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1Isaac called Jacob, blessed him, and commanded him, “You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. 2Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father. Take a wife from there from the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. 3May God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a company of peoples, 4and give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you, that you may inherit the land where you travel, which God gave to Abraham.”

5Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Paddan Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.

6Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan Aram, to take him a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he gave him a command, saying, “You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;” 7and that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan Aram. 8Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan didn’t please Isaac, his father. 9So Esau went to Ishmael, and took, in addition to the wives that he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife.

10Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. 11He came to a certain place, and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. 12He dreamed and saw a stairway set upon the earth, and its top reached to heaven. Behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, “I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give the land you lie on to you and to your offspring. 14Your offspring will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your offspring, all the families of the earth will be blessed. 15Behold, I am with you, and will keep you, wherever you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken of to you.”

16Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and he said, “Surely Yahweh is in this place, and I didn’t know it.” 17He was afraid, and said, “How awesome this place is! This is none other than God’s house, and this is the gate of heaven.”

18Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on its top. 19He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 20Jacob vowed a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and clothing to put on, 21so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Yahweh will be my God, 22then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, will be God’s house. Of all that you will give me I will surely give a tenth to you.”

Person

Abraham

Also called Abram
Lived
1997 BC – 1821 BC (approximate)
Born
Ur of the Chaldees
Father Terah
Spouse HagarKeturahSarah
Children Ishmael (Son of Hagar)MedanMidianZimranShuahJokshanIshbakIsaac
Siblings Haran (brother of Abraham)Nahor (brother of Abraham)
 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

Copyright © 2026 Hershel Wayne House. All rights reserved.
 Biography | Hershel Wayne House

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

  1. See Genesis 12:1 for an explanation of God's covenant with Abraham. ↩︎

  2. Based on the website Mini-Biografias de Personajes Biblicos Web de Recursos Cristianos) (trans. Mini-Biographies of Biblical Characters, Christian Resources Web). ↩︎

Copyright © 2026 Hershel Wayne House. All rights reserved.
Person & place data: Theographic Bible Metadata by Robert Rouse (Viz.Bible), CC BY-SA 4.0.