Abram's Journey to Canaan: Genesis 12.1-5

Introduction: The Patriarchal Period

The Patriarchal Period is the period in biblical history that encompasses the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s sons.

The Patriarchal Period begins with God calling Abram (later renamed to Abraham) to leave his home in Ur and to move to the Promised Land. The Patriarchal Period follows the three ‘patriarchs’ – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – as well as Jacob’s twelve sons. The Patriarchal Period ends with Jacob’s sons and their families living in Egypt, and it is followed by the Period of Egyptian Bondage, in which the Hebrew people – the descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons – are enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years.

The Patriarchal Period roughly corresponds to the Middle Bronze Age (1950-1550 BC), a time marked by the movement of various groups of nomadic peoples in the Near East, particularly the Amorites. The Amorites were growing in prominence and threatening the Sumerian city-states of Mesopotamia. This period of history is known as the First Intermediate Period in Egyptian history, which rests between the Egyptian Old Kingdom (when the first great pyramids were built) and the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (when Egypt saw a revitalization in art and culture). It’s likely that Jacob’s sons emigrated to Egypt sometime at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. 

The Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent is the name given to the geographical areas of the Near East that were suitable for agriculture and livestock. In the south in Egypt, the Nile’s run-offs in the Nile Delta made Lower Egypt fertile. Rainfall from the Mediterranean made the land of Canaan fertile, and to the north the Tigris and Euphrates rivers made much of Mesopotamia fertile. One of the primary reasons for unending conflict in the Near East is the fact that people groups fight over access to these choice lands. In our own times, conflict is exacerbated by the presence of oil throughout the Near East. 

Abraham's Ancestors?

Sometime around 2000 BC, around the days of Abraham, a people group identifying as the ‘Habiru’ emerged in Mesopotamian society. They weren’t a racial group, as they included both Semitic and non-Semitic stock, and were likely nomads before ingratiating themselves into Mesopotamian society. While many Habiru were craftsmen and musicians who abandoned their nomadic lifestyle to settle down in urban centers like the Sumerian city-states of Ur and Uruk, others hired themselves out as slaves to wealthy households or government authorities. Still others banded together and served as mercenaries-for-hire, and they gained a reputation for being aggressive migratory groups preying on unsuspecting communities and ambushing caravans traveling lonely caravan routes.

Because the name Habiru is phonetically equivalent to ‘Hebrew,’ many scholars have identified the Habiru with the biblical Hebrews or (more likely) have regarded them as ancestral to the later Israelites. Abraham is the first person in the Bible to be identified as ‘Hebrew,’ and we know his family had put down roots in Ur. The fact that Abraham and his father Terah didn’t seem to balk at the idea of uprooting and embracing a nomadic lifestyle may indicate that they were just as comfortable with nomadic lifestyles as urban dwelling. Scholars speculate that Abraham’s family had connections with a group of Habiru who lived thirty miles from Ur in the town of Larsa. 

Abraham's Family

Though Abram’s calling from Yahweh begins in Genesis 12, we first meet Abram in Genesis 11. Verses 10-32 trace Abram’s lineage from Shem, one of Noah’s sons who survived the Great Flood on the Ark. By tracing Abram back to Shem and thus to Noah, the text makes it clear that Abram’s bloodline is unspoiled by the ‘sons of God’ of Genesis 6. His bloodline is pure and, from Noah, traced back to Adam and Eve; thus the genealogy hones in on another point, that Abraham is in the bloodline that will, in time, lead to Eve’s seed who will fatally wound the Diviner in the Garden. 

Towards the end of the Genesis 11 genealogy, we learn that Abram’s father was Terah. Terah had two other sons: Nahor and Haran. Abram’s brother Haran was the father of Lot, which made Lot Abram’s nephew (we will see him in the coming chapters). Terah lived with his sons in the Sumerian city of Ur, and it was there that Abram’s brother Haran died. Sometime after this, Abram’s brother Nahor married Haran’s daughter Milcah (thus Nahor married his niece). This is unsettling to us today, but by taking Milcah under his wing, Nahor ensured that she wouldn’t be left destitute in the wake of her father’s death. The text tells us that Milcah had a sister named Iscah, whom we can assume was already married at the time of Haran’s death. 

Abram married his half-sister Sarai (she was born of Terah and another wife), and the text tells us that she was barren. Barrenness was a big deal in Abram’s day. If a couple failed to produce an heir, it meant disruption in the generational inheritance pattern and meant that the couple would have no one to take care of them in their old age. Sumerian legal codes provided two means of dealing with this problem, both of which we see in Genesis. The first option was for the husband to adopt an heir from outside the family; we see this in Genesis 15.2 where we learn that Abram’s heir was Eliezar of Damascus, likely his right-hand man. The second option was for the husband to impregnate a slave girl or prostitute, and the child would be considered his heir. When Abram sleeps with Hagar and conceives Ishmael, he is attempting to produce an heir via a legal means. 

The City of Ur

Genesis tells us that Abram lived in ‘Ur of the Chaldeans’ when he was called by God. This is likely a reference to the Sumerian city of Ur, one of the many cities of the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia. Dating the patriarchs to specific dates is tricky, but most conservative scholars place his birth around 2166 BC. He was seventy years old when he and his family left Ur to begin their journey to the Promised Land; this would’ve been around the year 2096 BC. 

What else was happening in the world at this time? Around 2000 BC, the peninsula of Italy was just beginning to be settled. It was around this time that the first Minoan palace of ancient Crete was built, and the city of Knossos was beginning to be inhabited. In Britain, Stonehenge was completed, and horses were just now being domesticated in Kazakhstan (up to this point, horses in Eurasia were all wild and primarily hunted for meat). Scientists believe the last Woolly Mammoths went extinct around this time. So as not to end on a bad note (for who gets excited about the extinction of Woolly Mammoths?), in Guatemala cocoa was first domesticated. 

During Abram’s day, Ur was just beginning what’s called the Third Dynasty of Ur. The Third Dynasty emerged out of a rocky period in Mesopotamian history. During the Early Dynastic Period, Sumerian culture was on the rise before being eclipsed for two hundred years with the rise to power of the city-state of Akkad and its Semitic culture. Sargon, a capable ruler of Akkad, had defeated the King of Uruk who had only recently unified lower Mesopotamia. Sargon was a Semite, speaking the Akkadian language rather than Sumerian. Semitic culture infected Sumerian culture with Sargon’s conquest, and Akkadian control reached as far as Persia in the east to the Mediterranean in the west – making the Akkadian Empire the first empire in known history. 

This First Empire was brought to an end by a barbaric people called the Guti, who invaded the region from the Zagros Mountains. A dark age settled over lower Mesopotamia, and in its wake Sumerian culture experienced a resurgence in the Third Dynasty of Ur. The crippling hold of the Guti was broken by Utu-hegel, the King of Uruk, but Ur-nammu, the King of Ur, defeated him and grasped control of lower Mesopotamia. 

The kings of the Third Dynasty styled themselves ‘Kings of the Four Parts of the World’ in an ambition to continue the former Akkadian Empire (Despite the lofty title, the Third Dynasty’s control had shrunk from that seized by the Akkadians). The Third Dynasty lasted 108 years, and the city of Ur itself would be conquered by the Amorites in 1932 BC.

Ur-nammu was both the first ruler of the Third Dynasty and likely the one who ruled when Abram was called by God. Ur-nammu is known for writing a code of laws that predates the infamous Code of Hammurabi. Ur-nammu claimed that he’d been appointed by the moon god Nanna – the chief deity of Ur – to rule over the land justly. In his codes he sought to remove dishonest economic practices and to care for orphans and widows. His laws are similar to those of Hammurabi, written about two centuries later, but while Ur-nammu’s code emphasized monetary fines for law-breakers, Hammurabi’s code emphasized physical punishments. Ur-nammu also commissioned an expansive ziggurat (we know it was his because his name is stamped into the bricks). The ziggurat was built on top of a smaller, earlier ziggurat. Ur-nammu’s ziggurat was built upon by Nabonidus of the much later Neo-Babylonian Era. The completed structure measured two hundred feet by one hundred feet and reached seventy feet high. It was square and pyramidal, and it’s likely that trees and shrubs were planted on its stepped levels. Around the ziggurat were numerous other sacred structures, one a splendid temple to Ningal, a moon-goddess and the wife of the moon god Nanna. 

Archaeologists believe Ur in Abram’s day had as many as 200,000 inhabitants, just a third less than the population of Cincinnati today. Ur was a thriving commercial hub, and we’ve discovered over a hundred thousand documents transcribing transactions in grain, vegetables, fruit, cattle, and slaves. Artists were skilled, builders were competent, business was active, and life was good. Writing was relatively common, and there were even schools that taught writing, art, and various subjects. Charles F. Pfeiffer writes, ‘Ur was not a primitive city in the days of the patriarchs. As one of the important Sumerian cities it possessed an elaborate system of writing, advanced means of mathematical calculations, religious records, refined specimens of art, a school system, and much else that modern man equates with civilization and refinement.’ It’s likely that Abram would’ve studied in such an early school and learned to write. Some scholars speculate that some of Genesis may have originally been written by Abram and passed on until Moses recorded it in his version of Genesis; in the same vein, it’s likely that if Abram knew how to write, he taught this skill to his sons, and they may have written their own narratives that have found their way into the bible. It’s thus possible that much of what we know of the patriarchs is firsthand accounting from the patriarchs themselves. Below is an image of Ur as it looks today:

Check out this video to get a glimpse of what Ur would've been like in Abram's day:

Abraham Leaves Ur

Abram was between seventy and seventy-five years old when he left Ur for Canaan with much of his family. This would’ve been around 2091 BC. We see God’s calling to Abram in the first verses of Genesis 12. Interestingly, while Genesis records God’s name as ‘Yahweh’ multiple times, this isn’t what Abram knew him as. When Moses wrote Genesis, he looked back on the patriarchal age and recorded God’s name as Yahweh. It was to Moses that God revealed His name as Yahweh; up until that point, He was known by another name. Exodus 6.2 tells us, ‘God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them.’ Yahweh appeared to the patriarchs as ‘God Almighty,’ The Hebrew for ‘God Almighty’ is El Shaddai; it was by this name that Abram knew God. 

Genesis 11.31 tells us that Terah ‘took his son Abram’ from Ur. On first glance, this suggests that Terah led the departure rather than Abram. However, it’s likely that Abram persuaded his father to accompany them, but Terah gets the designation as official leader of the party because he’s the head of household. 

When we envision Abram and his family leaving Ur, we often picture it as a small party. However, we must remember that the actual party would’ve likely contained not only Abram’s family but also ‘people they had acquired.’ As we will see, the entourage made a pit-stop at a city called Haran before continuing into Canaan, and at Haran Abram ‘acquired’ more people. While some have argued that Abram acquired slaves at Haran, it’s more likely that these were servants and business partners. Though we often imagine Abram as a poor peasant, it’s likelier that he was a wealthy businessman, perhaps invested in caravan trading. He and his family have intimate knowledge of how to survive outside the city, and they’re knowledgeable of caravan trade routes. The fact that they acquired people and possessions in Haran speaks to lots of wealth. Given all this, when we envision Abram’s entourage traveling to the Promised Land, we should envision a large if not vast group of people. Indeed, the fact that Abram encountered few hostilities in Canaan implies that raiders and bandits found his troop too large to tackle. In Genesis 14 we see Abram becoming entangled in local Canaanite politics; that he could play such an important role indicates that his people were not small in number at all. He was viewed by his neighbors as a powerful chieftain. All this together lends credence to the idea that Abram was wealthy and powerful. 

The journey from Ur to Canaan was more than one thousand miles. This seems like an insane journey, but archaeological evidence indicates that it wasn’t uncommon. Vast overland trade routes connected the major civilizations: the Hittites to the north, the Egyptians to the south, and the eastern Sumerian city-states were all connected via different overland routes. The land of Canaan itself was heavily-traveled, especially by trade caravans. There are two routes that Abram and his entourage could’ve taken. The Northern Route follows the Tigris River and would’ve stretched 670 miles in length. The Southern Route follows the Euphrates River and is shorter at 630 miles. The biblical text doesn’t tell us what route they took. What we do know is that they eventually reached the city of Haran nearly seven hundred miles from Ur and about two-thirds of the way to Canaan. In the image below, the southernmost route along the Euphrates (the traditional route) is marked in white; the longer, northernmost route is marked in blue:

Abram Arrives in Haran

From Ur to Haran via the southern route was 630 miles, and the trip would’ve taken 31 actual days of travel at the pace of twenty miles a day. The city of Haran lay on the left bank of the Balikh River about sixty miles north of where the Balikh empties into the Euphrates. The name Haran means ‘Roadway,’ and the city served as a junction of numerous trade routes between Carchemish and Nineveh, Mesopotamia and the Hittite peoples in Asia Minor, and the communities along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard. Haran was peopled by Amorites, and it featured a prominent temple to the moon god Sin (known in Ur as Nanna). 

When Abram came to Haran (called ‘Harran’ today), it was a walled city under the authority of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Its location at the junction of the Jullab and Balikh rivers made it an important trading hub as agricultural villages first spread across western Asia. The village of Haran was first settled around 6200 BC, and as it grew in size, it became necessary to build fortified walls. These walls sprouted around Haran around 2500 BC, half a millennium before Abram would pass through its gates. Haran existed as a sovereign city-state until it was conquered by Sargon of Akkad and incorporated into the Akkadian Empire. When the Akkadian Empire was overturned by Ur’s Third Dynasty, Haran became the property of the Sumerians. When the Third Dynasty collapsed around 1850 BC, Haran regained its independence. This independence didn’t last long, however, for fifty years later the city was abandoned under the onslaught of the warlike Amorite bands who’d seized Ur in 1850. The city was later rebuilt by the Assyrians and served as a vital trading hub for the Assyrian Empire. 

"Who were the Amorites?" The Amorites were an uncivilized, nomadic people group who emerged somewhere around the region of Syria east of the Jordan River. They were known to the Sumerians as the Martu and to the Egyptians as the Amar. The Amorites appear as nomadic tribes under chieftains, and they forced themselves into lands they needed to graze their herds. Around 2200 BC, about a century before Abram left Ur, they began migrating en-masse towards Sumeria, likely in an effort to escape a crippling drought. The Amorites became such a threat to the Third Dynasty of Ur that the kings were forced to construct a 170-mile wall from the Tigris to the Euphrates rivers to hold them off. As the Third Dynasty waned in power, many of the city-states under its control rebelled, reasserting their independence. At the same time, another people group called the Elamites, from southern Iran, were attacking the Sumerians. The fragility of the Third Dynasty enabled Amorite chieftains to assume power in Sumerian cities such as Isin, Larsa, and Kish. The Amorites also formed their own settlements in the region; one of these was Babylon. Babylon at this time was small and insignificant, and it wouldn’t be until 1894 BC that it became its own city-state. Even then no one could’ve imagined the power it would eventually wield. Below are Bronze Age Amorite sites:

In the Bible the Amorites are mentioned as the inhabitants of Canaan both before and after the Conquest of the land after the Exodus. As we will see next week, warlike bands of Amorites had made a ruckus in Canaan, virtually emptying it out right before Abram arrived. By the time Abram’s ancestors, the Israelites, return to Canaan after their Egyptian bondage, the land is once again thriving and populated, this time by the Canaanites. If the Bible says that the Amorites lived in Canaan, why are they called Canaanites? It’s actually pretty simple: ‘Amorite’ is a cultural designation whereas ‘Canaanite’ is a geographical designation. The Amorites became Canaanites when they settled down in the land of Canaan, and their culture became the Canaanite culture present in the days of the Conquest. While there are plenty of cultural differences between the Amorites of Abram’s day and the Canaanites of the Conquest, this doesn’t mean they aren’t connected: remember that between Abram and the Conquest was around 700 years, so lots of changes influenced Canaanite culture. The fact that the nomadic Amorites began settling down in walled cities also changed their way of life significantly. One of the connections between the Amorites of Abram’s day and the Canaanites of the Conquest is seen in the gods both cultures worshipped. The Amorites’ chief deity was Amurru (or Martu), a storm and weather god who was married to Asherah. He was often called Bel Sade, which means ‘lord of the steppe’ or ‘lord of the mountain,’ and many scholars believe this is the ‘ancestor’ of the fertility god Ba’al worshipped by the Canaanites during the Conquest. Ba’al, like Amurru, took the goddess Asherah as his consort. 

"Why did Abram stop at Haran?" If Abram’s entourage traveled the traditional southern route along the Euphrates River, then they would’ve had to divert from their course sixty miles to reach Haran. What was it that prompted them to go off-track? If they traveled the northern route, Haran lie on the way to Canaan, but why, then, did they stop? Two theories have arisen to explain why Abram’s party made a stop at Haran: 

The first theory is that they stopped at Haran so that Terah could worship the moon god Sin (known as Nannu, Ur’s chief deity, to the Sumerians). Haran had a remarkable temple dedicated to Sin, and we know that Terah worshiped other gods: Joshua 24.2 states that Israel’s ‘forefathers’ (naming Terah specifically) ‘worshiped other gods.’ 

The second theory is that they stopped at Haran because Terah, who was up in age, was of ill health and dying. Terah couldn’t continue to accompany them on the journey in his ill state, so Abram ordered the party to detour to the nearest city – Haran – so that Terah could either heal or pass in peace. We know that Terah died at age 205 at Haran, and it’s likely that Abram willingly diverted from his path to Canaan to ensure his father could be comfortable in his last days, and also so that he could see that Terah was taken care of and properly buried. 

Haran will come up again and again throughout the story of the patriarchs. It’s often referred to as Padan-aram, ‘The Fields of Aram.’ Abram’s brother Nahor broke from Abram’s entourage at Haran, deciding to put down roots there rather than accompany the rest of the family into Canaan. Nahor may have founded a nearby settlement that eventually grew up into the city of Nakhur. When Abram needed a wife for his son Isaac, he sent his servant to find a wife for him in the city of Nakhur (called ‘Nahor’ in the Bible). Rebekah thus grew up in the area around Haran. Archaeological evidence supports this, as there have been discoveries of Habiru culture in this Amorite-dominated area. Haran can be visited today. Below are snapshots of Haran how it would've looked during the Bronze Age:

On to Canaan!

Abram was seventy-five years old when he said his goodbyes to his brother Nahor and left Haran for Canaan. His route probably took him south through the Amorite-dominated town of Damascus, which arose sometime around 6000 BC and has been in existence ever since. Passing through Damascus, he would’ve entered the Transjordan, the area to the east of the Jordan River and known today as the East Bank. During the patriarchal period, the Transjordan was controlled by – you guessed it! – the Amorites. From there Abram’s party would’ve descended into the Jordan Valley, and only a river crossing kept them from entering the land of Canaan. 

The Jordan Valley stretches sixty-five miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, but the meandering Jordan River manages to cover 135 miles in the valley. The river is often shallow and filled with twenty-seven rapids, preventing travel down its course by boat. Calm parts of the river can be traversed shore-to-shore by boat, and shallow fords can be used if you don’t mind getting wet. Though there are fifty such fords along the river’s course, the crossing can nevertheless be treacherous due to swampy banks and muddy or rocky bottoms. 

As Abram and his party descended into the Jordan Valley, they entered a forbidding wilderness. The valley, well-watered by the Jordan River, was during the time of the patriarchs lush and covered with dense vegetation such as poplars, tamarisks, willows, cane, and reeds. Flooding happened often, and sometimes the flooding was so severe that the waters covered the trees. This area was home to wild animals such as lions, leopards, and jackals. Because of the dangerous environment, most people tended to avoid the area except when it was necessary to cross the river. No doubt Abram forced his caravan to put an extra oomph in their step as they navigated the paths through the thickets, keeping a wary eye out for leopards and lions. They would’ve likely crossed a ford on foot, splashing through the river and climbing up on the opposite bank – also densely forested and haunted by wild animals – to arrive in Canaan.  Today, the Jordan Valley is being turned into an agricultural paradise as engineers used the Jordan River to create irrigation channels and canals. If you visit the Jordan Valley today, it won’t be the forbidding wilderness it was during Abraham’s day. Below are some snapshots of the Jordan Valley today: