Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
(Note: "He commences with their gratuitous training, by which God had precluded them from the
possibility of boasting of any pre-eminence or merit. For God had bound them to himself by a closer
bond, because when they were on an equality with others, He drew them to himself to be His own
peculiar people, for no other reason than His own good pleasure. Moreover, in order that it may be clearly
seen that they have nothing whereof to glory, he leads them back to their earliest origin, and relates how
their fathers had dwelt in Chaldaea, worshipping idols in common with the rest, and with nothing to
distinguish them from the crowd." - Calvin. )
The ancestors of Israel dwelt "from eternity," i.e., from time immemorial, on the
other side of the stream (the Euphrates), viz., in Ur of the Chaldees, and then at Haran
in Mesopotamia (Gen 11:28,31), namely Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor. Of
Terah's three sons (Gen 11:27), Nahor is mentioned as well as Abraham, because
Rebekah, and her nieces Leah and Rachel, the tribe-mothers of Israel, were
descended from him (Gen 22:23; 29:10,16ff.). And they (your fathers, Terah and his
family) served other gods than Jehovah, who revealed himself to Abraham, and
brought him from his father's house to Canaan. Nothing definite can be gathered from
the expression "other gods," with reference to the gods worshipped by Terah and his
family; nor is there anything further to be found respecting them throughout the
whole of the Old Testament. We simply learn from Gen 31:19,34, that Laban had
teraphim , i.e., penates , or household and oracular gods.
(Note: According to one tradition, Abraham was brought up in Sabaeism in his father's house (see
Hottinger , Histor. Orient. p. 246, and Philo , in several passages of his works); and according to another,
in the Targum Jonathan on Gen 11:23, and in the later Rabbins, Abraham had to suffer persecution on
account of his dislike to idolatry, and was obliged to leave his native land in consequence. But these
traditions are both of them nothing more than conjectures by the later Rabbins.)
The question also, whether Abraham was an idolater before his call, which has been
answered in different ways, cannot be determined with certainty. We may conjecture,
however, that he was not deeply sunk in idolatry, though he had not remained entirely
free from it in his father's house; and therefore that his call is not to be regarded as a
reward for his righteousness before God, but as an act of free unmerited grace.
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