Why Was Terah Travelling to Canaan?

Question

Genesis 11:31 states: וַיִּקַּ֨ח תֶּ֜רַח אֶת־אַבְרָ֣ם בְּנ֗וֹ וְאֶת־ל֤וֹט בֶּן־הָרָן֙ בֶּן־בְּנ֔וֹ וְאֵת֙ שָׂרַ֣י כַּלָּת֔וֹ אֵ֖שֶׁת אַבְרָ֣ם בְּנ֑וֹ וַיֵּצְא֨וּ אִתָּ֜ם מֵא֣וּר כַּשְׂדִּ֗ים לָלֶ֙כֶת֙ אַ֣רְצָה כְּנַ֔עַן וַיָּבֹ֥אוּ עַד־חָרָ֖ן וַיֵּ֥שְׁבוּ שָֽׁם׃: "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law the wife of Abram his son; and they left together from Ur Kasdim to travel to the land of Canaan and they came until Charan and they dwelled there."

My question is why was Terah heading towards Canaan? There had not yet been any commandment for Abram to go to Canaan and Canaan was not yet the "holy land." Nor was Canaan their home country or a place where they had relatives.

It seems unlikely that Terah's intent to travel to Canaan is just a coincidence. Presumably there is some connection to Abram travelling there later on but I cannot figure out what that connection is from the text.

Does anyone have any explanation for why Terah was travelling to Canaan?

Answer 1

Answer based on the text

There's no motive given or hinted at in the text or elsewhere, so I'm afraid the only answer I can perceive is 'no' - there is no way to explain Terach's attempt to travel to Canaan based on the text.

Other Thoughts

As pointed out by Abu in the comments to his answer, Canaan was the heart of the 'fertile crescent' linking Eurasia with Africa, and so it's a very natural trading link. For somebody such as Terach who was relocating for any number of reasons, Canaan would be one of the most natural directions to move - it wasn't a known region to their family, but it was still a highly 'significant' area for the ancient world. It's no co-incidence that when Abram moves there he encounters ten or more kings already settled in the region (Genesis 14).

Answer 2

The text intends to show that the Israelites have a respectable and reputable lineage, because they become after all, Egyptian slaves for nearly 400 years, which is not something you would want your mother to know about.

So the text presents Abram as a direct descendant of Noah's righteous son Shem, through Arpachshad and Serug to another well-known and respected figure of the ancient world, Terah.

Now the problem is that Terah was known have lived in Ur Casdim, far to the east of the Promised Land. So we somehow have to move him west.

The connection is Deut 26:5 that presents Terah and his descendants as nomads. This is an important, in order to show that such respected figures could also be nomads, who don't usually get much respect from people living in agricultural settlements, and the Patriarchs were of course nomads to begin with. The nomadic assertion is in fact made even earlier, in Gen 9:27 which presents that Shem a tent dweller. (Other references to nomadic righteousness are to Jethro the Kenite in Exodus 18, Rahab in Joshua 2, Johonadab in II Kings 10:15-16, and Jaazaniah in Jeremiah 35.)

So we don't really need to ask the question. Of course Terah travelled to Canaan, that was the Fertile Crescent trade route and that's what nomads did.

Terah stops in Haran, in order to associate him with Laban, another descendant of Shem, and from there Abram moves further south to Canaan.

Answer 3

Very simple. They were never in Sumer. Ur refers to Urfa north of Haran. It will never make any sense if you believe Abraham was from Ur III. This is a tired old belief that was

Abram was semetic and he lived in the land of the Semitics which was Aram. The ancient cities all bear the names of Abraham's family. Naḫur (Til-Naḫiri), mentioned in the Cappadocian tablets (1800-1750). Harran named after Haran. This was how all ancient cities were named at the beginning of the dispersal after the flood and these cities are all in northern Aram.

Do you really think they would have cities named after them and just get up and move to a foreign land for no reason at all? That's not how the ancient world worked, especially so close to the patriarchs when God commanded people to spread out, and separated them by nation by language by family. It's an insult to think Tereh and Abram ended up in Summer.

Also "Ur of the Chaldeans" did not exist until the 9th century BC, long after Genesis was written. There is not one single good reason why Abraham was from Ur in Sumer, but there are dozens of reasons he was from Aram, in the land of Shinar. (al-Jazira).

The association of Ur Kasdim with Muqayyar, Sumerian Urim, mostly stems from the excavations carried out by the British Museum in ther late 19th and early 20th centuries, in particular the archeologist Leonard Wooley, but rests on no hard evidence.

God bless.