|
Let us now survey the progress of the city of God from the era of the
patriarch Abraham, from whose time it begins to be more conspicuous,
and the divine promises which are now fulfilled in Christ are more
fully revealed. We learn, then, from the intimations of holy
Scripture, that Abraham was born in the country of the Chaldeans, a
land belonging to the Assyrian empire. Now, even at that time
impious superstitions were rife with the Chaldeans, as with other
nations. The family of Terah, to which Abraham belonged, was the
only one in which the worship of the true God survived, and the only
one, we may suppose, in which the Hebrew language was preserved;
although Joshua the son of Nun tells us that even this family served
other gods in Mesopotamia.1 The other descendants of Heber
gradually became absorbed in other races and other languages. And
thus, as the single family of Noah was preserved through the deluge of
water to renew the human race, so, in the deluge of superstition that
flooded the whole world, there remained but the one family of Terah in
which the seed of God's city was preserved. And as, when Scripture
has enumerated the generations prior to Noah, with their ages, and
explained the cause of the flood before God began to speak to Noah
about the building of the ark, it is said, "These are the
generations of Noah;" so also now, after enumerating the generations
from Shem, Noah's son, down to Abraham, it then signalizes an era
by saying, "These are the generations of Terah: Terah begat
Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died
before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the
Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of
Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, the
daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of
Iscah."2 This Iscah is supposed to be the same as Sarah,
Abraham's wife.
|
|