Genesis 12:1

1. The Lord had said Rather, the Lord said . The pluperfect rendering was adopted by our translators from a supposed necessity of harmonizing this verse with Acts 7:2. But it is not necessary to suppose the writer here refers to a second call, which Abram received in Haran . According to a usage often noticed in these pages, the writer goes back and takes up his narrative at a point previously recorded so we may believe, with Stephen, that this call of Abram occurred “before he dwelt in Haran.” The history of Terah was in the last chapter finished, and now begins the continuous history of the chosen seed from the great event in which it had its birth. It was a Jewish tradition, as we see from the book of Judith, that the descendants of Terah were driven out from Chaldea because they refused to follow the prevalent idolatry: “For they left the way of their ancestors, and worshipped the God of heaven, the God whom they knew: so they [the Chaldeans] cast them out from the face of their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia, and sojourned there many days. Then their God commanded them to depart from the place where they sojourned, and to go into the land of Canaan.” Jdt 5:8-9 .

Get thee out Go for thyself; a special command. Note four particulars in this divine call. 1) Abram was to leave his native country, the fertile land where his fathers had dwelt for centuries, with its cities and its civilization, the mountains and noble rivers of his childhood. 2) His kindred, the stock of Eber, whom he left in Chaldea. 3) His father’s house, the family of Terah, whom he left in Haran. The closest earthly ties were to be broken. 4) He was to go forth, he knew not whither, unto a land that God should show him. Hebrews 11:8. He was to exchange the town and the pastoral life for that of the nomad; to leave the massive temples of Chaldea to build altars here and there in the wilderness. But by faith he saw his father-land, his home, in the promise of God. Hebrews 11:14.