Ver. 4. μετὰ τὸ ἀποθανεῖν: St. Stephen apparently falls into the same chronologi-
cal mistake as is made in the Pentateuch and by Philo (De Migr. Abrah., i., 463, Mang.). According to Gen. xi. 26 Terah lived seventy years and begat Abraham, Nahor, Haran; in xi. 32 it is said that Terah’s age was 205 years when he died in Haran; in xii. 4 it is said that Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. But since 70 +75 = 145, it would seem that Terah must have lived some sixty years after Abraham’s departure. Perhaps the circumstance that Terah’s death was mentioned, in Gen. xi. 32, before the command to Abraham to leave Haran, xii. 1, may be the cause of the mistake, as it was not observed that the mention of Terah’s death was anticipatory (so Alford). Blass seems to adopt a some- what similar view, as he commends the reading in Gigas: ‘“‘priusquam mortuus est pater ejus,” for the obedience of the patriarch, who did not hesitate to leave even his father, is opposed to the obsti- nacy of the Jewish people (see Blass, in loco). Other attempts at explanation are that reference is made to spiritual death of Terah, who is supposed to have relapsed into idolatry at Haran, a view which appears to have originated with the Rabbis, probably to get rid of the chronological difficulty (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb.; Meyer-Wendt, in loco), but for which there is absolutely no justification in the context; or that Abraham need not have been the eldest son of Terah, but that he was mentioned first because he was the most famous, a view adopted with more or less variation by Words- worth, Hackett, and recently by Felten (see too B.D.?, p. 16, note), but apparently in opposition to the authority of Ham- burger, who statesthat Terah was seventy years old when Abraham was born, that he was alive when Abraham departed at the age of seventy-five, being released from the duty of caring for his father by the more imperative command to obey the callof God. Lumby quotes from Midrash Rabbah, on Genesis, cap. 39, that God absolved Abraham from the care of his father, and yet, lest Abraham’s departure from Terah should lead others to claim the same relaxation of a commandment for themselves, Terah’s death is men- tioned i Holy Scripture before Abra--
3—6.