Genesis 11:28-30
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
28 Haran died before Terah his father, in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans.[a] 29 Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai,[b] and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah.(A) 30 Sarai was barren; she had no child.
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- 11:28 Ur of the Chaldeans: Ur was an extremely ancient city of the Sumerians (later, of the Babylonians) in southern Mesopotamia. The Greek text has “the land of the Chaldeans.” After a millennium of relative unimportance, Ur underwent a revival during the Neo-Babylonian/Chaldean empire (625–539 B.C.). The sixth-century author here identified the place by its contemporary name. As chap. 24 shows, Haran in northern Mesopotamia is in fact the native place of Abraham. In the Genesis perspective, the human race originated in the East (3:24; 4:16) and migrated from there to their homelands (11:2). Terah’s family moved from the East (Ur) and Abraham will complete the journey to the family’s true homeland in the following chapters.
- 11:29 Sarai: like Abram, a dialectal variant of the more usual form of the name Sarah. In 17:15, God will change it to Sarah in view of her new task.
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