What the Bible says about Haran
(From Forerunner Commentary)
Very early, Lot is associated directly with what the scholars call the "holy line," which came through the Flood via Shem. Adam's life overlapped Methuselah's by 243 years. Starting at the beginning, Adam, we jump to Methuselah, and Adam still lived another 243 years. Methuselah lived right up to the Flood; he probably died in it. However, during his last 98 years, Shem was alive. Shem, then, was a direct connection, along with his father Noah, from Adam and Seth through the Flood.
Shem lived for another 500 years after the birth of Arphaxad, who came when Shem was 100 years old. Shem lived to the ripe old age of 600 years. During the last 150 years of his life, Abraham was alive. Now we have direct connections from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham. There were 150 years that Shem could relate things directly to Abraham that took place even before the Flood. All of that experience, all of that personal history, could be passed on directly to Abraham, who was the uncle of Lot.
Lot's father, Haran, died, and Abram became Lot's adopted father, his guardian. But do not think that Lot was young. Even if Lot was only 25 years younger than Abram (and he might have been even closer to his age), when they left his own land and went to Caanan, Lot was already 50 years old, and he, too, had lived in close proximity to Shem. So the righteous Shem could pass on the history and the purpose of God directly to Abraham and Lot.
Moses was a couple of generations removed, yet his faith was far greater than was Lot's, who lived during those times. In Lot, we are not dealing with someone with no background and without access to learning the things of God directly from His righteous servants.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Faith (Part Three)
God exiled Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans and then from Haran across the Euphrates River. He had to leave everything. He took his family with him, but when they left Haran, he even left his father's grave behind.
He had to leave all his kindred and go with Sarah and his servants into this wild Canaan, a land that was not his, to live there as a stranger and a pilgrim for the rest of his life. There is no record of him ever returning to Haran, not even to visit his father's grave. When he needed to make contact with his relatives in Haran, he sent Eliezer. For example, he sent Eliezer to get Rebekah as a wife for Isaac. In a sense, Isaac was sent into exile as well. Abraham, the father of our faith lived through many, many years of exile from the land of his birth.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
How to Survive Exile
This opening paragraph broaches the core of the entire epistle. The remarkable amount of material here is reminiscent of what is written in John 21:25: “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
Names and titles identify people, objects, and even political, religious, or cultural movements within societies. Historical names and titles tend to identify those personalities who lived at the forefront of significant human occurrences of the past. They appear in our histories because people desired to know and understand their activities for their own edification.
God's early dealings with Abram are an example. In Genesis 11:26, God begins the history of their relationship. Before God speaks directly with Abram, we find that his father's name was Terah. God also provides us with Abram's birthplace, Ur of the Chaldees, and his lineage beginning with Shem, son of Noah.
As time passes, God also informs the reader that Abram married Sarai, who was then barren. He leaves the length of time within this first contact unspecified, but God eventually speaks to Abram in Ur and commands him to depart. However, by the time Abram and Sarai leave Ur for Canaan, the elderly Terah seems to have decided to move with them, and he leads the group from Ur to Haran, a city far to the north. In Haran, Terah seemingly abruptly dies at age 205, leaving Abram, Sarai, Lot, and the unnumbered remainder of Abram's party to continue to Canaan without him.
While Abram and Sarai were in Ur, God never appeared to them. He did no more than speak to them. Not until Genesis 12:7 does the Bible first mention God appearing to him, and by then, they had arrived in Canaan.
Also, at some time after their arrival in Canaan, the term “the Hebrew” is added to Abram's identity (Genesis 14:13). Perhaps this was done to distinguish him from other Abrams whom God did not want confused with the biblical Abram. Maybe He did it to help future readers make a positive identification. We have always accepted that the term “Hebrew” identified a person as being a descendant of Eber. However, scholars claim that this is not the only usage of the term's root, saying that “Hebrew” was used anciently to distinguish a person who had “crossed over.” This usage implies an individual with no long-term community roots, a wanderer. A Hebrew, then, was a traveler into an area who had crossed a border, a mountain range, or a river, or even one who changed loyalties into, say, a new religious belief.
The beginning of the epistle to the Hebrews contains a compact form of a similar procedure of identification. God inspired the human author to focus immediately on the central Personality of the entire letter—Jesus Christ—identifying Him by titles and by His associations with a magnificent series of mindboggling accomplishments and bestowed honors. By the time the brief, four-verse opening paragraph is concluded, God has already set a strong foundation for convincing those skeptical about Jesus' qualifications that, yes, He is qualified to be High Priest under the New Covenant to assist the elect children whom God is calling into His Family.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Eight): Hebrews 1Related Topics: All the Divine Names and Titles | Eber | Haran | Jesus Christ as Creator of All Things | Jesus Christ as High Priest | Shem | Why Hebrews Was Written
Find more Bible verses about Haran:
Haran {Nave's}