Chapter 12.—Of the Era in
Abraham’s Life from Which a New Period in the Holy Succession
Begins.
Let us now survey the progress of
the city of God from the era of the patriarch Abraham, from whose
time it begins to be more conspicuous, and the divine promises
which are now fulfilled in Christ are more fully revealed. We
learn, then, from the intimations of holy Scripture, that Abraham
was born in the country of the Chaldeans, a land belonging to the
Assyrian empire. Now, even at that time impious superstitions
were rife with the Chaldeans, as with other nations. The family
of Terah, to which Abraham belonged, was the only one in which the
worship of the true God survived, and the only one, we may suppose,
in which the Hebrew language was preserved; although Joshua the son
of Nun tells us that even this family served other gods in
Mesopotamia.
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The other
descendants of Heber gradually became absorbed in other races and
other languages. And thus, as the single family of Noah was
preserved through the deluge of water to renew the human race, so,
in the deluge of superstition that flooded the whole world, there
remained but the one family of Terah in which the seed of God’s
city was preserved. And as, when Scripture has enumerated the
generations prior to Noah, with their ages, and explained the cause
of the flood before God began to speak to Noah about the building
of the ark, it is said, “These are the generations of Noah;” so
also now, after enumerating the generations from Shem, Noah’s
son, down to Abraham, it then signalizes an era by saying, “These
are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and
Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died before his father
Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. And
Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was
Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife Milcah, the daughter of
Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.”
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This Iscah
is supposed to be the same as Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
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Josh. xxiv. 2
.
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Gen. xi. 27–29
.