes (Genesis Rabbah 38:…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Ur · 1. Abraham’ s native place — 1. Abraham’ s native place
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
