Haran

“ And arise, flee thou to Laban my brother to Haran.
44 And tarry with him a few days, until thy brother's fury turn away.
45 Until thy brother's anger turn away from thee, and he forget that which thou hast done to him. ”

“ Haran was situated about four hundred and fifty miles north-east from Beer-sheba. If the young man walked thirty miles a day, for he performed this long journey over the mountains and through the desert on foot, it took him fifteen days. No doubt, as he drew near the well, before the city, he was footsore, dust-covered, homesick, and greatly depressed in mind, for the occasion of his sudden departure and the anger of his brother Esau were still fresh in memory. ”

“ CHAPTER IX.
1 And Haran, the son of Terah, Abram's oldest brother, took a wife in those days.
2 Haran was thirty-nine years old when he took her; and the wife of Haran conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Lot.
3 And she conceived again and bare a daughter, and she called her name Milca; and she again conceived and bare a daughter, and she called her name Sarai.
4 Haran was forty-two years old when he begat Sarai, which was in the tenth year of the life of Abram ”

“ Then Satan appeared to Nimrod, and instructed him how to make a catapult which would throw stones to a distance, and by means of which Abraham and Haran could be projected into the midst of the fire.
Haran was undecided in his mind whether to worship Gcd or idols; sometimes he sided with Abraham, and sometimes with Terah. Now, the moment Haran was shot into the flames, his heart failed him, and he cried out that he would worship idols if his life were spared. But it was too late, he was burnt to ashes. But Abraham was unharmed. ”

“ When Jacob arrived at Haran, he saw a well in a field, and three flocks lying near it—because from that well they watered the flocks—and a great stone was laid upon the mouth of the well.
And Jacob said to the shepherds, “My brethren, whence are ye?”
They said, “From Haran are we.”
And he said, “Know you Laban, son of Nahor?” They answered, “We know him.”
And he said, “Hath he peace?”
They said, “Peace; and behold, Rachel, his daughter, cometh with the sheep.”
And he said, “Behold, the time of the day is great; it is not time to gather home the cattle; water the sheep.” ”

“ And when they came as far as the land of Haran they remained there, for it was exceedingly good land for pasture, and of sufficient extent for those who accompanied them.
2 And the people of the land of Haran saw that Abram was good and upright with God and men, and that the Lord his God was with him, and some of the people of the land of Haran came and joined Abram, and he taught them the instruction of the Lord and his ways; and these men remained with Abram in his house and they adhered to him. ”

“ We found that Ur lay on the lower Euphrates, where the ruins of Mugheir mark its site, that the oldest buildings in Babylonia belong to this place, and the oldest sovereigns on the Euphrates called themselves kings of Ur (p. 259) . From Ur Terah, according to the first text, journeyed with his family to Haran. [581] Haran lies in a wide plain surrounded by hills on the Skirtos, a tributary of the Belik, at no great distance from the Euphrates; it is the Carrhae of western writers. From Haran Abraham turns towards Canaan; but his brother's tribe remains in Haran. ”

“ He did not believe in the idols.
"I worship the sun by day and the moon and the stars by night," he said to Haran.
"There are times when you cannot see the sun by day, nor the moon and stars by night," said Haran, "but you can always have your idol with you."
This troubled little Abraham for a while, but one day he came running to his brother and said, "I have made a discovery. I shall no [92] longer worship the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. There must be some mighty power behind them that orders them to shine, the sun by day and the moon and stars by night. ”

“ Some think that Haran was in Chaldea, and so was still a part of Abram's country; or that he, having staid there five years, began to call it his country, and to take root there, till God let him know that this was not the place he was intended for. Note, If God loves us, and has mercy in store for us, he will not suffer us to take up our rest any where short of Canaan, but will graciously repeat his calls, till the good work begun, be performed, and our souls repose in God only.
In the call itself, we have a precept and a promise. ”

“ When Abraham attained the age of twenty years, his father Terah fell ill. He spoke as follows to his sons Haran and Abraham, "I adjure you by your lives, my sons, sell these two idols for me, for I have not enough money to meet our expenses." Haran executed the wish of his father, but if any one accosted Abraham, to buy an idol from him, and asked him the price, he would answer, "Three manehs," and then question in turn, "How old art thou?" "Thirty years," the reply would be. "Thou art thirty years of age, and yet thou wouldst worship this idol which I made but to-day?" ”

“ Terah hath begotten Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran hath begotten Lot; 28 and Haran dieth in the presence of Terah his father, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees.
29 And Abram and Nahor take to themselves wives; the name of Abram's wife is Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife is Milcah, daughter of Haran, father of Milcah, and father of Iscah. 30 And Sarai is barren—she hath no child. ”

“ Haran, more properly Charan, חרן, is a place in north-western Mesopotamia, the ruins of which may still be seen, a full day's journey to the south of Edessa (Gr. Κάῤῥαι, Lat. Carrae) , where Crassus fell when defeated by the Parthians. It was a leading settlement of the Ssabians, who had a temple there dedicated to the moon, which they traced back to Abraham. There Terah died at the age of 205, or sixty years after the departure of Abram for Canaan; for, according to Gen 11:26, Terah was seventy years old when Abram was born, and Abram was seventy-five years old when he arrived in Canaan. ”

“ Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants.—The preachers of New Thought, Theosophy, Christian Science and other phases of Spiritism, self-styled, strong and enlightened (Haran) , set up and distinguished (Canneh) , and believers in delightful delusions (Eden, delight) , are in captivity (Sheba, captivity) to Satan, and really without hope of Kingdom honors (Chilmad, level, plain, without mountains) . ”

“ Why, then, did the Scripture not mention him, when Terah with his family went forth out of the Chaldean nation and dwelt in Haran, since it mentions that he took with him not only Abraham his son, but also Sarah his daughter-in-law, and Lot his grandson? ”

“ Maani was born in Mesopotamia, in order that [Pg 291] that country, within whose bounds, some expositors believe the garden of Paradise was planted, might be the happy spot which had produced two eminent Rachaels; for it is certain, that Haran, where the beloved wife of Jacob was born, was a place of Mesopotamia. The fame of the nobleness of her genius, the vivacity of her understanding, and the beauty of her person, had been blazoned abroad when she was very young; this excited the curiosity of Pedro de la Valle, and he was desirous of seeing a lady, of whom he had heard so many encomiums. ”

“ But the heathenism of the portion of the family living at or near Haran is clearly proved by the matter of the teraphim, which Rachel stole from her father Laban. It is true that they are generally regarded as figures used for the purpose of magic, but as Laban himself calls them his “gods,” there is every probability that they were worshipped as such. It is to be regarded as simply an indication of the difficulty which most dwellers in the midst of polytheism in those days must have found in dissociating themselves from the practices of those with whom they came daily into contact. ”

“ Concerning the journey of Abraham, there is naturally nothing to be said, the Bible narrative merely stating that Terah and his family migrated to Haran. The only thing worth noting is, that the distance they had to travel was sufficiently great—about 560 miles from Uriwa (Mugheir) , and about 420 miles from Babylon, from the neighbourhood of which the family must have started if the Ur mentioned in Genesis be the Uri or Ura of the inscriptions, which was equivalent to the land of Akkad. ”

“ After this Nabonidos carried out the will of the gods. His “vast army” was summoned from Gaza on the one side to the Persian Gulf on the other, and set to work to restore the temple of Haran, which had been built three centuries before by the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser II, and subsequently repaired by Assur-bani-pal.
[pg 143] Two statements will be noticed in the inscription which will appear strange to students of ancient history. Cyrus is called “the young servant” of Merodach, the patron-deity of Babylon, and “king of Anzan,” or Elam, not of Persia. ”

“ Some think that love, strong, true, and self-sacrificing, is not to be found in the Orient; but the story of Charan, which comes down four hundred years and more, proves the contrary, for it still has the fresh, sweet flavour of a romance of yesterday ”

“ The modern Van.]
[Footnote 4: Parthia.]
[Footnote 5: This refers to his assuming the eponymy a second time after completing a reign of thirty years. At this period the Assyrian kings assumed the eponymy on first ascending the throne, and the fact that Shalmaneser took the same office again in his thirty-first year shows that a cycle of thirty years was in existence.]
[Footnote 6: The Gozan of the Old Testament.]
[Footnote 7: Haran or Harran in the Old Testament; called Carrhæ by the classical geographers.]
[Footnote 8: Andia was afterward incorporated into Assyria by Sargon.] ”

“ For Edrisi calls the place Faran Ahrun and Istachri Taran, which should doubtless be Faran (Cf. Ritter, Asien, Bd. VIII. S. 170 ff.) . Macrizi also calls the place Birkit Faran (Ritter, Sinaihalbinsel, p. 64.) Probably the harbour region of Pharan was called after the city, though it was somewhat distant; and the legend, so very inapposite here, concerning Pharaoh’s ruin, only connected itself with Faraûn by a confusion with Faran. ”

“ Nahor, out of whose family both Isaac and Jacob had their wives. (2.) Haran, the father of Lot, of whom it is here said (v. 28) that he died before his father Terah. Note, Children cannot be sure that they shall survive their parents; for death does not go by seniority, taking the eldest first. The shadow of death is without any order, Job x. ”

“ The accompanying national name defines the scene; for on the one side בּוּז and עוּץ, according to Gen 22:21, are the sons of Nahor, Abraham's brother, who removed with him (though not at the same time) from Ur Casdim to Haran, therefore by family Aramaeans; on the other side, בּוּז, Jer 25:23, appears as an Arab race, belonging to the קצוּצי פאה (comp. Jer 9:25; Jer 49:32) , i.e., to the Arabs proper, who cut the hair of their heads short all round (περιτρόχαλα, Herodotus iii. 8) , because wearing it long was accounted as disgraceful (vid., Tebrâzi in the Hamâsa, p. 459, l. 10ff.) . ”

“ Verses 12-13Verses 12-13 2Ki 19:12-13 “Have the gods of the nations delivered them?” אתם is not a pronoun used in anticipation of the object, which follows in וגו גּוזן (Thenius) , but refers to כּל־הארצות in 2Ki 19:11, a specification of which is given in the following enumeration. Gozan may be the province of Gauzanitis in Mesopotamia, but it may just as well be the country of Gauzania on the other side of the Tigris (see at 2Ki 17:6) . The combination with Haran does not force us to the first assumption, since the list is not a geographical but a historical one. ”

“ From all this it is clear that the place Pharan of Ptolemy is identical with the recognised Pharan in the Wadi Firân, and the φοινικών of Artemidorus and Strabo. And it is less to be doubted that also the Pharan of Eusebius (s. v. Ῥαφιδίμ) and Jerome, which is expressly (s. v. φαράν) called a city (πόλις, oppidum) , and is placed at the distance of three days’ journey from Aila,—was the city in Wadi Firân, although by a confusion with the Biblical desert of Paran it is added, that the Israelites had returned by this Pharan on their return from Sinai (c. f. Ritter, p. 740) . ”

“ The Châran Banjâras of the Dakkhin. 3. “Of the Châran tribe the Râthaur family,” says Mr. Cumberlege, “is the strongest, and holds sway in Berâr, for all the Dakkhin is parcelled out among different Banjâra tribes, and no camp (tânda) trades or grazes cattle beyond its own border. The Chârans evidently came to the Dakkhin with Âsaf Jân, sometimes called Âsa Khân, the Wazîr Shâhjahân ”

“ In Pyong-an the Governor’s son, when he found that he had lost Charan, had Charan’s mother imprisoned and all the relatives, but after a month or so, when the search proved futile, he gave up the matter and let them go.
Charan, at last happy with her chosen one, said one day to him, “You, a son of the gentry, for the sake of a dancing-girl have given up parents and home to live in this hidden corner of the hills. It is a matter, too, that touches your filial piety, this leaving your father and mother in doubt as to whether you are alive or not. They ought to know. ”

“ Harun, king of the Persians who held well-nigh all the East if we except India, was in such hearty sympathy with the king that he valued his good will more than that of all the kings and princes in the world, thinking him alone worthy to be honoured by his regard and munificence. ”