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DISCOVER GENESIS
An exploratory Bible course for disciples of Christ
PART 4 -- The Torah of ABRAHAM (Genesis 11:10 to 25:18)
GENESIS 11
The genealogy from Shem to Abram. -- (DATE: Between 1951 and 1876 before Christ)
(NOTE: Here we shift from a chronology of years after Adam’s creation to a different chronology of years before Jesus Christ, who is the new Adam of God that saved mankind. How these two chronologies are related to each other cannot be resolved from the testimony of the Bible.)
OUTLINE of Genesis 11:10-32:
01. The ancestors of Abram (11:10-26)
02. The beginning of the journey of Abraham to Canaan (11:27-32)
DISCOVER Genesis 11:10-32: Shem, the firstborn son of Noah, fathered Arpachshad when he was 100 years old, two years after the flood, and died when he was 600 years old. -- Arpachshad fathered Selah when he was 35 years old, and died when he was 438 years of age. -- Selah fathered Eber at the age of 30, and died at the age of 433. -- Eber had his son Peleg when he was 34 years of age and died in his 464th year. -- Peleg fathered Reu at the age of 30 and lived to be 239 years. -- Reu fathered Serug at the age of 32 and died when he was 239 years of age. -- Serug fathered Nahor at the age of 30 and lived to become 230 years old. -- Nahor fathered his son Terah at the age of 29 and died at the age of 148. -- By the age of 70 years Terah had fathered three sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran.
Terah lived with his family in the land of his forefathers, Ur of the Chaldeans (today in southern Iraq). And his son Haran had a son, Lot, and two daughters, Milcah and Iscah. And Terah’s son Nahor took his niece, Milcah for his wife, while Abram was married to Sarai, who was barren. Now Terah, when he was 205 years old, took his son Abram together with his wife Sarai and Lot, his grandson, to go to Canaan and live there. But when they came to the city Haran, they settled there instead. (Haran today is in southern Turkey at the border to Syria.)
PRAYER: Thank you our creator God that new people came to inhabit the earth after the devastating flood at Noah’s time. Thank you that you care for individuals like these forefathers of Abram. We praise you that nobody on earth is insignificant to you. Amen.
QUESTION 11: How many generations passed from Noah’s son Shem to Abram?
QUOTES: There is no direct quotation in the New Testament from this passage in Genesis 11:10-32. -- However we have the following three allusions in the New Testament to verses from this passage:
Genesis 11:10-26 is ALLUDED to in
Luke 3:34-36 (see the quotation below) --
Genesis 11:31 (Terah took his son Abram and his relatives and wanted to move to Canaan, but settled in Haran instead) is ALLUDED to in
Acts 7:2 (Luke wrote in Acts: Just before being stoned to death for believing in Jesus Christ, Stephen started his defense before the Jews by referring to the time Abraham still ‘was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran’, which is an allusion to this verse in Genesis 11) --
Genesis 11:32 (Terah died in Haran at the age of 205 years) is ALLUDED to in
Acts 7:4 (Stephen before his execution went on to say about Abraham that ‘he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran’, where his father died. Only then did God remove Abraham to live in the land of Canaan, where the Jews still lived at the time of Stephen.)
We conclude by quoting part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Luke, which ALLUDES to Genesis 11:10-26 by summarizing it: (Jesus was ...) “... 34 the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, 35 the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, 36 the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, ...” (Luke 3:34-36)