Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans,.... The same with Mesopotamia; so Pliny says b, that
"because of Babylon the head of the Chaldean nation---the other part of Mesopotamia and Assyria is called Babylonia.''
And he places Babylon in Mesopotamia; it was out of Ur, in the land of the Chaldeans particularly, that Abraham came, upon his first call:
and dwelt in Charan: according to the Jewish writers c, he dwelt here five years:
and from thence, when his father was dead; who died in Haran, as is said in Genesis 11:32 and that it was after the death of Terah his father, that Abraham went from thence, is manifest from Genesis 11:31 and yet a Jew d has the impudence to charge Stephen with a mistake, and to affirm, that Abraham went from Haran, whilst his father was yet living; proceeding upon a false hypothesis, that Terah begat Abraham when he was seventy years of age: but Philo the Jew is expressly with Stephen in this circumstance; he says e,
"I think no man versed in the laws can be ignorant, that Abraham, when he first went out of the land of Chaldea, dwelt in Charan; τελευτησαντος τε αυτω του πατρος εκενθι "but his father dying there", he removed from thence:''
and so says Stephen:
he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell; the land of Canaan; see Genesis 12:5 or "he removed himself", as the Ethiopic version renders it; or rather "God removed him", as the Syriac version reads, and so one copy in the Bodleian library; for it was by the order and assistance, and under the direction and protection of God, that he came into that land: after the words
wherein ye now dwell, Beza's ancient copy adds, "and our fathers that were before us".
b De Urbibus, l. 6. c. 26. c Seder Olam Rabba, c. 1. p. 2. Ganz Tzemach David, par. 1. fol. 5. 2. d R. Isaac Chizzuk Emuna, par. 2. c. 61. p. 448. e De Migratione Abrahami, p. 415.