3666. Verses 3-5 And God Shaddai will bless you, and make you fruitful and multiply you; and you will be an assembly of peoples. And He will give you the blessing of Abraham, you and your seed with you, to inherit the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham. And Isaac sent Jacob away; and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau's mother.

'God Shaddai will bless you' means the temptations to which that truth and good was subjected and by means of which the joining together was effected. 'And make you fruitful and multiply you' means the goods and truths deriving from that joining together. 'And you will be an assembly of peoples' means abundance. 'And He will give you the blessing of Abraham' means the joining of the Divine itself to the good and truth of the natural. 'You and your seed with you' means to the good and the truth born from this good. 'To inherit the land of your sojournings' means the life acquired through receiving instruction. 'Which God gave to Abraham' means which is received from the Divine. 'And Isaac sent Jacob away' means the beginning of the manifestation [of the Divine Natural]. 'And he went to Paddan Aram' means here, as previously, the cognitions of that truth. 'To Laban the son of Bethuel the Aramean' means a parallel good. 'The brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau's mother' means the relationship through the mother of the good of truth, represented by 'Jacob', with the truth of good, represented by 'Esau'.

1356. That 'Terah' means idolatrous worship becomes clear from the derivatives mentioned from verse 20 down to this point. This second Ancient Church declined from a kind of internal worship, becoming adulterated as it did so until in the end it became idolatrous, as Churches usually do. They pass from internal things to external, ending up with mere externals when internal things have been erased. The fact that the same happened to this Church, even to the extent that a large part of them did not acknowledge Jehovah as God but worshipped other gods, is clear in Joshua,

Joshua said to all the people, Thus said Jehovah, the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt of old beyond the River, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. Joshua 24:2.

Now fear Jehovah, and serve Him in sincerity and truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve Jehovah. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve Jehovah, choose this day whom you are to serve, whether the gods which your fathers served who were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites. Joshua 24:14-15.

From this it is quite evident that Terah, Abram, and Nahor were idolaters.

[2] The fact that Nahor was a nation in which idolatrous worship existed is clear also from Laban the Syrian, who dwelt in the city of Nahor and who worshipped the images or teraphim which Rachel carried away with her, Genesis 24:10; 31:19, 26, 32, 34. And the fact that Abraham had one god, Nahor another, and Terah their father yet another, is clear from Genesis 31:53. It is also explicitly stated in Moses that Jehovah was unknown to Abram,

I, Jehovah, appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Shaddai, and by My name Jehovah I was not known to them. Exodus 6:3.

From this it is evident how much this Church with this people declined into idolatrous worship, which is meant here by 'Terah'. And since Terah means that worship, so do Abram, Nahor, and Haran.