1. Lesson One of the Book of Daniel, Introduction to the Book of Daniel

Studies in Genesis, Important Genealogy, Lesson XXV Genesis 11

We now continue in our study of chapter 11 of Genesis, verses 10-32, where we find a detailed listing, a genealogy of men and their sons from the son of Noah, named Shem to the most renowned man in Old Testament history, the man named Abraham.

This genealogy continues the trail God has laid, on which He will reveal to us the ultimate man in the line of Shem, His only begotten son, the perfect sinless man, Jesus Christ, that one, He promised Eve, who would bruise the serpent’s head.

We live on this side of that greatest of events and are gifted to know fully where this line of men led.

In chapter 5 God had laid the trail from Adam to Noah, a trail with 10 names and in chapter 11 we again find 10 names from Shem to Abraham.

Most of those men listed in chapter 11 fit in a category called nondescript, unremarkable, or ordinary.

Read the obituaries each day and you will find that most of those who are listed fit into this category and little is said about them for there are only a few of this world whose names will live on. 

But nothing is left to us in God’s word but their names and ages and who they begot. 

It is amazing how little we know of those who are gone before us in this world, even those who lived in the same places where we live!

But indeed there seems to be a desire on God’s part to move along the line of history to the story of Abraham in order to dwell on one of God’s favorite subjects, the subject of faith.

My, how God is pleased with faith, pleased with even the tiniest of faith, faith the size of a mustard seed.

God looks and looks to find that faith in His children and is pleased with even a speck of faith.

I think as a parent seeing that speck of faith in your own children you too will be so pleased.

God told Noah to replenish the earth which within this command is a requirement to trust in God but the faithless, as the men of Babel, always choose the way of work, the way of cooperation with the group in order to not need God for men and the work of their hands will satisfy.

But this is simply sacrificing the permanent on the altar of the immediate.

Be careful being self-reliant for no one ever has gone to heaven being self-reliant for we are made to be reliant on our maker.

Come unto me all ye that labor and I will give you rest.

In the book of Psalms you will read, Unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain who build it. 

And at the time of Noah the house was to be scattered all over the earth but with the faithless the house is built in vain.

So God desires to build the house and rushes through a genealogy of men for God wants to move from a people of disobedience, a people who joined in building a city and a tower but were forced by God to scatter, to a man of obedience, to a man of faith, a man whom Paul in Romans 4:16 calls the father of us all for he is the father of faith.

We also see in this genealogy an observable gradual decrease in the years of their lives.

Shem reached 600 years of age, which fell short of the age of the patriarchs before the flood, the three next came short of 500 years, the three next did not reach 300 years and after them we read of none reaching the age of 200 but Terah who lived 205 years. 

God chose to shorten the lives of men after the scattering, after the earth was replenished. 

Perhaps environmental conditions, such as the loss of the atmospheric canopy at the time of the flood contributed to this decrease in years.

But it also could have simply been God’s direction that men’s lives were to normalize at 70 and if by reason of strength another 10 for Psalm 90:10 written in the days of David says:

 
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly

away.

Some bright morning when this life is over, I'll fly away, To that home on God's celestial shore I'll fly away

So the nondescript men fly away and we move to the one man, Abraham, in whom three religions pay homage, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in which 54% of the world’s population are adherents whatever that means. 

And so Abraham comes on the scene as we read of him in Genesis 11:24-32:

And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: ²⁵ And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. ²⁶ And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. ²⁷ Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. ²⁸ And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees (cal dees). 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. ³⁰ But Sarai was barren; she had no child. 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. ³² And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

So in summary we start with this passage introducing Abraham with a man named Nahor, who had a son named Terah who we are told begat sons and daughters, an inference which may tell us that only some of Terah’s children’s names are included.

For only three sons names are listed, Abram, Nahor and Haran and they were born when Terah was seventy.

Were they triplets or from several different wives?

Note that one of these sons is named after his grandfather, Nahor who because of this naming may have been the oldest but that is only conjecture.

Now Haran, one of the brothers died in his homeland and did not accompany the family to a place of his name, a place called Haran. 

We must be very careful to rightly divide the word of truth when it comes to names and places for there are many diverse uses of names.

It could be that Terah even named the place after his dead son where they settled.

Haran was of age to take a wife before he died for we are told of his daughter Milcah and his two sons Iscah and Lot.

We are told that Abram and Nahor took wives, Sarai and Milcah.

Remember Milcah was Nahor’s brother’s daughter so we see that Milcah married her Uncle.

And also later in scripture we will learn that Rebecca, Isaac’s wife was Milcah’s granddaughter. 

Sarai was a half-sister to Abram which relationship he will use to his immediate advantage later on in Genesis when trying to get out of a tight place with foreign kings.

For this is what he said in 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.

So we see here that Terah had multiple wives.

With regard to Nahor there is no indication that Nahor, Abram’s brother accompanied Terah in his move but joined his family at some later time.

We are also told that Sarai was barren which we will find to be a God imposed condition designed to bring her to the place of faith and trust in God.

To be barren in those days was almost an unforgivable sin from the aspect of the importance of generational continuance.

So Terah the Patriarch decides to move himself and a part of his family. 

He takes Abram and His wife Sarai, and his grandson Lot whose father Haran had died, and leaves his birthplace Ur of the Chaldees (cal-dees), to go to a place called the land of Canaan, a land which Terah will never see for he dies in Haran, a city now of Assyria.  

There is no mention of Terah’s wife or wives or Abram’s mother

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. ³² And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

Now in Chapter 12 we will read of Abraham’s call to leave his father’s house and continue the journey to the land called Canaan. 

This was the land Terah was destined for but something kept him in Haran. 

But God began this story with Terah leaving his land, Ur of the Chaldees so there must be some significance in this. 

Was this call to journey to Canaan given originally to Terah? 

We do not know but if it was, Terah found an intermediate place to his liking and settled there.

So what would motivate Terah to uproot his family and leave the great city of Ur to travel one thousand miles to the land of Canaan.

Regardless of the way, it would be a slow and very dangerous journey tied to a roundabout route requiring them to stay on what is called the Fertile Crescent rather than taking a direct route across the desert.

This is why he traveled six hundred miles to a place he may have named Haran, after his deceased son.

For some reason we know not, he stopped there rather than completing the final leg of the journey, another four hundred miles to Canaan.

Some conjecture and it is conjecture that God originally called Terah to go to Canaan with the same promises that were later given to his son Abram and because of reasons we do not know he settled in Haran. 

But in reality this kind of response to God’s call is not rare but common for it is easy to settle on our lees. 

Start the journey to fulfill God’s call and get comfortable on the way and allow your roots to grow deep.

Circumstances befall us and it is easy to be incomplete to our calling and in our obedience.

It appears from later scripture that Haran had water and pasture land for livestock based upon the many shepherds there during the days of Jacob and Laban. 

So thinking it to be a rest stop from the long and arduous journey from Ur it became instead a place of comfort and a place where the saying was heard:

We will continue to Canaan tomorrow:

but tomorrow never came and it came to pass that the disobedient Terah died in Haran.

Terah, full of possibilities, could have been our father of faith. 

But God be praised for his son Abraham vowed to obey God and answered the call to go to the land of promise.

The land where the nation from which God’s people would be called into being and the birthplace of our Lord. 

Paul said it best as to what we are to strive for as we serve our Lord, and Abraham could have said this also for Paul was able to say with all good conscience:

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: 2 Tim. 4:7

God expects faithfulness, obedience and endurance. 

He expects a Keep on keeping on attitude from his children and Abraham begins his journey of faith by leaving that comfortable place in Haran, to go to the place of unbelief, the place called Canaan then, but the place to be called Israel because Jacob as a prince hast power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

I began this series with the intention of ending it here at chapter 11 but I think the Lord is leading me to continue this study through the life of Abraham.

But I also think it right to cease my teaching of this class after we finish with Abraham so that others will also have this wonderful opportunity I have been given for the last 25 years.

To everything there is indeed a season.

So we will begin our move from that rest stop of Haran to join Abram as he completes his father’s journey to the Promised Land.

Genesis 12:1-8, Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: ² And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: ³ And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. ⁴ So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. ⁵ And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. ⁶ And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. ⁷ And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him. ⁸ And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.

In entering this chapter we leave behind what is called the Bible’s primeval history and move into the Bible’s patriarchal history, for the remainder of the book of Genesis will describe the life of Abraham through the life of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and his brothers.

In our study of God’s book of beginnings we have travelled through many generations but always on the line toward God’s ultimate goal of his creation, the incarnation of His Son, the Savior, that man, that God-Man proven by Biblical Genealogy to be in the line of Adam, Noah, Shem and Abraham.

Within this chapter we will find a covenant of God with Abraham which still is applicable to all believers. 

For it is an unconditional covenant, a unilateral one-sided covenant, a sovereign act of God whereby He unconditionally obligates Himself to bring to pass definite blessings and conditions for the covenanted people.

This covenant is the thread which ties the remainder of the Old Testament together and is critical to a correct understanding of Bible prophecy.