Genesis 11:29 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
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.
to take (in the widest variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
wives
נָשִׁ֑יםna.Shim
H802
a woman · noun, common masculine plural absolute
name
שֵׁ֤םshem
H8034
an appellation · noun, common masculine singular construct
Abram’s
אַבְרָם֙'av.Ram
H87
Abram · proper noun, a man's name
wife
אֵֽשֶׁת'e.shet-
H802
a woman · noun, common feminine singular construct
Sarai
שָׂרָ֔יsa.Rai
H8297
Sarai · proper noun, a woman's name
name
וְשֵׁ֤םve.Shem
H8034
an appellation · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
Nahor’s
נָחוֹר֙na.chOr
H5152
Nochor · proper noun, a man's name
wife
אֵֽשֶׁת'e.shet-
H802
a woman · noun, common feminine singular construct
Milcah
מִלְכָּ֔הmil.Kah
H4435
Milcah · proper noun, a woman's name
daughter
בַּתbat-
H1323
a daughter (used in the same wide sense as other terms… · noun, common feminine singular construct
Haran
הָרָ֥ןha.Ran
H2039
Haran · proper noun, a man's name
father
אֲבִֽי'a.vi-
H1
father · noun, common masculine singular construct
Milcah
מִלְכָּ֖הmil.Kah
H4435
Milcah · proper noun, a woman's name
father
וַֽאֲבִ֥יva.'a.Vi
H1
father · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
Iscah
יִסְכָּֽהyis.Kah
H3252
Jiskah · proper noun, a woman's 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 17:15 And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.
Genesis 22:20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor…
Genesis 20:12 And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.
Genesis 24:15 And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor,…
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 11:29
Milcah, the daughter of Haran - Many suppose Sarai and Iscah are the same person under two different names; but this is improbable, as Iscah is expressly said to be the daughter of Haran, and Sarai was the daughter of Terah, and half sister of Abram.
John Gill on Genesis 11:29
And Abram and Nahor took them wives,.... Very probably after the death of their elder brother Haran, whose daughters they married, at least one of them did, and some think both:
the name of Abraham's wife was Sarai: it is not said whose daughter she was, unless she is the same with Iscah, the daughter of Haran, and so had two names, Iscah her name before marriage, Sarai after it, Abram calling her "my mistress", as "Sarai" signifies, as she called him my lord: so the Targum of Jonathan, Iscah, this is Sarai; in like manner Jarchi, Baal Hatturim, and other Jewish writers (f), take them to be the same; but according to Genesis 20:12 Sarai should be the daughter of Terah, the father of Abraham…
The Church Fathers
"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." This Iscah is supposed to be the same as Sarai, Abraham's wife.
(Verse 29) And Abram and Nachor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nachor's wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran. The father of Milcah was also the father of Iscah. Haran fathered two daughters, Milcah and Iscah, who were both called by the same name. Of these, Milcah became the wife of Nachor, and Sarai became the wife of Abram. At that time, marriage between cousins and between siblings was not yet prohibited by law, as it later became among all people, even among brothers and sisters.
Abram and Nachor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nachor's wife was Melcha, the daughter of Aran, the father of Melcha and the father of Jescha. Our elders say that Jescha is the same as Sarai, the wife of Abraham, since evidently the brothers Abraham and Nachor had two sisters, the daughters of Aran, as wives. But if this is so, Aran, their father, cannot be the one who was the younger brother of Abraham and Nachor, but instead must be another person with the same name. For it is known that Abraham was only ten years older than his wife Sarai, as he himself said before the Lord: "Will a son be born to a hundred-year-old man, and will Sarah at ninety years old bear a child?" (Genesis XVII, 17). And how could his younger brother have a daughter who would be ten years younger than he, while he himself would be only seven or at most eight years older than her?
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Genealogy — In Hebrew the term for genealogy or pedigree is “the book of the generations;” and because the oldest histories were usually drawn up on a genealogical basis, the expression often extended to the…
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.)…
Iscah — Spy, the daughter of Haran and sister of Milcah and Lot (Gen. 11:29, 31).
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.…
Milcah — (queen or counsel).
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,…
Sarah — Princess, the wife and at the same time the half-sister of Abraham (Gen. 11:29; 20:12). This name was given to her at the time that it was announced to Abraham that she should be the mother of the…
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…
Abraham · Marries Sarah — Marries Sarah
Genealogy · To Abraham — To Abraham
Haran · 1. Father of Lot and brother of Abraham — 1. Father of Lot and brother 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…
Sarai means “princess” in Hebrew. No mention is made of Sarai’s parentage, perhaps to add suspense to the Abimelech story, which reveals that she was Abram’s half sister (20:9-12). Later, the law prohibited such a marriage (Lev 18:9; 20:17; Deut 27:22). • Nahor’s wife was Milcah: Milcah was Haran’s daughter and Nahor’s niece (see Gen 11:29). Her son Bethuel was the father of Rebekah, the wife of Abram’s son Isaac (24:10, 15, 24). The name Milcah is related to the Hebrew word meaning “queen.” In Akkadian, it is a title of the goddess Ishtar, the moon-god’s daughter. Terah’s name is related to the word for “moon” in Hebrew; his whole family appears to have worshiped Sin, the moon-god (see Josh…
יסכה JISCAH — This was Sarah; she was also named Jiscah (from a root meaning “”to see”, “to look”) because she could see the future by holy inspiration, and because everybody looked (gazed) at her beauty (Megillah 14a). The name Jiscah also has reference to princely dignity (נסיכות) just as the name Sarah (שרה) has an allusion to “ruling’’(שררה).
Iscah · Daughter of Haran and sister of Lot — Daughter of Haran and sister of Lot
Marriage · Consanguinous, Abraham and Sarah — Consanguinous, Abraham and Sarah
Milcah · 1. The wife of Nahor and the mother of Bethuel — 1. The wife of Nahor and the mother of Bethuel
Nahor · .Marriage and — .Marriage and
Sarah · .Wife of Abraham — .Wife of Abraham
Shem · General references — General references
Terah · The father of Abraham — The father of Abraham
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).
