No 9

(Ur)

As we know, the Lord called Abram out of this city in the Chaldees and told him “..get thee out of thy country (Ur), and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation..” Genesis 12:1,2. When Abram entered Canaan sometime around 2070 BC according to the Hebrew Masoretic text, Ur was at the pinnacle of its power. However, it met its end during the period of 1960 – 1830 BC and so complete was its destruction that it remained in oblivion until it was resurrected by modern archaeologists, notably Sir Leonard Woolley in 1922. The expedition lasted 12 years and in 1934, the long lost buried city of Ur had become one of the best-known sites in all of the ancient Near-East.

The splendid temple-tower or ziggurat built by King Ur-Nammu is still preserved today in the flat territory of Lower Mesopotamia in the basin of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers. In present-day Iraq, the site of Ur is known as Tall al Muqayyar. Ur was the principal center of worship of the Sumerian moon god Nanna and of his Babylonian equivalent Sin. Isn’t it odd that the Lord would choose someone whose family was involved in idol worship (Joshua 24:2) and turn him into the father of many nations?

Abraham is the father of the Jews, the Arabs and the Christians; today, these three groups make up a huge portion of the world’s population. God knew what He was doing when He chose Abraham because, as we read in Romans 4:3 “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” Abraham trusted God and He blessed him for that.