Between Ur and Canaan lies the Syrian Desert. A 200,000 square mile barrier of arid rocky wasteland, gravel steppe, and mountain ranges.
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran's son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.
— Genesis 11:31a CSB
Taking the direct route from Ur in the east (located in what is now southern Iraq) to the land of Canaan in the west (which corresponds roughly to south Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine) was akin to suicide. The only way for Terah and his family to navigate safely through the unforgiving landscape was to travel around the desert's edges.
Five major rivers—the Tigris, Euphrates, Orontes, Jordan, and the Nile (in anti-clockwise order)—hem in the Syrian desert to the east, north, and west, creating a region historians call the Fertile Crescent. This region stretches from modern-day Kuwait and the Persian Gulf all the way up and round and down to Egypt’s Nile delta.
Attempting to reach the land of Canaan simply meant following the Euphrates upstream. Just doing that would have taken Terah's family almost three-quarters of the way around the desert towards the land of Canaan—a distance of around 600 miles—before they would have had to leave its banks.
But when they came to Haran, they settled there.
— Genesis 11:31b CSB
An abandoned dream
As Terah, Abram, Sarai, and Lot near the point where they would have needed to walk away from the Euphrates to the west or southwest to reach the land of Canaan, Terah instead turns them north. He leads them to Haran, a town whose modern-day equivalent, Harran, sits close to the southern border of Turkey.
If you remember, Haran was the name of Terah's youngest son, who died in Ur.
Surely that's not a coincidence?
I can imagine the conversations this family of four had after hearing about a town with the same name as their dead son/brother/father.
Shall we visit?
It's not far.
If we don't, we might not get another chance.
We can afford to take a quick detour.
I wonder what it's like?
Haran would have been insufferable after visiting a town named after him.
The author of this part of Genesis doesn’t give us Terah’s reasoning for abandoning his original destination. But, in the last verse of chapter 11, he does share with us that Terah never moved on from Haran.
Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.
— Genesis 11:32 CSB
Terah lived as long as his grandfather, Serug, had. Life was obviously easier in Haran than it had become in Ur, but he died in Haran. He never makes it to the land of Canaan.
Epitaphs
Most of us probably don’t think twice about the simple statement that ends Terah’s story, but it’s a heart-wrenching epitaph. It might as well read: he didn’t pursue his dream to the end.
Terah set out from Ur full of hope and energy and determination. He carried a dream that told him a better life awaited his family in the land of Canaan. But he never saw it. He never reached the goal he set out to achieve. He had set a vision of Canaan inside his son Abram’s heart, yet he did not help Abram see it through.
Terah stopped following his dream.
He pressed pause on his grief.
And he settled in Haran.
And as a result, so did Abram.
When we compare Terah’s epitaph to the other men in his family line, the lifelessness of Haran is stark. Each male ancestor for the eight generations before Terah all had the phrase "and fathered other sons and daughters" as their Biblical epitaph.
Even Terah's father Nahor—not to be confused with Terah's middle son Nahor—lived over 80 years less than any of his forebears, yet still had this same epitaph.
Nahor lived 29 years and fathered Terah. After he fathered Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and fathered other sons and daughters.
— Genesis 11:24-25 CSB
For Terah, there is no mention of further children. In fact, Terah’s family line is in real danger of ending. He has no further children, his daughter-in-law Sarai cannot have children, his grandson Lot is yet to meet the right woman, and the 600 miles between him and his middle son Nahor means he'll never know whether he had any children.
Life may have gotten easier, but it's not full of life.
There's more going on here...
If we trace Terah’s family tree, we get a list of names that looks like this:
Terah,
Nahor,
Sergu,
Reu,
Peleg,
Eber,
Shelah,
Arphaxad,
Shem,
Noah,
Lamech,
Methuselah,
Enoch,
Jared,
Mahalalel,
Kenan,
Enosh,
Seth,
and Adam.
Not only is Terah’s family line in danger of ending, God’s chosen family line is in danger of ending too.
When does God intervene?
Terah stayed in Haran for so long that he eventually died there, his dream dying with him. It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that Abram’s story probably would have ended the same way had God not intervened.
And when does God choose to intervene?
He doesn’t intervene in Ur. Neither does he intervene during Abram’s long journey towards Haran. All the time we're heading in the right general direction, there’s no need for God to call us.
God doesn't wait for Abram to get his life sorted out. Neither does he wait to become impressed by Abram's faith, prayers, or righteousness. In fact, Joshua tells us that Abram wasn't even a follower of God when he was called (see Joshua 24:2)!
It’s only when Abram settles in Haran that God steps in. It's only when Abram's dream of reaching the land of Canaan looks like it's never going to happen that God calls him.
Genesis 12 and that call
And so we eventually reach Genesis 12. From the start of Abram’s genealogy in Genesis 11:10 to his father Terah’s death at the end of Chapter 11, the story doesn’t mention God.
God’s entrance into Abram’s life is the dramatic, out-of-the-blue “Go” that begins Genesis 12. It also serves as an introduction to the God he's going to end up following. Abram doesn't know who God is! He and the rest of his family don't worship this God, not even on the side.
God is an unknown entity telling him to "Go to the land I will show you" (see Gen. 12:1). Yes, there's lots of promises that follow in the subsequent two verses, but how does Abram know he can trust this God to make any of those happen? He knows nothing about him.
All he knows is he's being told to leave his land, his relatives, and his father's house to follow an unknown God who says he will show him a mystery land (see Gen. 12:1-3).
Yet he still leaves!
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran...
— Genesis 12:4-5a CSB
Would you have left?
What would you have done in Abram's shoes if an unknown deity had called you to leave everything behind and travel to a mystery land? And how would you have convinced your relatives you weren't certifiably insane and that they should join you on said adventure?
Personally, I'd have been full of questions for this strange divine being.
Who are you?
Why me?
Why now?
Why do you want me to go?
Where do you want me to go?
How do I convince my wife and family?
When we seek God's guidance, we all secretly—or not so secretly—want to hear a clear direction of travel from God.
Abram doesn't get that.
God tells him to go, but not what direction to travel in or what land to head towards. So, when Abram leaves immediately, we're left amazed. There’s no hanging around. There’s no studying of maps. No requests for a prophetic word of knowledge from friends. Abram just goes.
If that was you or me praying within our existing model of guidance, I imagine we’d sit there for ages with a map in front of us waiting for God to show us the mystery land before we left. At the very least, most of us would want to know whether we should travel north, south, east, or west.
We desire a call like Abram’s, but if we're honest, it wouldn’t be enough. A call to go to a mystery land God will reveal later would still leave us paralysed with indecision. We’d want further confirmation that the direction we went next was the right one. We’d want God to point out the land we were supposed to be heading towards before setting out.
Yet, Abram gets up and leaves.
And immediately he sets off for the land of Canaan.
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan.
— Genesis 12:4-5 CSB (emphasis mine)
A personal call
When God calls Abram, the first words he uses in Hebrew are "Lek lěkā." This is not simply a command to "go" as it's traditionally translated, but an invitation for Abram to rediscover his true self.
Word-for-word, God literally says to Abram:
“You go for you,”
or
“Go to/towards yourself.”
If we insert these phrases into Genesis 12:1, God's call reads:
“You go for you to the land I will show you,”
or
“Go towards yourself to the land I will show you.”
Only two English translations out of the fifty-nine I checked, capture this invitation.
Now [in Haran] the Lord said to Abram, Go for yourself [for your own advantage] away from your country, from your relatives and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.
— Genesis 12:1 Amplified Bible Classic Edition (AMPC) (The text in the square brackets appears in the translation, otherwise emphasis mine)
And Jehovah saith unto Abram, `Go for thyself, from thy land, and from thy kindred, and from the house of thy father, unto the land which I shew thee.
— Genesis 12:1 Young's Literal Translation (YLT) (emphasis mine)
Abram's swift reaction to leave isn't in response to a vague call to an unknown place. I imagine Abram already knew, somewhere deep inside, that settling in Haran hadn’t been the right decision to make. So when God comes alongside him and tells him it's time to move on and leave, it rekindles a vision that had nearly died.
Might this not mean that God's call is an invitation to show the utmost respect to our own deepest self? I suggest that God's call might feel as if someone is respecting us more completely than we have ever been respected.
— Bob Ekblad
Reading the Bible with the Damned, p.68
God never mentions Canaan because he doesn’t need to. Abram knows instinctively that Canaan is the land to which God is referring.
Abram obeys God's call because it's deeply personal. This god knows him so well he can name Abram's abandoned dreams and call them back into being.
Abram obeys God's call because this deity reveals himself to be different from the other gods Abram has known. This is a god who restores dreams rather than demanding something from him.
No wonder he left immediately.
No wonder he obeys this strange new god.
When does God call us?
The good news is that, like Abram, we don't need to be in the right place or even be following the right god for God to call us.
When we have stopped.
When we are stuck.
When we lack purpose.
When grief weighs us down.
When our lives have become unfulfilling.
When our hard work brings no satisfaction.
When we put time but not energy into our lives.
When we find ourselves sleepwalking through each day.
When we have lost sight of who we are.
When we are no longer being a blessing to others.
When a season is ending.
This is when God calls us.
If your spirit is resonating with any of those whens, then God is probably already calling out to you… It’s just we don’t recognise his voice. We don't realise he's calling us to new life instead of something new. We don't recognise that he's calling out what's inside of us rather than telling us to go in a specific direction.
God's call to Abram wasn't about taking a fresh path, but about encouraging him to move again along an old path.
When we refuse to treat guidance from God as an arbitrary calling and instead see his guidance as a reawakening of dormant dreams and semi-forgotten desires, we too may realise we already know which direction to head in.
Abram's epitaph
By the way, do you know what Abram’s—later Abraham's—epitaph said?
Abraham had taken another wife, whose name was Keturah, and she bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Jokshan fathered Sheba and Dedan. Dedan's sons were the Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim. And Midian's sons were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were sons of Keturah.
...
This is the length of Abraham's life: 175 years. He took his last breath and died at a good old age, old and contented, and he was gathered to his people.
— Genesis 25:1-4 and 7-8 CSB
There’s no, and he died in the land of Canaan comment for Abraham. Instead, there’s a new wife (after Sarai's death), six more sons, and another seven grandsons mentioned—let alone the daughters and granddaughters that this ancient culture leaves unmentioned.
All this focus on the number of children isn't (just) making a comment about how virile—extremely, apparently—and energetic and joyful Abraham was in his old age. It's communicating how God's new tribe is growing. It mentions by name the men attached to seeing this new idea about a tribe existing for the blessing of outsiders take root.
However, it’s the author’s comments that Abraham died "at a good old age" that impact me the most given he lived thirty years less than his father, Terah.
It’s not about how many years we live, but what we do with them that brings fulfilment.
God’s call is an invitation to move out of our places of lifelessness and into new life towards our deepest selves. He delights in calling us when our lives have stalled because this is a god who loves to give and give and give. By pursuing the dreams he has deposited in our hearts, our lives can become birthplaces of blessing, where God's self-giving love can flow through us to others.
Abram went for it and he died full of life.
I hope to do the same. What about you?