Nahor

Nahor was a patriarch before Abraham, the son of Serug, the father of Terah and the grandfather of Abraham, of the other Nahor and of Haran. He is named in the genealogies in the Book of Genesis, the First Book of Chronicles and the Gospel of Luke as one of the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh. Scripture says almost nothing about his life.

Age and place According to some interpretations, Nahor was born and raised in the city of Ur on the Euphrates, in lower Mesopotamia, about two thousand years before Christ. According to the Masoretic text he begot Terah at twenty-⁠nine and lived a hundred and forty-⁠eight years in all; according to the Septuagint he was seventy-⁠nine at the birth of Terah and lived two hundred and eight years in all, and other sources give a hundred and nineteen years. These differences come from the differences among the ancient texts of Scripture.

The tradition of the chronicles The Byzantine chronicles, among them those of John Malalas and George Hamartolos, and later the Russian chronicles, give him a longer life than Scripture does. They relate that Nahor, like his father Serug, made and sold images of idols, and that the devil took pains to deceive the Hebrew people, so that they would forget the grace of God and worship them. According to these sources Nahor did not understand that his father made the images in memory of valiant men and came to honour them as gods. This account is not found in Scripture and is a later tradition.

Veneration The Orthodox Church counts him among the righteous forefathers of Christ and remembers him on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers of the Lord, before the Nativity.