Haran #26

Haran is a city in upper Mesopotamia, in the region the Bible calls Paddan-aram or Aram-naharaim, on the Balikh River in what is now southeastern Turkey. In Genesis it is the second stage in the long journey that began at Ur: Terah leaves Ur with Abram, Sarai, and Lot, aiming for Canaan, but they settle in Haran instead, and Terah dies there at the age of 205 (Genesis 11:31-32).

Biblical Significance

Haran is where the call of Abraham is spoken in Genesis. The Lord tells Abram to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house and go to a land that will be shown to him, with the promise of a great nation and a blessing for all families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3). Abram is seventy-five when he departs, taking Sarai, Lot, and the people and possessions they had acquired in Haran (Genesis 12:4-5).

The city remains the family’s ancestral home. When Isaac needs a wife, Abraham sends his servant to his own kindred rather than to the Canaanites, and the servant travels to Aram-naharaim, to the “city of Nahor,” where he finds Rebekah (Genesis 24:1-10). Many readers connect this city with Haran and its surrounding district. Jacob later flees there from Esau, on the advice of his mother Rebekah, and comes to a well where shepherds identify themselves as from Haran (Genesis 27:43-45; 28:10; 29:4-6). He serves Laban for years and marries Leah and Rachel, and most of his sons are born in the region (Genesis 29-30).

Haran appears again in the age of the empires. The Assyrian king’s messengers, listing cities that Assyria had destroyed, name Haran among them (2 Kings 19:12), and Ezekiel counts it among the traders with Tyre (Ezekiel 27:23).

Today

Harran is a village in Sanliurfa Province, Turkey, close to the Syrian border, and the ancient city stood on the same site. Cuneiform records from Assyria, Babylon, and the Hittites mention it, and it was a famous center of the worship of the moon god Sin, whose temple was rebuilt by the Babylonian king Nabonidus in the sixth century BC. Harran also briefly served as the last refuge of the Assyrian court after the fall of Nineveh, around 610 BC.

Visitors today see the ruins of a citadel, a very large early Islamic mosque, and traditional beehive-shaped mud-brick houses. Archaeological work at the site is ongoing. Since the Bible mentions only the name and the district, the identification of the modern site with Genesis’ Haran is generally accepted, although the exact route of Abraham’s travels can only be inferred.