Genesis 12:1 - The Popular Commentary by Paul E. Kretzmann

Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. Here the real story of Abram, or Abraham, begins, to which the author has led up in a very skilful manner. God gave him a command which imposed upon him a threefold renunciation, Abram was to leave his fatherland, both Haran and Ur of the Chaldees being included in Mesopotamia. He was to forsake the members of his tribe, the other Chaldaic descendants of Shem, all of them now addicted to heathenism. He was to go forth even from his father's house, that of Terah and his family. The expressions are purposely heaped to indicate that it meant for Abram a complete severing of family ties: leaving everything behind that he had ever held near and dear but his wife, he was to journey, as a stranger, into a land which he would see by and by.