1.2 The Call Of Abram

1-2-1 Terah and Abram

Reading through the record of the call of Abram, a number of questions present themselves. The answer to these provides powerful practical exhortation.

1. Terah, his son Abram and the rest of the family left Ur to travel to Canaan. How was Abram fulfilling the command that he was given in Ur (Gen.12:1; Acts 7:2) to " get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house" ? Surely they went with him?

2. Why did Abram stop for a while in Haran, instead of going straight from Ur to Canaan? Why did not Abram immediately fulfil the command to leave his kindred and " father's house" ?

3. Why is it recorded that " Terah took Abram (not the other way round)...and they went forth with (their wives) from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan" (Gen.11:31)? Were the promises made to Terah too? 

Close study of the narrative is necessary to piece together the likely scenario. First, we must define the difference between leaving " thy kindred" and leaving " thy father's house" . The word " house" is often used in Scripture, and particularly in Genesis, to describe a household including servants, and can also refer to ones descendants. The Hebrew for " Kindred" comes from a stem meaning 'to be born', leading Strong to define it as referring to those born in one's own fatherland. Acts 7:3 says that when Abram was in Ur, he was told " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred" - pointedly omitting mention of " thy father's house" . Gen.12:1 records that the Lord had told Abram to leave his country, kindred and his father's house, but goes on to say that " So Abram departed" from Haran " as the Lord had spoken unto him" (Gen.12:4). The implication is that the command which he was given in Ur, was repeated to him in Haran, with the additional information that he must now also leave " thy father's house" . Again we ask, Why? 

There can be no doubt that Abram was a man of great faith. Yet as with those who would fain follow his example, that faith was developed by God through the providentially arranged circumstances of his life. The fact has to be faced that Abram was called to leave his country and kindred (his fellow countrymen), but when he left Ur his countrymen came with him. And additionally, " Terah took Abram...to go into the land of Canaan" (Gen.11:31). Abram did not respond immediately and completely to God's command. The call of Abram is an essay in partial response. Yet we know he had faith. Terah was an idolater (Josh.24:2); the command to leave was given to Abram, not Terah. Because God was going to promise Abram a massive new family stemming from him, he therefore had to come out from his own natural family. He was going to be promised many descendants- therefore he had to separate himself from his " father's house" or posterity. He was to be promised a land for eternal inheritance- therefore he had to leave his own native land. And in this life, Abram's seed must separate themselves from their present, worldly inheritance if they are to receive the promised blessings. It was therefore imperative that to receive the promises, Abram must separate from his natural family and land inheritance. There seems little doubt, in the light of this, that it was God's intention for Abram to leave Ur and his natural family, just taking his wife and their children with them. Yet Abram did not do this. And yet he had faith!  

The suggested explanation is that Abram was in the spiritual dilemma faced by so many of God's servants. He had faith, but not quite enough to motivate him to the fullness of action which he so dearly wished to achieve (cp. Rom. 7:18,19). " I believe; help thou mine unbelief" . " Lord increase (add to) our faith" (which the disciples already had). God recognized Abram's faith, and for some reason Terah took Abram and the whole family, announcing that they were to emigrate to Canaan. For some unrevealed reason, the workings of providence made Terah  take this decision. Because 'Canaan' would have been relatively unheard of (Abram " went out, not knowing whither he went" , Heb. 11:8) and uncivilized compared to Ur, it is possible to speculate that Abram had told Terah about the promise he had received. Terah then may have decided that such a promise ought to involve him as Abram's father, and decided to go with Abram. Terah must have had a very high level of motivation to leave cosmopolitan Ur for uncivilized Canaan. " Terah took Abram" certainly implies that some unrecorded circumstances took the decision out of Abram's hands; he had to leave his own country, because his father had ordered a mass emigration of the family. How hard it must have been for Abram to make sense of all this! He had been told to leave his family and country, and travel to a land God would show him. At that point in time, he was unaware that that country would be Canaan. How God would lead him was unexplained.  

But he believed God, and " when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed" (Heb. 11:8). Therefore when his father announced that they were emigrating to Canaan, Abram would have realized that this was the call from God to get up and leave. Unlike the rest of Terah's unrecorded family, who would have mocked such a crazy plan, Abram willingly submitted. But how was he to leave his kindred and father's house? For they were coming with him! Indeed, Terah " took Abram" . Thus Abram had faith in God's promise, yet may have balked at the command to leave his country and family. Providentially arranged circumstances then resulted in his aging father taking him, implying some degree of compulsion, and leading him out of his native country. Whilst not fully understanding how he could leave his father's household whilst they looked set to be accompanying him on this journey to a strange land, he went ahead in faith. It is emphasized that God " brought out" (s.w. to lead, pluck or pull out) Abram from Ur (Neh.9:7; Gen.15:6,7). The calling came through Abram's hearing of the word of promise, and providentially arranged circumstances encouraging his faithful response to it.   

Abraham's attachment to his father and father's house is even indicated in his name, Ab-ram- meaning "my father is exalted" (1). In that family, Abram's father named his son like this because he wanted his son to exalt him- not break away from him, as God required of Abram. Abraham's connection with his father is shown in the various possible meanings of the name Abram. If 'Abram' were used as a Western Semitic word, it would mean "he is exalted through his relationship to his father"; 'Abram' in Akkadian would mean "he loved the father" (2). Yet Abraham gave up all this for the sake of God's promises to him; he lost it all in order to gain the new family which God offered him in return, just as all his seed must do. And later Scripture seems to refer to these meanings of the word 'Abram'- for Is. 41:8 and 2 Chron. 20:7 speak of him as "the friend [lover] of God". He had once 'loved' his father's house, but in response to the promises he left them, and loved God; and thus God loved him, and Abram became Abraham, the 'exalted father'.

It was equally radical for Abraham to be told that God would impute righteousness to him. For in those times, righteousness was a concept associated with a person remaining within their existing communal relationships. Von Rad quotes contemporary documentation to this effect: "A man is called righteous who conducts himself properly with reference to an existing communal relationship... just [justified] is the man who stands with his community" (3). The whole message to Abraham of justification by faith and imputed righteousness must be seen against this backdrop. The same radical call to break away from our surrounding society and its worldviews and concepts of righteousness is required by all who have received the same promises made to Abraham.

A Radical Call

In the near East, each family had their own gods. When a man became head of the family, he had the right to choose his own god; there was no requirement that he maintained the same god as the previous head of the family. The choice of a god was confirmed by a covenant; the Amorites and Arameans therefore called their family god "The Lord of the house", and the sons of the family often were named with "theophoric names", reflecting the name of the family's god (4). Against this background, therefore, it was a radical thing for Yahweh to appear to Abraham and order him to do something as radical as break from his family (Gen. 12:1). It was God who chose Abraham, not Abraham who chose Yahweh, contrary to the accepted norm of the man chosing a family god when his father or previous head of the family died. The surrounding nations or tribes were comprised of various families each with their own god; nations had no one fixed god. When we repeatedly read of how Yahweh was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that Yahweh is the God of all the families and tribes of Israel, we are therefore encountering a new paradigm. There were to be no other gods in Israel apart from Yahweh. He was to be the sole national God; the unity of Yahweh, and His being the sole national God of Israel, was therefore a new concept in the near East. And we can better understand the way that both the Lord Jesus and Paul saw in the unity of God a call to unity amongst His people; for this had been the intention from the start. The unity of God isn't so much a numerical statement as a call to profound unity. But it could only become real for Abraham, as it can for us today, if we leave, come out from, the culture and worldviews which surround us.

Yahweh's call of Abraham to be His, taking the initiative which Divine grace does when calling someone, was therefore radical. The Biblical record states simply that Yahweh spoke and Abraham believed with no proof or prior relationship. The rabbinic midrash and the Koran embelish upon this silence with various tales of Yahweh's prior relationship with Abraham- perhaps psychologically motivated in the desire to make Abraham's faith and obedience the more understandable and normal. Whether or not there was any previous encounter between Yahweh and Abraham is beside the point- the Biblical record invites us to see God as taking the initiative, and Abraham faithfully responding. This is characteristic of God's call; Saul out looking for lost cattle, the disciples mending their nets- are suddenly called, and some respond well and others like Saul for ever try to slip out of it.

It has been pointed out that Abram or Abiram was one of the most common names in the near East- it was common in Babylon as Abirami, and in Egypt as Abu-reheni or Abram (5). Into this very common name- as normal and common as the names we bear in our societies- was added the Name of Yahweh. Abram became Abraham. The central letter of Yahweh's Name became the central letter of Abraham's. But Abram means 'my father is exalted', or more strictly as W.F. Albright  suggests 'I am exalted with regard to / because of my father'. To jettison this name was to trash all Abraham and his culture held so dear- definition in terms of their father, where they came from. The call of the Lord Jesus in our age is in essence no different- to reject father and mother and instead follow Him, to be His. Not in the sense of hating them, but in being new persons, carved out as a totally new family. The 'h' in the middle of Yahweh's Name was now inserted into the middle of Abraham's name; Abram became Abraham, father of a multitude, a new family. Some miserable philological critics have claimed that 'h' was an unknown sound in the near East of Abraham's time (6).  And maybe they're right, in which case 'h' would've been a new sound. It would be rather like importing the single Russian letter pronounced 'shch' into the English alphabet. The answer to the question 'What's your name?' would've been arresting and challenging to Abraham's contemporaries: 'Abraham' would've sounded strange and new to them. There will be something equally challenging and arresting to the world surrounding Abraham's seed as people come to know our name, to perceive who we really are.
All this would've made life difficult for Abraham, as it does for us. The Midrash at Bereshit Rabbah 38:13 tells tales of Terah accusing his son Abraham before the gods for having destroyed idols, and Abraham being thrown into a fiery furnace for rejection of his father and his father's gods.