“Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran: and from there, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein you now dwell”.
Even Abraham, blessed as he was, moved slowly in the path of faith at first. He did not quit Mesopotamia to dwell in Canaan all at once. Before this he dwelt at Haran. He got out of his land, but not so quickly "out of his kindred," so that there was a remarkable delay in coming into the land which God was to show him... Terah, as long as he lived, was a dead weight on Abraham’s obedience. We are told, "Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan" (Gen 11.31). But the land in these circumstances, they never reached. God told Abraham to quit his kindred as well as his country; and till this was done, he failed to reach Canaan. It would have scarcely been proper for Abram as the son to take Terah his father. So "Terah took Abram..." This however, was not at all according to the call of God to Abram. Hence we read, "they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." But when Terah died, "Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him" (Gen 12.4). Then the language is pointedly different:- "And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came" (Gen 12.5). There was no failure now that his faith was not hampered by the encumbrance of nature which almost necessarily took the upper hand; therefore the movement had lacked the power of God to give it effect. That gone, the blessing immediately followed.
William Kelley
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