Nahor's Residence in Haran Before Terah's Move
Nahor's Residence in Haran Before Terah's Move
The biblical account in Genesis 11:27-32 provides the primary information regarding Nahor's residence in Haran before Terah's move. According to Genesis 11:27, Terah had three sons: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. After Haran's death in Ur of the Chaldees, Terah took his family, including Abram, Lot (Haran's son), and Sarai (Abram's wife), and set out for Canaan [3].
Nahor, the son of Terah and brother of Abram, married Milcah, the daughter of Haran. The biblical text indicates that Nahor remained in Haran when Abram, Lot, and Sarai continued on to Canaan after Terah's death [1, 2].
The exact timing and circumstances of Nahor's residence in Haran are subject to interpretation. Some sources suggest that Nahor stayed behind in Ur initially and later moved to Haran. According to Easton's Bible Dictionary, Nahor "remained behind in the land of his nativity on the east of the river Euphrates at Haran" [2].
Flavius Josephus provides additional context, stating that Terah, after mourning for Haran, decided to leave Ur of the Chaldeans with his family, and they all moved to Haran in Mesopotamia. Josephus implies that Nahor accompanied his father Terah to Haran [4].
Augustine addresses the seeming omission of Nahor in the biblical account of Terah's migration from Ur to Haran, questioning whether Nahor accompanied his father. Augustine suggests that Nahor might have been included in the migration but was not mentioned specifically in the narrative [5].
The biblical narrative does not explicitly state that Nahor resided in Haran before Terah's move. However, it is clear that Nahor remained in Haran after Terah's death, maintaining connections with Abram's family in Canaan. The correspondence between Abram's family and Nahor's family in Haran continued until Jacob's time [2].
Keil & Delitzsch's commentary on Genesis 24:10 highlights Nahor's residence in Haran, stating that the servant sent by Abraham to find a wife for Isaac went "into Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor, i.e., Haran, where Nahor dwelt" [6].
The various interpretations and commentaries suggest that Nahor's residence in Haran is closely tied to the broader narrative of Terah's family migration and the subsequent interactions between Abram's and Nahor's families.
Sources
- Smith's Bible Dictionary “Smith's Bible Dictionary: Nahor — (snorting), the name of two persons in the family of Abraham. + His grandfather; the son of Serug and father of Terah. (Genesis 11:22-25) (B.C. 2174.) + Grandson of the preceding son of Terah and brother of Abraham and Haran. (Genesis 11:26,27) (B.C. 2000.) The order of the ages of the family of Terah is not improbably inverted in the narrative; in which case Nahor instead of being younger than Abraham, was really older. He married Milcah, the daughter of his brother Haran; and when Abraham and Lot migrated to Canaan, Nahor remained behind in the land of his b”
- Easton's Bible Dictionary “Easton's Bible Dictionary: Nahor — Snorting. (1.) The father of Terah, who was the father of Abraham (Gen. 11:22-25; Luke 3:34). (2.) A son of Terah, and elder brother of Abraham (Gen. 11:26, 27; Josh. 24:2, R.V.). He married Milcah, the daughter of his brother Haran, and remained in the land of his nativity on the east of the river Euphrates at Haran (Gen. 11:27-32). A correspondence was maintained between the family of Abraham in Canaan and the relatives in the old ancestral home at Haran till the time of Jacob. When Jacob fled from Haran all intercourse between the two branches of the famil”
- Smith's Bible Dictionary “Smith's Bible Dictionary: Terah — (station), the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran, and through them the ancestor of the great families of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Midianites, Moabites and Ammonites. (Genesis 11:24-32) The account given of him in the Old Testament narrative is very brief. We learn from it simply that he was an idolater, (Joshua 24:2) that he dwelt beyond the Euphrates in Ur of the Chaldees, (Genesis 11:28) and that in the southwesterly migration, which from some unexplained cause he undertook in his old age, he went with his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai, and his gra”
- Project Gutenberg “Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, CHAPTER 6, section 5: of the Chaldeans, called Ur; and his monument is shown to this day. These married their nieces. Nabor married Milcha, and Abram married Sarai. Now Terah hating Chaldea, on account of his mourning for Ilaran, they all removed to Haran of Mesopotamia, where Terah died, and was buried, when he had lived to be two hundred and five years old; for the life of man was already, by degrees, diminished, and became shorter than before, till the birth of Moses; after whom the term of human life was one hundred and twenty years, God determini”
- Schaff ANF/NPNF (Patristic) “NPNF1 Vol 2: Augustine — City of God, Christian Doctrine — CHAP. 13.--WHY, IN THE ACCOUNT OF TERAH'S EMIGRATION, ON HIS FORSAKING THE CHALDEANS AND PASSING OVER INTO MESOPOTAMIA, NO MENTION IS MADE OF HIS SON NAHOR. (part 1): Next it is related how Terah with his family left the region of the Chaldeans and came into Mesopotamia, and dwelt in Haran. But 319 nothing is said about one of his sons called Nahor, as if he had not taken him along with him. For the narrative runs thus: "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, his son Abram'”
- Genesis (Lutheran) “Keil & Delitzsch on Genesis 24:10: The servant then went, with ten camels and things of every description belonging to his master, into Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor, i.e., Haran, where Nahor dwelt (Gen 11:31, and Gen 12:4). On his arrival there, he made the camels kneel down, or rest, without the city by the well, "at the time of evening, the time at which the women come out to draw water," and at which, now as then, women and girls are in the habit of fetching the water required for the house (vid., Robinson's Palestine ii. 368ff.). He then prayed to Jehovah, the God of Abraham, "Let ther”