THE TIMES BEFORE OUR BIBLE WAS

WRITTEN.

THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM.

No. III.

THE life of Abraham, "the friend of God," is embraced in thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis, from the 12th to the 24th, inclusive of the 7 last verses of the 11th chapter, and the first 10 verses of the 25th.

Abraham was at first called "Abram," and the name of "Abram" means, "exalted father." As he is mentioned first in Terah's family, one would think that Abram was the eldest son-but that is not the case. Shem had been named before Japheth, and Abram is named before his brothers, on account of dignity. Terah died at the age of 205, when Abram was 75 years old; therefore, Abram must have been born when Terah was 130, because 130 and 75 make 205. Yet as Terah had a son when he was 70 (Gen. xi. 26), this son was most probably Haran-who died before his father left Ür of the Chaldees, and whose daughter, Milcah, became the wife of her later born uncle, Nahor. Abram's wife, Sarai, is by some supposed to be Iscah, but from Gen. xx. 12, she would appear to be the daughter of Terah by another wife, and therefore Abram's half-sister.

Abram was born 60 years after Haran, and perhaps Nahor between the two. The marriages

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of near relatives appear at that period to have been permitted by God-though afterwards strictly regulated; while marriages with the sons daughters of idolators seemed especially to have caused "grief of mind" in the patriarchal families, (Gen. xxvi. 35), who must have remembered the evil result of such alliance between the "sons of God," and the "daughters of men" in a former day.

Haran was probably a beloved son, and his name dear to his family, for it is given to the place where Terah first settled after leaving Ur.

In New Testament times,-a man, "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, called Stephen, gifted with miraculous powers, and speaking with irresistible wisdom (Acts vi. 10), and whose face was "like the face of an angel," tells his countrymen that "the God of glory" (the glory that the sons of God may have seen between the Eden cherubim), appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Harran. This place Harran, therefore, is not in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia means "the between river country, between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates;" and there is a village named Harran, in the north of Mesopotamia, situated east of the Euphrates; but we have, we think, Bible proof that this is not the Haran to which Terah's household gave their family

name.

The Lord had said to Abram, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy father's house, and come unto a land that I will shew thee;" which land is not there named. It is Stephen who tells us that this call came to him in Mesopotamia. Another passage or two helps us to ascertain whither he first went. It is of importance to fix on the right Haran, because one branch

of the family, Nahor and his descendants, remained there when Abram had gone forth again, and there is a district which may, it is thought, have derived its name from Nahor; it is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as "Aram-Nahar-aim " (Gen. xxiv. 10), which word ought not to have been translated by the Greek word, Mesopotamia, because this has alike confused the history, not only of Abraham, but that of Isaac and Jacob. Aram-Nahar-aim means "high land between rivers;" and these rivers, Dr. Beke, who has recently explored the district, considers for many reasons likely to have been the Scriptural Abana and Pharpar (or the Barada and Awaj), "rivers of Damascus."

We perceive that Abram must have lived long in Haran, and probably near Damascus, Josephus, the great historian of the Jews, repeats the tradition that he was king of Damascus. When he and Lot departed thence into Canaan, it was with "all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran (Gen. xii. 5), and when Lot two or three years after is taken prisoner by Chaldean and Persian kings, Abram arms his 318 trained servants "born in his house,' and pursues the plunderers to Dan. After that, when in Gen. xv. God says to Abram, "I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward," the patriarch answers, "Lord God, to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born in mine house is mine heir." The previous verse explains that this is "the steward of his house, Eliezer of Damascus," who must have been from twenty to twenty-five years old, to have been placed in such a post of trust, and born at Damascus, which seems to verify the report of Josephus, and also implies that Terah left Chaldea a long while before his death.