Abraham believed he was called by God to leave his homeland and go to land that God would show to him. Abraham believed God’s promise and left his homeland and travelled to Canaan (from Gen. 12:1-4a – ‘J’ source).
Abraham’s homeland
There are two late guesses in the Bible about Abraham’s homeland. The first of these is Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 11:28, and Neh. 9:7), in south Mesopotamia. The second is Haran, in north Mesopotamia, (Gen. 12:4b). The latter was the Amorite homelands, and the former was a territory that was occupied by the Amorites at various times. This indirect association with the Amorites is a guess made in the ‘P’ source.
A more likely place for Abraham’s homeland is the region of Aram, which can be localised to eastern side of the Hermon mountains, a region with less than 200 mm of rain per year. In Gen. 25:20, etc., it is also called Paddan Aram, the plains of Aram. By the time of Joseph (who flourished in the time of the Egyptian Pharoah, Amenhotep III), if not earlier, population pressure and other things are likely to have caused some of these people to move to the other side of the Hermon mountains. Here the region was sometimes called Aram Naharim, the rivers of Aram. There was sufficient rain here for rain-based agriculture. It is from this region that King Cushan invaded Israel. He was opposed and defeated by Othniel, the son of Caleb’s younger brother (Judges 3:7-11). (Later the expression “the rivers” were taken to mean the Euphrates and Tigris. As result, when vowels signs were attached, the signs for a dual word were used so that it was transliterated as Naharaim, “two rivers”. “Two rivers” was a meaningless concept to Israelis before the exile to Babylon, when it made sense, – just look at a map of the Euphrates at this point.)
Another early testimony to the actual homeland of Abraham is the comment that Laban, his relative, was an Aramean (Gen. 31:20). Another geographic indication is the account of Jacob fleeing from Laban. The result of the following contest was that Jacob and Laban reached a treaty, dividing the land between them, so that Jacob would not encroach on “Laban’s land” and Laban would not encroach on “Jacob’s land” (Gen. 31:45-55 – ‘E’ source). Although this treaty was entirely nominal, since neither could claim ownership of the entire land he claimed as his own, it does indicate territorial proximity between the land of Aram and the land latter claimed as the land of Israel.
This interpretation is supported by the account of the required response of the people in offering worship, saying, “My father was a wandering Aramean” (Deut. 26:5). Although this a ‘D’ source text (and thus written much later) it possibly reflects a very ancient and traditional part of the temple worship, even at Shiloh, when the Israelites first entered Canaan after their “sojourn” in Egypt.
Bibliography
K. Lawson Younger Jr., A Political History of the Arameans (SBL Press, Atlanta, 2016), 1-42.
