Abraham

Abraham, first called Abram, was the son of Terah and the father of Isaac and Ishmael (Genesis 11:27; 1 Chronicles 1:27-28). The meaning of the name Abram is uncertain, but God explained the longer name Abraham: “I have made you a father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5). Through him, God promised, “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Through Isaac he was the grandfather of Esau and Jacob (1 Chronicles 1:34; Genesis 25:26). Abraham lived from 2166 to 1991 BC, 175 years in all (Genesis 25:7).

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Family and Homeland

Terah's sons were Abram, Nahor and Haran; Haran, the father of Lot, died in Ur of the Chaldeans while Terah was still alive (Genesis 11:27-28). Abram's wife Sarai was barren (Genesis 11:29-30). Terah set out from Ur for Canaan with Abram, Sarai and Lot, but they settled in Haran, where Terah died at 205 (Genesis 11:31-32).

Ur of the Chaldeans is most often identified with Tell el-Muqayyar, the site of the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Iraq. The British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley led the joint British Museum and University of Pennsylvania excavation there, uncovering some 1,800 burials in its cemetery, 16 of which he classified as royal. He named a statuette from the cemetery the “ram caught in a thicket”, after Abraham's ram (Genesis 22:13). Gary Rendsburg, professor of Jewish history at Rutgers University, prefers a northern Ur, modern Urfa in southeastern Turkey.

Joshua recalled that Terah lived beyond the Euphrates and “worshiped other gods”, and that God took Abraham from there and led him through the land of Canaan (Joshua 24:2-3).

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The Call and the Journey into Canaan

In the call of Abraham, the LORD told Abram to leave his country and his father's household for a land He would show him, promising to make him a great nation (Genesis 12:1-2). Abram was 75 when he left Haran with Sarai and Lot, and he entered Canaan in 2091 BC (Genesis 12:4-5). At the Oak of Moreh at Shechem, while the Canaanites were in the land, the LORD promised the land to his offspring, and Abram built an altar (Genesis 12:6-7). He built another between Bethel and Ai and journeyed on toward the Negev (Genesis 12:8-9).

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Egypt and the Parting from Lot

In a severe famine Abram went down to Egypt and, fearing the Egyptians would kill him for his beautiful wife, asked Sarai to say she was his sister (Genesis 12:10-13). She was taken into Pharaoh's palace and Abram acquired flocks, herds, servants and camels on her account, until the LORD struck Pharaoh's household with plagues and Pharaoh sent Abram away (Genesis 12:14-20). He came back to the Negev very wealthy in livestock, silver and gold (Genesis 13:1-2).

When the herdsmen of Abram and Lot quarreled, Abram let Lot choose, and Lot took the well-watered plain of the Jordan and pitched his tent toward Sodom (Genesis 13:7-12). The LORD then promised Abram all the land he could see and offspring like the dust of the earth, and Abram moved to the Oaks of Mamre at Hebron and built an altar there (Genesis 13:14-18).

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The Rescue of Lot and Melchizedek

When four kings carried off Lot, the news came to “Abram the Hebrew”, who lived by the Oaks of Mamre the Amorite; Mamre and his brothers Eshcol and Aner were bound by treaty to Abram (Genesis 14:12-13). With 318 trained men of his household Abram pursued Kedorlaomer king of Elam as far as Dan and on to Hobah, north of Damascus; so Abram rescued Lot (Genesis 14:14-16). Melchizedek king of Salem, priest of God Most High, blessed Abram, and Abram gave him a tenth of everything (Genesis 14:18-20). Offered the goods by the king of Sodom, Abram swore he would “not accept even a thread, or a strap of a sandal”, lest the king say he had made Abram rich (Genesis 14:21-23).

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Promise, Covenant and Hagar

Still childless, Abram told the LORD that his heir would be Eliezer of Damascus, a servant of his household (Genesis 15:2-3). The LORD promised him an heir of his own and offspring as many as the stars, and “Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:4-6). He told Abram that his descendants would be strangers in a land not their own, enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years, and would return in the fourth generation, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:13-16). In the covenant with Abram, the LORD gave his descendants the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates (Genesis 15:17-18).

After ten years in Canaan, the childless Sarai gave Abram her Egyptian maidservant Hagar as a wife (Genesis 16:1-3). Texts from many periods and places record this remedy for childlessness, a wife giving her husband a slave-girl, alongside adoption, a second wife and a concubine; a 1976 study found Nuzi the one site where all four were then known. When Hagar conceived and despised Sarai, Abram said, “your servant is in your hands”, and Hagar fled Sarai's harsh treatment (Genesis 16:4-6). Hagar bore Abram a son, Ishmael, when Abram was 86 (Genesis 16:15-16).

When Abram was 99, the LORD appeared to him as God Almighty, renamed him Abraham and Sarai Sarah, and gave circumcision as the sign of the covenant (Genesis 17:1-15). God promised that Ishmael too would become a great nation, the father of twelve rulers, but that His covenant would be with Isaac (Genesis 17:19-21). That same day Abraham, aged 99, was circumcised with Ishmael, aged 13, and every male of his household (Genesis 17:23-27). Later Scripture remembers this Patriarchal Covenant as “the covenant He made with Abraham, and the oath He swore to Isaac” (Psalm 105:9).

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Mamre, the Visitors and Sodom

At the Oaks of Mamre Abraham fed three visitors, and in the promise of Isaac's birth the LORD said Sarah would have a son within a year, asking, “Is anything too difficult for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:1-14). Told of the judgment coming on Sodom, Abraham pleaded, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?”, and the LORD agreed to spare the city for fifty righteous people, and at last for ten (Genesis 18:20-32). In the destruction of Sodom in 2067 BC, God remembered Abraham and brought Lot out, and Abraham saw the smoke rising like smoke from a furnace (Genesis 19:27-29).

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Gerar, Isaac and Beersheba

At Gerar Abraham again called Sarah his sister, and Abimelech king of Gerar took her, but God warned him in a dream to return her, “for he is a prophet; he will pray for you and you will live” (Genesis 20:1-7). Abraham explained that Sarah was his father's daughter though not his mother's, and when Abimelech returned her, Abraham prayed and God healed Abimelech's household (Genesis 20:11-17).

Isaac was born to Sarah in 2066 BC, when Abraham was 100, and Abraham circumcised him on the eighth day (Genesis 21:2-5). Abraham and Sarah had both laughed at the promise of a son (Genesis 17:17; 18:12), and now Sarah said, “God has made me laugh” (Genesis 21:6). When Sarah saw Hagar's son mocking at Isaac's weaning feast, she demanded that the slave woman and her son be driven out, and God told the distressed Abraham to listen to her, “for through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned” (Genesis 21:8-12). Abraham sent Hagar and the boy into the Wilderness of Beersheba with bread and water, and Ishmael grew up in the Wilderness of Paran (Genesis 21:14-21). In the treaty at Beersheba, Abraham swore an oath with Abimelech over a well, and the place was named for that oath; he then planted a tamarisk tree and called on the name of the LORD, the Eternal God (Genesis 21:22-33).

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The Binding of Isaac

In the binding of Isaac, God tested Abraham by telling him to offer “your only son Isaac, whom you love” on a mountain in the land of Moriah; the angel of the LORD stopped him, and Abraham offered a ram instead and named the place The LORD Will Provide (Genesis 22:1-14).

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Last Years and Death

Sarah's death and burial at Machpelah came when she was 127: calling himself “a foreigner and an outsider” among the Hittites, Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah and its field at Hebron from Ephron the Hittite for four hundred shekels of silver and buried her there (Genesis 23:1-19). The field and cave were deeded to him as a burial site (Genesis 23:17-20). Old and blessed in every way, Abraham made his chief servant swear, with a hand under his thigh, to find Isaac a wife among Abraham's own kindred, not among the Canaanites (Genesis 24:1-9). The servant set out with ten camels for Nahor's hometown in Aram-naharaim, and Isaac married Rebekah (Genesis 24:10, 66-67).

Abraham also took another wife, Keturah, who bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah; Chronicles calls her his concubine (Genesis 25:1-2; 1 Chronicles 1:32). He left everything he owned to Isaac and sent the sons of his concubines away to the east with gifts (Genesis 25:5-6). Abraham died at 175, at a ripe old age, “old and contented”, and his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him beside Sarah in the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 25:7-10). Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob's wife Leah were later buried there too, and Jacob asked to be buried there with his fathers (Genesis 49:29-31).

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Abraham in Later Old Testament Scripture

God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and told Moses that His name forever is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 2:24; 3:15). A prayer in Chronicles speaks of the land given “to the descendants of Abraham Your friend”, and in Isaiah God calls Israel the “descendant of Abraham My friend” (2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8). Isaiah tells the people to “Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave you birth”, for when God called him “he was but one” (Isaiah 51:2). A prayer in Nehemiah recalls that God chose Abram, brought him out of Ur, named him Abraham and found his heart faithful (Nehemiah 9:7-8). Ezekiel reports that those left in the ruins of the land were saying, “Abraham was only one man, yet he possessed the land” (Ezekiel 33:24). The Psalms recall God's “holy promise to Abraham His servant” (Psalm 105:42), and Micah looks to God to show His “loving devotion to Abraham” (Micah 7:20).

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Ancient Texts and Archaeology

No inscription or excavated object is known that certainly names Abraham; ancient Near Eastern texts illustrate customs that appear in the Genesis narratives. About 7,000 cuneiform tablets from Nuzi drew interest for apparent parallels with Genesis, though customs seen at Nuzi are now known to have been widespread in the ancient Near East. John J. Bimson, in a 1980 essay on the dating of the patriarchs, argued that the archaeological setting he proposed puts Abraham's life largely, if not entirely, before 2000 BC, “in accord with the biblical dating of the patriarchs”.

A 2013 Tel Aviv University study dated the first significant appearance of the camel in the Wadi Arabah to the last third of the 10th century BC or later.

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Later History

Later tradition places the cave of Machpelah under the great enclosure at Hebron built in the Herodian era, a site that has served as both a church and a mosque. In later times Abraham became a major figure in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions: Christians came to count him among the greatest men of faith, and in Islam, where he holds an exalted place among the prophets, he is called the Friend of God.