Abraham in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

Abraham ("father of a multitude".) Up to Genesis 17:4-5, his being sealed with circumcision, the sign of the covenant, ABRAM (father of elevation). Son of Terah, brother of Nahor and Haran. Progenitor of the Hebrew, Arabs, Edomites, and kindred tribes; the ninth in descent from Shem, through Heber. Haran died before Terah, leaving Lot and two daughters, Milcah and Iscah. Nahor married his niece Milcah: Abraham Iscah, i.e. Sarai, daughter, i.e. granddaughter, of his father, not of his mother (Genesis 20:12). Ur, his home, is the modern Mugheir, the primeval capital of Chaldaea; its inscriptions are probably of the 22nd century B.C. The alphabetical Hebrew system is Phoenician, and was probably brought by Abraham to Canaan, where it became modified. Abraham, at God's call, went forth from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:31-12). In Haran Terah died. The statement in Genesis 11:26, that Terah was 70 when he begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran, must apply only to the oldest, Haran. His being oldest appears from the fact that his brothers married his daughters, and that Sarai was only ten years younger than Abraham (Genesis 17:17); the two younger were born subsequently, Abram, the youngest, when Terah was 130, as appears from comparing Genesis 11:31 with Genesis 12:4; Acts 7:3-4; "before he dwelt in Charran Haran, while he was in Mesopotamia," in his 60th year, at Ur he received his first call: "Depart from thy land, to a land which I will show thee" (as yet the exact land was not defined). In Haran he received a second call: "Depart from thy father's house unto THE land (Heb., Genesis 12:1( which I will show thee;" and with it a promise, temporal (that God would bless him, and make him founder of a great nation) and spiritual (that in him all families of the earth should be blessed)...