Ur of the Chaldees

Biblical Text

Ur of the Chaldees first appears in Genesis 11. Genesis 11:28 records that Haran, the son of Terah, died before his father in his native land, Ur of the Chaldees. According to Genesis 11:31, Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, and his daughter-in-law Sarai and set out from Ur of the Chaldees for Canaan. When they reached Haran, however, they settled there.

Later, in Genesis 15:7, God identifies himself to Abraham as "the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees." The prayer of the Levites in Nehemiah 9:7 likewise confesses that God brought Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees and gave him the name Abraham. In the New Testament, Stephen refers to these events in his speech (Acts 7:2–4). He states that God appeared to Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia and that Abraham came out of "the land of the Chaldaeans" and dwelt in Haran.

Background

"Chaldees" renders the Hebrew Kasdim. The Chaldeans are known as a people who rose to power in southern Mesopotamia during the first millennium BC and later founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The city is therefore designated by a name that came into use long after Abraham's time. Some explain this as a place name added later to help readers identify the location, while others connect it with the date of the text's composition.

The most widely held view identifies the site with the Sumerian city of Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar) in present-day southern Iraq. Excavations there by the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and 1930s uncovered a ziggurat dedicated to the moon god, royal tombs, and other remains. Another view holds that the text refers to a different "Ur" in northern Mesopotamia near Haran, and scholars have not reached a consensus.

Significance in the Bible as a Whole

Ur of the Chaldees is the starting point of the Abraham narrative and is read as the place where God's call and promise begin. Joshua 24:2–3 states that Abraham's ancestors served other gods "on the other side of the flood" and that God took Abraham from among them. For this reason, the departure from Ur is sometimes understood as a calling out of a land of idolatry. Although the New Testament does not mention the place by name, it carries this tradition forward by emphasizing the faith with which Abraham went out, "not knowing whither he went" (Hebrews 11:8–12).

Interpretation and Issues

• Place of the call: Interpreters differ on whether the call of Genesis 12:1 took place in Haran or earlier in Ur. Acts 7:2 and Genesis 15:7 are cited in support of the view that the call had already come in Ur.
• Extrabiblical stories: Stories that Abraham smashed his father's idols, or that he was thrown into a fire and survived, are known to come from Jewish tradition (midrash). One explanation holds that these stories arose because the Hebrew ur has the same form as the word for "fire." The text of Genesis, however, contains no such material.

In the Korean Church

The exhortation "Leave Ur of the Chaldees" is common in Korean church preaching. It is widely used as a metaphor for the decisive step of faith by which a believer leaves familiar surroundings or old habits behind to follow God's call.