Genesis 11:28

And Haran died before his father . Literally, upon the face of his father ; ἐνώπιον τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ ( LXX ); while his father was alive (Munster, Luther, Calvin, Rosenmüller); perhaps also in his father's presence (Keil, Lange), though the Jewish fable may be discarded that Terah, at this time an 'idolater, accused his sons to Nimrod, who cast them into a furnace for refusing to worship the fire-god, and that ,Haran perished in the flames in his father's sight. The decease of Haran is the first recorded instance of the natural death of a son before his father. In the land of his nativity . ἐν τῇ γῇ ῇ ἐγεννήθη ( LXX .). In Ur of the Chaldees . Ur Kasdim ( Genesis 11:31 ; Genesis 15:7 ; Nehemiah 9:7 ). The Kasdim— formerly believed to have been Shemites on account of

(a) of the Greeks, who regarded Memnon, King of Ethiopia, as the founder of Susa (Herod; 5:54), and the son of a Cissian woman (Strabo, 15.3, § 2;

(b) of the Nilotic Ethiopians, who claimed him as one of their monarchs; and

(c) of the Egyptians, who identified him with their King Amunoph III ; whose statue became known as the vocal Memnon;