CHAPTER VI. TERAH's three sons, Abraham, Nahor, Haran. Terah passes to Haran on his route to Canaan; came from Ur of the Chaldees'; Ur situate in Armenia. Abraham proceeds to Egypt; was settled among the Amorites at Hebron when Chedorlaomer invaded Palestine. Abraham and his Amorite confederates followed the invaders in their retreat to Damascus, and by a night surprise inflicted on them a terrible defeat.-Ur of the Chaldees.Northern and Southern Chaldees.-The Chaldees of the time of Job.Schools of the Chaldees at Orkhoe and Borsippa. The Ishmaelites.-Paramount importance of the fortunes of Israel.—The fate of the Edomites. TERAH, the seventh in descent from Arphaxad, had three sons, Abraham, Nahor, and Haran (Gen. 11. 26). Haran was ancestor of the children of Lot, or in other words, of the Moabites and Ammonites; Nahor was ancestor of the Chaldees, or, to give them their Hebrew title, of the Khasdim; and in the other son, Abraham, we recognize one of the greatest of the Old Testament patriarchs. The father of Abraham went forth with his family from, 'Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran and dwelt there' (Gen. 11. 31). It is generally agreed that Haran was the Karrhai of Ptolemy, which lay between the Khabour and the Euphrates, in the district which the Jews called Padan-aram (Gen. 25. 20). As Canaan was situate to the south-west of Haran we might naturally suppose that Ur lay somewhere to the north-east. Now in this direction, in the highlands drained by the eastern arm of the Euphrates, was a place called Ur (Amm. Marc. 25. 7, 8), and in its neighbourhood were settled the Khalubes 1 of Xenophon, who, as Strabo tells us 1 The Chalybes of the Euxine were the great metallurgists of antiquity, and from them the art of steel manufacture may have migrated with the Iberes into Spain. The Bilbilis (Salo or Xalon) and the Chalybs were the rivers whose waters were most in repute among the steel-forgers of that country, Justin 44. 3. 8, and Pliny 34. 41. (12. 3. 19, p. 549), were the same people as the Khaldaioi. Here, then, we have an Ur situated just where we might expect to find it, and as it has Chaldees in its neighbourhood, it seems to answer all the requirements which in Scripture are connected with the name Ur of the Chaldees.' When seventy-five years old (Gen. 12. 4) Abraham was ordered to leave Haran and proceed on his way to Canaan: he took with him Lot his brother Haran's son, but left Nahor and the rest of his father's family behind him in Padan-aram. Intercourse between the two emigrants and the parent-stock appears to have been thenceforward casual and unfrequent, but it did not altogether cease. We read in Genesis (22. 20) 'It was told Abraham, saying, behold Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor; Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram, and Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel. And Bethuel begat Rebekah, &c. And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.' Bethuel, the youngest son of Milcah, remained at Haran, his father's town, which it is said long retained traces of its Chaldean settlers (Assemani, Bibl. Orien. 1. 327). Nahor's eldest sons were probably sent into the world by their father, much in the same way as the sons of the concubines were sent forth by Abraham (Gen. 25. 6). Some of these sons seem to have gone southwards in search of settlements, and according to the system of interpretation which I believe to be very generally applicable to the geography of Scripture, I gather from the passage quoted, that Nahorite families settled north and west of Gilead in Huz and Buz (Job 32. 2) and Maachah, and in other districts neighbouring on Damascus, which latter place specially took the name of Aram. Maachah I take to be the Aram-Maachah whence the Ammonites obtained aid in their wars with David (1 Chron. 19. 6), and the Tibhath (1 Chron. 18. 8) which David plundered may possibly have given a name to Tebah. Gesenius has suggested that the first element of Arphaxad VI.] THE SONS OF TERAH. 159 (Arpha-ksad) was the Arabic urfat, a limit, a boundary; so that, according to the character we assign to the compound, Arphaxad might signify either the Border of Khesed, or Khesed of the Border. Khesed is a well-known Shemitic name, so that on the first supposition Arphaxad would be a district personified, on the second a title of the patriarch derived from the place he lived in. This etymology has the merit of explaining the name of Khasdim, the people of Khesed, or Arphaxad, thus agreeing with Josephus, who tells us that the descendants of Arphaxad were named after him. It locates also the district of Arphaxad to the north of Assyria, where it would seem the sequence Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad (Gen. 10. 22), and the requirements of Greek geography1 agree in fixing it. After his arrival in Canaan a famine arose in the land, which compelled Abraham to go down into Egypt. On his return to Canaan he took up his abode near Bethel, in a position overlooking the Jordan valley, which was shortly to become the scene of the earliest military expedition of which any trustworthy accounts have reached us. 'It came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations (Goim); that these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar. All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea. Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their mount Seir, unto El-paran, which is by the wilderness. And they returned, and came to According to Josephus (Ant. 1. 7), Nicolas of Damascus represented the land of the Chaldees, whence Abraham came, as lying above (huper) Babylon. En-mishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar' (Gen. 14). The mention of the Rephaim, the Emim, and the Horites, and of Seir, Ham, and Elparan, show us clearly enough that the invaders entered Palestine from the north, and descended to the salt sea by the east of Jordan; and just as clearly can we trace their return homeward by the route west of the river through the countries of the Amalekites and the Amorites. At Hebron and its neighbourhood Abraham was pasturing his cattle, in confederacy with three Amorite chiefs, when tidings reached him that his kinsman Lot was among the prisoners carried off by Chedorlaomer. In company with his three allies he pursued the enemy to Dan, and there by a night surprise utterly defeated them. From Dan he chased them to Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.' As I believe the consequences of this defeat have been greatly underrated, I would dwell a little on some of the circumstances that attended it. Abraham took with him 318 of his trained servants, born in his own house' (Gen. 14. 14). If his Amorite friends had each of them an equal following, the pursuers may have numbered a thousand men. The surprise must have been like that of the Amalekites when David overtook them (1 Sam. 30. 16); and when we remember that it was by night, and that the invaders were carrying off the inhabitants of the country, we may readily understand the panic that ensued, and the character of the flight from Dan to Hobah. The captives, no doubt, rose upon their captors, and repaid with interest the injuries they were smarting under. At Damascus Abraham was in the midst of his Nahorite or Chaldee kinsmen, men, who if we may judge of them from their later history, were by no means indisposed to follow any opening that led, or promised to lead, to plunder. The states rising into importance in the basin of the Euphrates, must have lost the flower of their youth in the invasion of Palestine, and were no doubt prostrated VI.] UR OF THE CHALDees. 161 by so terrible a calamity. The Chaldees seem to have taken advantage of their weakness. West of the southern Euphrates are certain ruins called Mugheir. From an inscription found in these ruins it would appear that their ancient name was Ur. The place was called Chaldaeopolis by certain Greek writers1, and it lies in the district generally assigned to the southern Chaldees. Mugheir was accordingly early fixed upon as the 'Ur of the Chaldees'; and several of our modern antiquaries have adopted this notion. But the difficulties that attend it appear to me insuperable. We must suppose that Abraham and his friends carried their flocks and herds over the southern Euphrates, and then up the river to Haran, merely, as it would seem, to cross it a second time on their road to Canaan. I do not know any satisfactory answer that has been, or can be, given to the objection here suggested. That the ruins at Mugheir were the work of Chaldees I have no doubt, but they must have been Chaldees coming from Damascus, not the more ancient Chaldees that came from the land where Arphaxad settled. Their connexion with Damascus explains the origin of the opinion so widely prevalent in the East, that Abraham once reigned in that city. Ur was probably a variant form of the Hebrew 'îr, a city, selected as the name of their capital alike by the southern and by the northern Chaldees. Ptolemy mentions Arrhapa as the name of a town bordering on Assyria; and the river running along the northern border of Armenia, and separating it from Russian territory, is called Erpay. It is not improbable that both Arrhapa and Erpay may be connected with the Arabic word erput [urufath], and signify respectively the city of the border-land, the boundary river. Ptolemy mentions a district named 1 1 According to Eusebius (Praep. Evan. 9. 17), Alexander Polyhistor quoted Eupolemus as his authority for saying that Abraham was born at Camarina, a city of Babylon which was called Urie, but by the Greeks Chaldaeopolis. M |