How Old Was Abraham When He Left Haran?
By Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
The Apparent Contradiction
There’s a seeming contradiction in the Bible concerning Abraham’s age when he left Haran. The apparent contradiction is as follows. If Terah died when he was 205 years old, but fathered Abram when he was 70, then Abram must have been 135 years old when his father Terah died (as Gen. 11.26, 32 suggest), not 75, as Gen. 12.4 indicates. For the story to work without any discrepancies, Terah would literally have to be 130 years old when he fathered Abram. But it seemed as if he were only 70 years old. Hence the apparent contradiction. Below are the relevant citations that appear to contradict each other.
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Genesis 12.4 (ESV):
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him,
and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-
five years old when he departed from
Haran.
Acts 7.2:
And Stephen said: ‘Brothers and fathers,
hear me. The God of glory appeared to our
father Abraham when he was in
Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.’
Acts 7.4:
Then he went out from the land of the
Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his
father died, God removed him from there
into this land in which you are now living.
Genesis 11.26:
When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered
Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Genesis 11.32:
The days of Terah were 205 years, and
Terah died in Haran.
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Apologetic Exegesis
The key passage is Gen. 11.26. The Hebrew text doesn’t explicitly say that *when* Terah was 70 years old he begat Abram. Rather, it puts it thusly (Gen. 11.26 KJV):
And Terah lived seventy years, and begat
Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Nowhere is it explicitly mentioned that Terah had all 3 children when he was 70 years old. Nor is there any direct evidence that these children were triplets, or that they were born on the exact same date, month, or year. The verse in Gen. 11.26 merely indicates that after Terah reached a certain age——namely, 70 years old——he began to father children. But exactly when these children were actually born is unknown. The only thing that’s clear from Gen. 11.26 is that they were born after Terah had reached a certain age.
It’s quite possible, for example, that some of his children could have been born when Terah was 130 years old. Nothing in the text would contradict the timing of such a birth. As long as Terah fathered at least one child after he was 70, the rest could have been born anytime between Terah’s 70th and 205th birthday.
The order in which the names of Terah’s sons are listed may not reflect the precise chronological order in which the children were actually born. The text is simply indicating their order of importance. Given that Abram is a key figure in the Old Testament and the common patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, he’s obviously mentioned first:
there is yet a question whether Abram was
born first as listed, or perhaps he is listed
first because he was the wisest similar to
Shem, Ham, and Jafeth where Shem was
not the oldest, but was the wisest. … the
Talmud leaves the above question open.
(Wikipedia)
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Conclusion
Actually, Abram could have been 75 years old when he left Haran, as the text indicates (Gen. 12.4). And maybe he did leave Haran “after his father died” (Acts 7.4) at the age of 205 (Gen. 11.32). There is no contradiction with regard to the dates. The assumed contradiction is actually based on fallacious reasoning and speculation. It’s based on an eisegesis, that is, a misinterpretation of the text. Readers often assume that the text is telling us that Abram was born *when* Terah was 70 years old. But that’s a conjecture. The text doesn’t say that at all. All the text says is that once Terah reached a certain age, he began fathering sons. But exactly when each and every son was born is unknown.
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