6. His nativity and education was in Ur of the Chaldees, Gen. xi. 28, 31. This place is said to be “on the other side of the flood,’ 39, or “ the river,” Josh. xxiv. 2; that is, from the land of Canaan, on the other side of the great river Huphrates eastward. It was so also of Tigris, on the east of Aram Naharaim, or Mesopo- tamia properly so called (which is not insisted on), because Abraham came over Tigris unto Haran with his father Terah. “He came,” saith Stephen, “out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran,” Acts vii. 4. He says, indeed, that before he came unto Charran he dwelt in Mesopotamia, verse 2; wherein also Haran lay,
452 STATE AND ORDINANCES OF THE CHURCH [EXERC. XIX.
for the name of Mesopotamia was given of old unto all the adjacent regions, even unto. the Persian Sea. So doth Pliny evidently, lib. vi. cap. xxvi, “Mesopotamia tota Assyriorum fuit vicatim dispersa, preter Babylona et Ninum ;’—“ All Mesopotamia belonged unto the Assyrians, and consisted of scattered villages, unless it were Baby- lonia and the country about Nineveh.” And again, “ Reliqua pars Mesopotamie Assyrieeque Babylonia appellata est.” So that he equals Mesopotamia with Assyria; which how great a tract of those regions it comprehended is manifest from Ptolemy, Strabo, and others. Eupolemus in Eusebius, Preeparat. Evang. lib. ix. placeth Oipiz, Ura, in Babylonia; and there also Pliny mentioneth Ura upon the banks of Euphrates, lib. v. cap. xxiv., “ Fertur Euphrates usque ad Uram.” But this seems not to be the Ur where Abraham dwelt; nor was there any reason that in a design for Canaan he should remove from any part of Babylonia upon Euphrates unto Haran. It is more likely to be the place mentioned by Ammianus, lib. xv., where he says that the Romans in six days came from Cor- duene in Armenia, “ad Ur nomine, Persicum castellum,”—“ unto Ur, a Persian castle”’ And this he placeth between Nisibis and Tigris, and was not far from the place where it is probably supposed that the ark rested after the flood, the family of Eber keeping their first seat, not accompanying the D187 ‘23, or “sons of men,” Gen. x1. 2-5, those wicked apostates who went from the east to find a place to fix the seat of their rebellion against God. Broughton contendeth that Ur was in the vale of the Chaldeans,—that is, in Babylonia,—a very little way, or some few miles from Haran, averring that Stephen cannot otherwise be defended, who affirms that he was in Mesopo- tamia before he dwelt in Haran. But as this defence of Stephen is needless, seeing, as we have manifested, he took Mesopotamia in a — large sense, as others did also, giving the same extent unto it with Assyria, the denomination arising from the most eminent and fruit- ful of ‘these regions; so the removal of a little way or a few miles answereth not that description which the Holy Ghost gives us of this journey: Gen. xi. 31, “And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran,..... and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.” Their design was to go unto Canaan. And as the Ura which was in Babylonia was situated on this side of Euphrates, as Pliny testifies,—so that Abraham could not go from thence unto Canaan by Haran but he must twice needlessly pass with all his family over Euphrates,—so the expression of their journeying to Haran will not suit unto any imaginary Ur within a few miles of it. Nor is it of any weight that it is called “Ur of the Chaldees,” whose proper seat was in Babylonia, and extended not much farther east- ward; seeing if the Chaldees, as is most probable, were called Chas-
SECT. 7, 8.] BEFORE THE GIVING OF THE LAW. 453
dim, as they are constantly, from awa, “ Chesed,” Gen. xxii. 22, the son of Nahor, the brother of Abraham, there must of necessity be allowed an historical prolepsis in the words, and so that is called “Ur of the Chaldees” from whence the Chaldees were afterwards to have their original, who in time possessed Babylonia and the parts adjacent.
7, Whilst Abraham lived with his progenitors in Ur, there is no doubt but he was, with them, infected with much false worship and idolatry ; for so Joshua affirms expressly that they served D8 DION, chap. xxiv. 2, even those whose worship, God afterwards prohibited in the first precept of the law, DN DYiON I ny N? ;—* There shall not be unto thee other gods;” those, or such as those, whom they served beyond the flood. “Other gods” are all false gods. The Jews’ imagination about the discovery made by Abraham of the true God, his renunciation of all idolatry thereon, with the breaking of his father’s images, and his being cast for that cause by Nimrod into the fire, all about the forty-fourth year of his age, I have considered and exploded elsewhere. And all these figments, with that of Haran’s being consumed by fire in the sight of his father, they wire- draw from the supposed signification of the name 7ix, which they would have to signify “fire,” Gen. xi. 28; but as, where it relates unto the Chaldeans (“Ur of the Chaldees”) it is apparently the name of a place, a town, or country, so it rather signifies a valley than fire. And these words, Isa. xxiv. 15, 7)7) 1733 DMNS2 f2~Y, which we translate in the text, “Wherefore glorify ye the Lorn in the fires,’ may be better read, as in the margin, “in the valleys;” which better answers unto the following words, “ And the name of the Lorp God of Israel in the isles of the sea.” At what year of his age he left Ur with his father is not expressed, but it is apparent that it was towards the latter end of the life of Terah, even after the death of Haran his eldest son, and that Nahor and Abraham were married to Milcah and Iscah his daughters, and Sarah had continued barren some remarkable space of time, Gen. xi. 28-32.