1356. The symbolism of Terah as idolatrous worship can be seen from the developments described from verse 20 to this point.
This second ancient church degenerated from a certain inward worship and was adulterated, till in the end it became idolatrous. Churches tend to do this, by shifting away from their deeper dimensions toward shallow ones, ending at last in purely superficial concerns, having obliterated any deeper ones. This church followed the same course, to the point where the majority of its people did not acknowledge Jehovah as God but worshiped other gods. This can be seen in Joshua:
Joshua said to all the people, "This is what Jehovah, God of Israel, has said: ‘Your ancestors lived across the river ages ago — Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor — and served other gods.'" (Joshua 24:2)
"Now fear Jehovah and serve him in integrity and truth; and take away the gods that your ancestors served across the river and in Egypt and serve Jehovah. And if it is bad in your eyes to serve Jehovah, choose for yourselves today whom you would serve, whether it is the gods that your ancestors who were across the river served or the gods of the Amorites." (Joshua 24:14-15)
This demonstrates plainly that Terah, Abram, and Nahor were idolaters.
[2] The fact that Nahor was a nation that practiced idolatrous worship can be seen from Laban the Syrian, who lived in Nahor's city and worshiped the images or teraphim that Rachel stole (Genesis 24:10; 31:19, 26, 32, 34). 1 Abraham had one god, Nahor another, and their father Terah another, as Genesis 31:53 shows. 2 In Moses it is also said explicitly of Abram that Jehovah was not known to him:
I, Jehovah, appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Shaddai, 3 and by my name "Jehovah" I was not known to them. (Exodus 6:3)
Such evidence makes it clear how far this church, as it existed in this nation, strayed into the idolatrous worship symbolized by Terah. (And since that worship is symbolized by Terah, it is also symbolized by Abram, Nahor, and Haran.)
Footnotes:
1. Laban was Nahor's grandson. Genesis 24:10 mentions the city of Nahor as the setting of a story that introduces Laban (Genesis 24:29). The verses from Genesis 31 that are listed tell about Rachel's theft of her father Laban's religious images. The word applied to those images, "teraphim," is a transliteration (supplied by Swedenborg here and also used by Schmidt 1696) of the Hebrew word תְּרָפִים (tǝrāṕîm). [LHC]
2. In Genesis 31:53, Laban makes an oath in which he refers individually to the god of Abraham, the god of Nahor, and the god of their father. [LHC]
