Genesis 11:28

(28) Haran died before his father. —Heb., in the presence of his father. This is the first recorded instance of a premature death caused by natural decay. In Ur of the Chaldees.—Ur-Casdim. A flood of light has been thrown upon this town by the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions, and we may regard it as certain that Ur is now represented by the mounds of the city of Mugheir. When first we read of this city, it was inhabited by a population of Accadians, a Turanian race, sprang probably from an early offshoot of the family of Japheth; but in course of time it was conquered by men of the Semitic family, who from thence overran the whole of Shinar, or Babylonia, and expelled from it the descendants of Cush. Mr. Sayce (Chald. Gen. p. 20) puts this conquest at some very uncertain date, two or three thousand years before Christ; but the establishment of a powerful monarchy under a king named Lig-Bagas, and the consolidation under his sway of several petty kingdoms, into which Chaldea had been previously split up, he places with some confidence at 3,000 years before the Christian era (ibid., p. 24).

Now, there are in our museums inscribed bricks and engraved cylinders actually from the library of Lig-Bagas, and we learn that the Accadian literature was still older; for many of the works found at Agané are translations from it: and thus all those difficulties as to the antiquity of the art of syllabic writing which used to exist when men had nothing better to judge by than Egyptian picture-writing have passed away. Abraham migrated from a town which was then a famous seat of learning, and where even the ordinary transactions of life were recorded on tablets of terra-cotta. Very probably, therefore, he carried with him bricks and cylinders inscribed with these ancient records. We are no longer, therefore, surprised at the striking similarity between the narratives in the Book of Genesis prior to the migration of Abraham and those preserved in the cuneiform inscriptions. But the believer in inspiration cannot fail to be struck also at their dissimilarity. The cuneiform inscriptions are polytheistic, acknowledging twelve superior gods, and of gods inferior a countless multitude. The Semitic race is accused of adding to these a number of goddesses, chief among whom were Beltis, the wife of Bel, and Istar, the planet Venus.

28 . This and the following verse are taken from J, and commence the personal history of the patriarch. Haran died ] This may indicate a tradition that the hill people, or families who joined the main body of the Terahites, lost their separate existence and became completely merged in the house of Terah. The grave of Haran was shewn in the days of Josephus ( Ant . i. 151). in the presence of his father ] i.e. while his father Terah was still alive. in the land of his nativity ] To these words is appended the explanation, “in Ur of the Chaldees,” very possibly added as a gloss by a later hand, as in Genesis 15:7 . Abram in Genesis 24:4 ; Genesis 24:7 ; Genesis 24:10 refers to Haran, or Aram naharaim , as the land of his nativity; and that region is generally treated as the home of the ancestors of the Israelites. It is clear, however, that, beside the tradition which ascribed the origin of Israel to Mesopotamia, there was also another which derived them ultimately from S. Babylonia. See Genesis 11:31 .

Verse 28. - And Haran died before his father . Literally, upon the face of his father ; ἐνώπιον τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ (LXX); while his father was alive (Munster, Luther, Calvin, Rosenmüller); perhaps also in his father s presence (Keil, Lange), though the Jewish fable may be discarded that Terah, at this time an 'idolater, accused his sons to Nimrod, who cast them into a furnace for refusing to worship the fire-god, and that Haran perished in the flames in his father s sight. The decease of Haran is the first recorded instance of the natural death of a son before his father. In the land of his nativity . Ἐν τῇ γῇ ῇ ἐγεννήθη (LXX.). In Ur of the Chaldees . Ur Kasdim (Genesis 11:31; 15:7; Nehemiah 9:7).

The Kasdim - formerly believed to have been Shemites on account of (1) Abram's settlement among them, (2) the preservation of the name Kesed among his kindred (Genesis 22:22), (3) the close affinity to a Shemite tongue of the language known to modern philologists as Chaldee, an Arameean dialect differing but slightly from the Syriac (Heeren), and (4) the supposed identity or intimate connection of the Babylonians with the Assyrians (Niebuhr) - are now, with greater probability, and certainly with closer adherence to Biblical history (Genesis 10:8-12), regarded as having been a Hamite race (Rawlinson, Smith); an opinion which receives confirmation from (1) the statement of Homer ('Odyss. ,' 1:23, 24), that the Ethiopians were divided and dwelt at the ends of the earth, towards the setting and the rising sun, i.e. , according to Strabo, on both sides of the Arabian Gulf; (2) the primitive traditions (a) of the Greeks, who regarded Memnon, King of Ethiopia, as the founder of Susa (Herod., 5:54), and the son of a Cissian woman (Strabo, 15:3, § 2; (b) of the Nilotic Ethiopians, who claimed him as one of their monarchs; and (c) of the Egyptians, who identified him with their King Amunoph III., whose statue became known as the vocal Memnon ( vide Rawlinson's 'Ancient Monarchies,' vol. 1. p. 48); (3) the testimony of Moses of Chorene ('History of Armenia,' 1:6), who connects in the closest way Babylonia, Egypt, and Ethiopia Proper, identifying Belus, King of Babylon, with Nimrod, and