Abraham’s original name, Abram, meant “exalted father” or “my father is exalted.” God promised Abram that he would be the father of a great nation that would bless all peoples (Gen 12:1-3). This passage is a prologue to the set of passages that together form the Abrahamic Covenant (See 15:1-21). In 17:5 God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude.” God’s promises are highlighted here, that from a man with no heir, He would from Abraham’s own loins be the progenitor of a great multitude of people devoted to God. God’s covenant with Abraham was sealed by circumcision, and eventually Isaac, a son of promise (Gal 4:28) was given to the one who ever after was to be known as “the father of all them that believe” (Rom 4:11).
Biography
| Hershel Wayne House
The man Abram appears suddenly on the scene in the book of Genesis. He was born in the area around the modern Persian Gulf at Ur of the Chaldeans. According to Genesis 11:26, 27, his father was Terah (Gen 11:26, 27), and married the daughter of his father by someone other than his own mother (Gen 11:29). After being visited by the true God, who called him to leave his home in Ur and go to a place that God would lead him (Gen 12:1-3; Josh 24:3; Neh 9:7; Isa 51:2; Acts 7:2, 3), he left his home in Ur, along with his father Terah, his wife, and other relatives, and moved to Haran (Gen 31; Neh 9:7; Acts 7:4). After residing in Haran for a period of time, Abram then moved to Canaan (Gen 12:4-6; Acts 7:4).
When Abram was initially called by God, God told him that the land to which he was being led would be given land from the river Euphrates, which includes the land Canaan (Gen 21:1, 7; 15:7-21; Ezek 33:24). Upon coming to Canaan, Abram moved to Bethel (house of God) (Gen 12:8), near the location of Ai, conquered later by Joshua. Between these cities, Abram and Lot looked toward the city of Sodom and the cities of the plain.
Due to a famine in Canaan, Abram went to Egypt, where he revealed some weakness in his character. First, God had given Abram a promise of the land from which he left to go to Egypt, but he failed to trust in God's care for him and his family. Second, upon arriving in Egypt he identified Sarai as his sister, rather than his wife, which in one way was accurate since she was the daughter of Terah, the father of Abram, but his subterfuge caused a serious problem, in that Abram's wife was apparently attractive so he was taken into the home of the Pharaoh, who provided much wealth to Abram (Gen 12:10-20; 26:1).
Despite all of this, Abraham was chosen by God to be the father of many nations (Gen 12:3). We discover in Genesis 15 that the covenant he made with Abraham was unilateral and unconditional. His success would be based on the work of God.
Short Outline of Abraham's Life
Biblical verses that deal with Abraham, the Father of Nations
We first encounter Abraham (father of many nations) as Abram (great father) in Genesis 11:26-31. He was the son of Terah, brother of Nahor and Haran, and uncle of Lot. Abram's brother Haran died while Abram was still in Ur of the Chaldees (Gen 11:28), where he also married Sarai, his half-sister. We discover toward the end of Genesis 11 that his father Terah left Ur, and went to the land of Canaan, via a city named Haran, where Terah died.
The story of Abraham becomes important in chapter 12, in which we are introduced to important biblical characters, locations, and events that set the stage for the remainder of the Bible. Yahweh came to Abram and commanded him to go to a land that He would show him. In this passage, Yahweh sets forth a unilateral and unconditional covenant, in which He promised to make from him a great nation, make his name great, and through him bless all of the families of the earth.1
"Abraham (Abram) was first of the patriarchs, father of Isaac and Ishmael, grandfather of Jacob and the traditional ancestor of the Jewish people. Abraham (originally Abram, which means "exalted father") came from Ur in Mesopotamia. His father, Terah, took him (with his wife, Sarah, and his nephew, Lot) to Haran. God called Abraham to leave this new home and to find another home elsewhere in Canaan. After a brief stay in Egypt, Abraham settled near Hebron where he became involved in a local political quarrel when Lot was taken prisoner by an alliance of four eastern chieftains. Abraham launched a successful attack against this confederacy and on his victorious return encountered the mysterious Melchizedek, king of Salem, to whom he gave a tenth of all the spoil he had taken in the battle.
For many years of their marriage, he and Sarah were childless, but God assured Abraham that he would eventually become the father of a great nation. Sarah disbelieved and persuaded Abraham to beget a child by her maid, Hagar, who bore him his first son, Ishmael. When Abraham was ninety-nine years old, God appeared to him, and instituted with him a covenant of circumcision, giving him the new name of Abraham (meaning "father of a multitude") and told him that a son, to be named Isaac was shortly to be born to Sarah. When the boy was in his childhood, God ordered Abraham to take him up to a mountain in the land of Moriah and offer him up as a sacrificial victim. Abraham prepared to do so, but was prevented at the last moment from carrying out the sacrifice, and told that he would be blessed for his faithfulness in being ready to offer up his son.
When Sarah died Abraham bought the plot of ground (the field of Ephron in Machpelah) that became the burial place for many generations of his descendants. He subsequently made arrangements for the marriage of Isaac, and took another wife, Keturah, who bore him Zimran, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. At the age of one hundred and seventy five, Abraham died and was buried in Machpelah.
The principal narrative of the part of Genesis dealing with Abraham's history is interrupted in various places by other stories involving the patriarch. These include the parallel stories of his sojourns in Egypt and in Gerar. On both occasions Abraham lied about his relations with Sarah, jeopardising the fulfilment of God's promise (as both Pharaoh and Abimelech intended to take Sarah for themselves), while protecting himself. Both times God intervened to save him from the consequences of his deception. In another story we read of Abraham's intercession on behalf of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were destroyed for their wickedness."2
See Genesis 12:1 for an explanation of God's covenant with Abraham. ↩︎
1These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. 2Moses called to all Israel, and said to them:
Your eyes have seen all that Yahweh did in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; 3the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4But Yahweh has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day. 5I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your sandals have not grown old on your feet. 6You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am Yahweh your God. 7When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, and we struck them. 8We took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites. 9Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do. 10All of you stand today in the presence of Yahweh your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, 11your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who are in the middle of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water, 12that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God, and into his oath, which Yahweh your God makes with you today, 13that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he spoke to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 14Neither do I make this covenant and this oath with you only, 15but with those who stand here with us today before Yahweh our God, and also with those who are not here with us today 16(for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the middle of the nations through which you passed; 17and you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which were among them); 18lest there should be among you man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away today from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison; 19and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” to destroy the moist with the dry. 20Yahweh will not pardon him, but then Yahweh’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book will fall on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the sky. 21Yahweh will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.
22The generation to come—your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which Yahweh has made it sick, 23that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath. 24Even all the nations will say, “Why has Yahweh done this to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?”
25Then men will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they didn’t know and that he had not given to them. 27Therefore Yahweh’s anger burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book. 28Yahweh rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.”
29The secret things belong to Yahweh our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.