Genesis Chapter 11 Part 3: Terah Set Out for Canaan and Settled in Haran

Most people read the genealogy at the end of Genesis 11 and skip it.

They should not.

Because buried inside this genealogy are four details that set up everything that happens in the rest of the book of Genesis.

A son who dies before his father in Ur of the Chaldeans.

A wife introduced with one devastating sentence.

Sarai was barren. She had no child.

A father who set out for Canaan and stopped in Haran.

And a death notice that ends the chapter.

Terah died in Haran.

Not in Canaan. Not in the place he set out for. In the place where he stopped. Two hundred and five years old. And he never made it.

That is one of the saddest lines in the book of Genesis. Not because Terah was a wicked man. But because he aimed at the right destination and settled short of it. He started the journey someone else would have to finish.

And that is the lesson most of us need more than we realize.

In this lesson we cover

Why the genealogy from Shem to Abram is not a speed bump to skip but the narrowing lens of divine election moving relentlessly toward one man in one city in one generation

The declining lifespans from Shem at 600 years down toward the lifespans we recognize today and what four possible explanations tell us about the post-flood world

Why shorter lifespans are not just a biological fact but a theological invitation to number our days and not waste them the way the pre-flood world did

Haran dying in the presence of his father in Ur of the Chaldeans and why this is the first named death of a son before his father in the post-flood world and what it tells us about the world we actually live in

Ur of the Chaldeans confirmed by Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavations beginning in 1922 including the massive ziggurat of the moon god Nanna, the Royal Cemetery with its extraordinary artifacts, and a population of tens of thousands

Joshua 24:2 telling us that Terah’s family served other gods in Ur and why the call of Abraham is not God rescuing someone from primitive darkness but calling someone out of the most sophisticated pagan civilization of the ancient world

Why Moses places Sarai’s barrenness in Genesis 11 before God makes His promise in Genesis 12 and what that literary placement tells us about the kind of God we are about to meet

The pattern of the barren woman in Scripture from Sarah to Rebekah to Rachel to Hannah to Elizabeth and why biology never gets the final word over the promise of God

Three reasons why Terah may have stopped in Haran and what each one reveals about the difference between aiming at the right destination and actually arriving there

Why Terah’s death was not a tragedy that delayed God’s plan but a step in it and why the old world had to end before the new one could begin

The three unsolved problems Genesis 11 hands to Genesis 12 and how God answers all three simultaneously in the first verse of the next chapter

How archaeology has confirmed the patriarchal narratives including personal names attested in ancient documents, customs confirmed in the Nuzi tablets, and slave prices that match exactly what Genesis records

Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 confirming every detail of Genesis 11 and what he says about when the call to Abraham actually came

Abraham in Hebrews 11 going out not knowing where he was going and why the faith Genesis 11 is preparing us to see is the most important faith in the Old Testament

What it means that the entire chapter of Genesis 11 moves from the pride of Babel to the death of a father in an unfinished journey and why that movement is the perfect setup for the most important call in the Bible

Human ambition reaches for heaven and ends in confusion. God works through barrenness, grief, and unfinished journeys and ends with a name that will bless every nation on earth.

Genesis 11 ends with a dead man in Haran who meant to go further.

Genesis 12 begins with the God who calls the next man to finish what the last one could not.

Watch the full lesson at the link below and share it with someone who has ever stopped short of where God was calling them to go.

Previous lesson   Genesis 11:5 through 9   The Lord Came Down

Next lesson   Genesis 12:1 through 3   The Call   Go and I Will Make

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And welcome back to our study. So far in Genesis chapter 11, we've watched the Tower of Babel rise and fall. We've heard the come let us of human pride get answered by the come let us of the divine sovereignty of God. We watched God descend to see a tower that was supposed to reach him. We watched languages scatter a people who refused to be scattered. And we saw the name Babel remembered not as the gate of God, but as confusion. And now the focus moves again to the one man through whom God would build the name that actually lasts. In Genesis chapter 11, verses 10 through 32 is a genealogy. And like every genealogy in Genesis, it is more than just a list of names. It is deeply theological. It's a theological argument. This genealogical argument makes four arguments simultaneously. It shows the world moving from the universal to a particular person. It shows human lifespans declining from the post-flood generations towards something more like what we know now, to our own lifespans. It introduces three names that will dominate the rest of Genesis. And it ends not with a triumphant arrival in the promised land, but with a family that was stopped just short. Terah set out for Canaan and settled in Haran. And then Tara died. And then something new, something the world has never seen before, is about to begin. And before we read, I feel I have to give this disclaimer again. Some of these names are really hard to pronounce. And in my research, I've heard them pronounced multiple ways. So again, please be nice in your comments through this as we go. Just remember, I am a southerner, so we'll see what happens. So let's read the text in Genesis chapter 11, verses 10 through 32. And it says, These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arkbashad two years after the flood. And Shem lived 500 years after he became the father of Arkbashad, and he had other sons and daughters. Arkbashad lived 35 years and became the father of Shelah. And Arkbashad lived 403 years after he became the father of Shelah, and he had other sons and daughters. Shelah lived 30 years and became the father of Eber, and Shelah lived 403 years after he became the father of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters. Eber lived 34 years and became the father of Peleg, and Eber lived 430 years after he became the father of Pelag, and he had other sons and daughters. Teleg lived 30 years and became the father of Ru. And Peleg lived 209 years after he became the father of Ru, and he had other sons and daughters. Relu lived 32 years and became the father of Sirog. And Ru lived 207 years after he became the father of Sirog and had other sons and daughters. Seerog lived 30 years and became the father of Nahor. Seerog lived 200 years after he became the father of Nahor, and he had other sons and daughters. Nahor lived 29 years and became the father of Terah. And Nahor lived 119 years and became the father of Terah, and he had other sons and daughters. Terah lived 70 years and he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives from themselves. The name of Abraham's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milkah. And the daughter of Haran and the father of Milka is Iskah. Ishah. Let's go with that. Sarai was barren, and she had no child. Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandsons, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son, his son Abram's wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan, and they went as far as Haran and settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haram. Now these 23 verses, we see a lot of things happening. We see ten generations, declining lifespans, three sons introduced, one death in Ur, one barren wife, one journey that begun and then was stopped short. And then what we see is that the old world ends and the new one is about to begin. Genesis chapter 11, verse 10 opens with the seventh Toledo in the book of Genesis, where it says, These are the records of the generations of Shem. The Toledo formula has appeared six times before this. Remember when we see that? We see the generations of that starting a new part of the story. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 4, we see the heavens and the earth. In Genesis chapter 5, verse 1, we see the toledot of Adam in Genesis chapter 6, verse 9, of Noah, in Genesis chapter 10, verse 1, again the sons of Noah. And then in Genesis chapter 10, verse 1, it goes through that list of Shem, Ham, and Japhet. And then Terah specifically pointed out in Genesis chapter 11, verse 27. And now Shem gets his own dedicated Toledo. Even though Shem appeared in the previous chapter in Genesis chapter 10, Moses gives him a second focused genealogy that narrows the lens from the 70 nations to the one line that will matter most. Notice the structure of Genesis from chapter 1 until now becoming progressively narrower. In other words, it started off with a large overarching view, and now it's narrowed down to one family. We began with the whole of creation, and then we moved to the fall, and then we moved to humanity, and then we moved to Noah's family, and then chapter 10, the 70 nations, all the way down to a single line within a single family, moving relentlessly toward one man in one city in one generation. And this narrowing is not accidental, it is the structure of God narrowing his focus to the vessel through whom he will bless the entire world, all of the nations. Now, before we look at the theological meaning of the genealogy, let me lay out the lifespan so you can see the pattern that's happening here very clearly. To start with, you have uh Shem, 600 years old, you have Sheila, 433 years old, Eber, 464, Peleg, 239, Ru or Reu, 239 years, Sarah, 230 years, Nahor, 148 years, Terah, 205 years, and then we see Abraham, and we'll see in Genesis 25, live to be 175 years old. Now you compare that to the pre-flood patriarchs, who were anywhere between 950 years down to 365 years with Enoch before he was taken. But 900 year lifespans were common, and now you see those declining from 600 to 500 to 400 down to 100. The contrast is stark. The pre-flood patriarchs live for 900 years. The post-flood patriarchs began declining rapidly toward lifespans that we recognize today. So we ask the question: why the lifespans decline? And the the declining lifespans after the flood have generated significant discussion among multiple scholars. And there's several explanations that have been proposed that I've gone over. The first one, and kind of common, is uh what's called the vapor canopy. Some creation scientists have proposed that the pre-flood world was protected by a vapor canopy, a dense layer of water vapor in the upper atmosphere that filtered harmful radiation and created a like a greenhouse type environment conducive to extraordinary longevity of life. And when the floodgates of heaven opened in Genesis chapter 7, that canopy collapsed. And without its protection, the post-flood generations were exposed to radiation levels that dramatically shortened lifespans. That's explanation number one. The second possibility that some lean on is what's called the dietary or environmental changes explanation. In Genesis chapter 9, verse 3, you see that permission to eat meat was given. And this represented a significant change in the human diet. And some scholars suggest that the effect of those dietary changes combined with significant environmental disruption from the flood contributed to the shortening of lifespans over the generations. Explanation number three is that the flood reduced the human population to eight people. And modern genetics understands that population bottlenecks can introduce what's called genetic vulnerabilities that accumulate over successive generations. The rapid shortening of lifespans after the flood may reflect the genetic consequences of that bottleneck working themselves out over time. Now, explanation number four is kind of a little bit more where Eileen was just called the providential appointment of God. Some theologians, including people like Augustine, understood the shortening of lifespan simply as God adjusting the design for human life to fit the new post-flood world. The long pre-flood lifespans serve the purpose of populating the earth in the early generations. The shorter post-flood lifespans reflect a new order appropriate to the new world. Now, all four explanations may contain some truth, and there are scholars who lean on all four sides. But the pattern is unmistakable, and that is that the world is changing. The post-flood world is settling into something that looks more and more like the world we know now. Now, here is a theological point worth pressing forward on. The pre-flood world had men who lived nearly a thousand years. They had time, enormous amounts of time, to do what? To repent, to turn, to walk with God. And the pre-flood world squandered every year of it. The post-flood world has shorter lifespans, and shorter lifespans create a higher level of urgency. It's in Psalm chapter 90, verse 10, it says, As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years, or if due to strength, 80 years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away. Moses, who is believed to be the writer of Psalm 90, as well as the entire book of Genesis, understood the shortening of human life as a call to the number of our days. Psalm 90, verse 12 says, So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. That means the pre-flood world had nearly unlimited days and they wasted them. And the post-flood world has far fewer. That leads us to consider an important thought. And that is what we do with those days in our surrendering to the Lord. The question of the declining lifespans asked it asked the same question that should ask us today. What are you doing with the days you have left? Are you serving the Lord and building his kingdom? Are you focused on building your own kingdom because you think that somehow you have unlimited dates? Now it's also important to see that the genealogy of all of this in Genesis chapter 11 has been moving into a single family line. Verse has been going father to son, one name at a time, ten generations from Shem. And then the verse broadens in verse 26. Terah lived 70 years and became the father of Abraham and Nahor and Haran. Three sons you see here. And then the genealogy goes into a single thread. Now it opens into three before narrowing again to that one thread that we're going to see for the rest of Genesis, which is Abraham. Notice here that Abraham was listed first. Again, this does not necessarily mean that he was the oldest. Remember, as we've talked about in previous lessons, that in Genesis, the more significant son is often listed first, regardless of the birth order. So Isaac, for example, was listed before Ishmael in significance, even though Ishmael was older. Jacob was listed before Esau, even though Esau was older, because Jacob was more in line with God's purpose. And Abraham being listed first among Terah's sons because Abraham is why the genealogy exists. The whole genealogy is building up to Abraham. Verse 28, it introduces us to the first specific death named in the post-flood world outside of the genealogies that we read through. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth in Ur of the Chaldeans. He died. He died before his father, in the presence of his father. And this is the first time in the entire post-flood narrative that a son dies before his father. Every other time we read it, it would have the father die, and then it would go on through the son's genealogy, and the son would die. But Moses records it with uh with really a devastating simplicity. He died in the presence of his father. There's no commentary, no explanation, no theological lecture. It's just the fact and the weight of this fact. And you think through this, what he's saying is for the first time that's recorded that we know of, a father watched his son die. In a world where fathers were supposed to go first and we're living hundreds and hundreds of years, the world of Genesis 11 is more like the world we recognize. The world where children sometimes unfortunately die before their parents, where grief is unpredictable and often arrives without warning, where the penalty of Genesis chapter 3 falls into the wrong order sometimes. And yet the story doesn't stop there. The narrative absorbs this grief and moves forward because the God of Genesis has never let the death of one of his people be the end of the story. In fact, most of the time it's the beginning of the story. And so, because of that, let's go on our lesson when we move to Urb, the Chaldeans, because this is all pointing forth to Abram. Remember that, the world where Abram is coming from. Now, this is not a vague mythological location. It's one of the most thoroughly excavated cities in all of the ancient world. A British archaeologist with the last name of Wooley excavated Urb beginning in 1922. And let me tell you what he found there. In 1922, through the excavations that happened, they found a massive ziggurat dedicated to the moon god Nana, which is partially still standing today. There were royal tombs with extraordinary amounts of gold and artifacts. There was evidence of a highly literate society with extensive record keeping. There was evidence of a population that was estimated to be within the tens of thousands. And then there was evidence of a great death pit where court officials were buried alive with deceased royalty. And so Ur was not a primitive village. According to all records and all of archaeology, it was one of the most advanced cities in the ancient world. And it was deeply pagan. Joshua chapter 24, verse 2 tells us this explicitly. And so you go back to the findings of the 1922 excavations, the moon god Nana, whose Ziggurat dominated the city, would have been one that Abraham's grandparents and parents worshiped and bowed down to. You have the pantheon of Sumerian deities whose worship permeated every aspect of life in that world. And so when God calls Abraham out of Ur, he's not calling him out of primitive ignorance. He is calling him from a sophisticated, uh, thoroughly pagan civilization. The call of Abraham is not rescuing someone from the dark, it is calling someone out of the most enlightened darkness in the ancient world. Then in verse 30, we see his wife Sarai introduced for the first time, introduced as barren. Verse 30 in the English is six words. In the Hebrew, it's a little bit longer and there's a little bit more depth there. And it's one of the most carefully placed sentences in the entire book. Sarai was barren, she had no child. And so Moses introduces her with one defining fact. It's not by her beauty, though, Genesis chapter 12 establishes that she was beautiful later, not by her character, though we'll see her faith test it over and over. The first thing that Moses tells her about, tells us about her is that she cannot have children. He says it twice. First, she's barren, and second, she has no child, in the same sentence. And this is not accidental repetition. Moses is making sure in this writing that we feel the weight of it before we read another word. And here's the theological reason that Moses introduces Sarai this way. In Genesis chapter 12, the very next chapter, God is going to make Abraham a promise. I will make you into a great nation. And a great nation requires descendants. Descendants require children, and children require a man who has a wife who can bear the children. And Moses has just told us that Abram's wife is barren and she has no children. And so the promise of God and the biological reality of Sarai are in direct conflict. Before the promise is even given, Moses has already set up the impossibility that it will have to overcome. This is the literary and theological genius of Genesis chapter 11, verse 30. This is not a footnote. This is set up for the entire Abraham narrative. God is about to make a promise of a great nation to a man whose wife cannot bear children. And the reader knows that before Abraham does, which means from the very first verse of Genesis chapter 12, we are reading the story of a God who specializes in the impossible. And I want you to catch this. Barrenness in Scripture is never the end of the story. It's always the setup. Sarah was barren and she bore Isaac. Rebekah was barren and she bore Jacob and Esau. Rachel was barren and she bore Joseph and Benjamin. Hannah was barren and she bore Samuel. Elizabeth was barren and she bore John the Baptist. And so the barren womb in Scripture is the place where God most clearly demonstrates that the promises that he gives do not depend on human ability, but they depend on him fulfilling his promises. And we know he is faithful. In Isaiah chapter 54, verse 1, we read, Shout for joy, O barren one. You have you who have borne no child, break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not tried travailed, for the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous than the sons of the married woman, says the Lord. The barren one will have more children than the married woman. That's what Isaiah 54 is saying. Because when God makes a promise, biology never gets the last word. Now, here's an apologetic significance of Genesis chapter 11, verse 30 that we need to look at. Because a skeptic might say the promise to Abraham was easy to fulfill. We'll say, well, Abraham had a young wife, and of course she didn't have children yet, but she was still young enough. And so of course she had children later. Well, Moses answers that objection before it's ever raised. He didn't just say she has no child, he said she was barren. And so the promise was not fulfilled through natural means. It was fulfilled through supernatural intervention, which means the credit belongs entirely to the one who made the promise. And this is the consistent testimony of the New Testament about how Abraham's faith operated. If you look at Romans chapter 4, verse 19 through 21, it says, that's Romans 4, 19 through 21. It says, without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb, yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what God had promised, he was able also to. Form. He contemplated the deadness of Sarah's womb. And he did not waver. That faith was only possible because the promise came from God. And the barrenness of Genesis chapter 11, verse 30, is the reason that that faith was necessary. Now, we come to the final scene of Genesis chapter 11, and it's one of the strangest scenes in all of the book, to be honest with you, when you really break it down. It says Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai's daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan, and they went as far as Heran and settled there. So they set out for Canaan. Terah took his family and set out for Canaan. This is not Abram. This is Terah, the father's leading the journey. And his destination was Canaan, the very land that God promised to Abram in Genesis chapter 12, the very next chapter. And so we have to ask questions: was Terah already receiving some type of divine call? Did he know something about Canaan that drew him there? And all honestly, the text doesn't really tell us. It simply records that he set out for Canaan and then he stopped in Haran. Now Haran is the name of the son who died in Ur. It's the city of northern Mesopotamia, which is modern Southeast Turkey. And they settled there. The journey to Canaan became a settlement in a different land in Haran. The destination was only reached partially. So here's the question: why do they stop? It's a question that the text raises without ever actually answering the question, and that silence itself is somewhat significant. Why did Terah stop at Haran when he set out for Canaan? And there are several possibilities that are suggested with this. First is the possibility of grief. The city of Haran shared the name with the son Terah, had lost in Ur. And so some scholars suggest that Terah stopped in a city whose name reminded him of his dead son. Because of the grief, he couldn't bring himself to go any further. That's a possibility. The second is age and weariness. Remember the different lifespans. Terah was already old when the journey began. And the road from Ur to Canaan was long and difficult. Haran was a significant city and a reasonable place to stop and to recover. And what happened was the recovery place possibly became the permanent place. Third, the call had not yet come to them to Tarah. And so the divine call of Genesis chapter 12 later would come to Abraham, not his father. Terah may have been moving in the right direction without a specific divine commission that would have compelled him to complete the journey. He started the journey, but someone else would finish the journey. He aimed at the destination, but he stopped just a little bit short. This is one of the most human moments we find in the book of Genesis. A man who meant to do something great, who started toward the right destination, stopped before he got there, before he finished the race, and he settled in Haran. Now, and it says, and Terah died there, not in Canaan, not in the place he set out for, not in the place that he, but in the place that he stopped, he died. 205 years. He never made it to the destination he set out for. And this is also one of the saddest lines in the book of Genesis. Not because he was an evil man, but because he stopped short of the place the story was heading. And his death is the necessary precondition for what comes next. Because as long as Tarah's alive and he's settled in Haran, Abraham is his son and in his father's household. And sons in that culture do not receive independent divine commissions while their fathers are still leading them. Terah then had to die in Haran before Abram could leave there, before he could receive the commission. The old world had to end and the new one, so the new one could begin. In Genesis chapter 11, the chapter began with the pride of Babel. It ends with the death of a father in an unfinished journey. And then next we're going to get to Genesis chapter 12, and then the call comes to Abram. It says, Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. Now, before we jump there, let me step back and show you the architecture of Genesis chapter 11. It's somewhat fascinating. The chapter has a deliberate two-part structure. In verses 1 through 9, you have the universal human story. All humanity, one language, one plane, one project, one name, and God's response to the collective rebellion of the entire human race. And the widest possible lens, just looking at everything happening. And part two settles in verses 10 through 32 on one particular family in the story. One family, one line, ten generations, then one man, and the narrowing of the narrowing of the divine focus to the specific vessel through whom God would work. The narrowest possible lens. The movement from universal to particular is the movement of the entire Bible. Let me explain that. In the beginning, we see that God created the whole world. And then in chapter 12, we see that he calls one nation. And from that one nation, he calls one tribe, which is Judah, and from Judah, one family, which is David, and from David's family, one son, who would come to save the world, who is Jesus. The narrowing of Genesis chapter 11 is the beginning of that movement. And it ends with a name Abram, the man who God is about to call. Now, before we close this section in just a minute, I want to name three problems that Genesis chapter 11, verses 10 through 32 introduces that Genesis chapter 12 and onward will need to solve. Problem number one is that Sarai is barren. And so God is about to promise a great nation, but the wife who would need to bear the first child of the nation cannot have children. That's problem number one. Problem number two, Tarah stopped short. The family set out for Canaan, the promised land, but they stopped in Haran. So someone has to finish the journey that the father started. Problem number three is that Haran is uh is dead. Lot, the grandson that Tarah is caring for, is now fatherless. And Lot will become a significant figure in the Abraham narrative, a complication in the story that will need to be navigated. And Genesis chapter 12, verse 1 is God's answer to all three problems at the exact same time, simultaneously. When he says, Go from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house to a land I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. The word go. He is finishing the journey that Tara started. Leave your father's house. The old world is over. I will make you a new or a great nation. The barrenness of Sarah will not be the final word. And the God who says, I will, is the God who always does. Now, let me answer a question that always comes up when we start talking about the field of apologetics and Genesis. Is Ur of the Chaldeans a real place? We answered this a little bit earlier. The answer is yes. And the evidence is extensive. Again, I mentioned this earlier, but it's worth paying attention to. Because in 1922, with the excavations that began in southern Iraq, it confirmed that this was the site of ancient Ur. And the discoveries there, just a few more, including the ones I mentioned earlier. There was a thriving civilization dating back to a minimum of 3,000 BC. There were several ziggrats. There was one of Ur Namu, a massive three-tiered temple tower to the moon god Nana that is still partially standing. Again, I mentioned earlier the royal cemetery with extraordinary artifacts confirming a sophisticated and very wealthy civilization, thousands of clay tablets with records of trade and law and religious practices, and evidence of a mercantile culture deeply connected to the wider ancient Near Eastern trading network. And that's the world Abram came from. Again, it wasn't primitive. It was one of the most sophisticated urban environments in the ancient world. And the moon god that they worship who dominated Ur is specifically attested to. And that goes back to the verse we read earlier in Joshua chapter 24, verse 2. The god of Ur, Nana, was exactly the god that he was referencing. Now, for much of the 19th and early 20th century, critical scholars have argued that the narrative of the patriarchs were late literary inventions with no historical basis in the 2nd millennium B.C. world that they claim to describe. But the archaeological discovers of the 20th century have reversed that judgment. Several archaeologists, after extensive research, have concluded that the narratives of the biblical patriarchs fit the 2nd millennium B.C. world with remarkable precision. They list the names, the customs, the social structures, the legal practices, the geographical references. They all reflect an authentic historical context that could not have been invented by a later writer. And specifically, there are personal names used like Abram, Nahor, and Terah, who all were attested to in the ancient Near Eastern documents from the second millennium BC. There was the practice of a childless couple using a servant woman to provide an heir, which we see with Hagar later in Genesis chapter 16. And there's tablets that record this. There was the custom of a dying father blessing his sons, which we see repeatedly throughout the book of Genesis. And it's confirmed in the ancient Near Eastern legal practices. Very interesting, the price of 20 shekels of silver paid for Joseph in Genesis chapter 37. It matches exactly the price of a slave that's documented in these findings from archaeology. And these details are not things a later writer could have invented or possibly even known about. They are the fingerprints of authentic historical memory. Genesis chapter 11 is not a legend or a myth, it's history and the archaeology confirms it. Now, one last thing I want you to do, I keep saying that, but one last thing I want you to see is the New Testament fulfillment. The New Testament's most comprehensive treatment of the events of Genesis chapter 11 appears in Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 7. There in Acts chapter 7, verses 2 through 4, Stephen says, Hear me, brothers and brethren and fathers. The glory of God appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran, and said to him, Leave your country and your relatives and come to the land that I will show you. Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him moved to this country in which you are now living. And so what Stephen does in Acts chapter 7 is he confirms the details that were listed in Genesis chapter 11, that the call came before Haran, that Abram settled in Haran, and after his father died, God moves him to the land. And the death of Terah was not a tragedy that delayed God's plan. It was simply a step in God's plan moving in the right direction. And then the man introduced at the end of Genesis chapter 11 becomes the defining figure of the New Testament's theology and faith, which is what Paul says in Romans chapter 4, verse 3. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. And so he went out not knowing where he was going, but he trusted God. Genesis chapter 11 ends with Tarah, dead, and Haran, and Genesis chapter 12 begins with God calling Abram to go to the land I will show you. And not here's the destination, study the map, plan the route, pack appropriately, and later I'll show you where you're going. Instead, he said, just go and start walking and I'll lead you. And that becomes the father of all who would believe and follow Jesus in the future. And then we also see Sarah's barreness introduced in Genesis chapter 11, verse 30, which is the seed of one of the New Testament's most important theological arguments. Paul quotes Isaiah chapter 54 in Galatians chapter 4, verse 27, when he says, For it is written, Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear, break forth and shout, you who are not in labor. It's an amazing verse. The barren woman of Genesis chapter 11, Sarah becomes a symbol of the church which appears barren by the world's standards, but whose children are more numerous than any natural birth could produce. And so the barren of Sarai is not just a personal tragedy, it's a deeply theological symbol of how God works, though, through what is empty, through what is impossible, through what the world has given up on. It's very important for us to understand that the barren woman, the childless couple, and the impossible promise. This is God choosing the things that are not to nullify the things that are. So let me bring this all together, kind of wrap this up for you. Genesis chapter 11 is a chapter in two halves. Again, in the first half, we see the tower, uh, shows us what humanity does when it organizes itself around its own name. It builds, it gathers, refuses to scatter, it's confused, and then it's scattered anyway. In the second half, we see the genealogy that shows us what God does in response. And he narrows his focus, he selects this one family, he moves through grief and the barrenness and unfinished journeys, and he prepares to call one man. And that contrast is the entire message of the chapter. That humanity and it's at its most organized and ambitious, building a tower to make a name for itself produces nothing but confusion and eventual scattering. But God works through a grieving father, a barren wife, and a journey stops short and produces the man that would become the father of all who believe. Human ambition reaches for heaven and ends in confusion. God works through barrenness and grief, an unfinished journey, and ends with a name that will bless every nation. Now, in our next lessons, we'll move to Genesis chapter 12, and there we're going to see the call of Abram, and we will consider the depth of what the Lord is saying to Abraham when he says that word go. And then the most important story of the Old Testament begins. Now, again, I hope that you've enjoyed today's lesson and that it helps you grow in your faith. Until next time, I pray that you have a blessed day.