And it came to pass while I spake6 thus to my father Terah in the court of my7 house, there cometh down8 the voice of a Mighty One9 from heaven in a fiery cloud-burst,10 saying and crying: “Abraham, Abraham!” And I said: “Here am I.” And He said: 11“Thou art seeking in the understanding of thine heart the G od o f Gods and the Creator;11 12I am He:12 Go out from thy father Terah, and get thee out from the13 house, that thou also be not slain in the sins of thy father’s house.” And I went out. And it came to pass when I went out, that before I succeeded in getting out in front of the door of the court, there came a sound of a [great] 1 4 thunder15 and burnt 1 6 him and16 his house,16 and everything whatsoever in his house, down to the ground, forty cubits. 17

S omits. Or by (through) night. Lit. I will investiga t e ( o r examine) before thee concerning. Th e question that follows, Who then is He? etc., gives the subject of the investigation. Something has to be supplied h ere. So A K; S omits. S K, reflected. A K, his (i. e. Terah’s), rightly. At this point th ere follows in A K (R) an insertion which contains, among other thin gs, a version of the well-known legen d about A braham’s burnin g of th e idol-temple, and with it his brother Haran; cf. A ppendix I. Lit. falleth (S); K, fell (A omits). = LXX. Ò ÆFPLD`H (frequent as a rendering of Heb. h ~’‘l, “God”); cf. 4 Ezra ix. 45, etc.

K, flame.

The text of S is n ot i n or der; Sreznevsky reads: Cogu Coisya, God thou dost fear, and the Creator thou art seeking. A omits. K, his. S omits. K, + and there fell fire from heaven. A (K R) omit. 17

K, + and the dwellers therein, both men and beasts.

Here R ends. The Midrashic story about the burning of Te r ah ’ s h o u s e i s really based upon an interpretation of the Biblical “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. xi. 31, xv. 7). Here “Ur” is inter pr et ed as = “fire”; Abraham was brought out of “Ur” (“fire”) by the Lord.

PART II THE APOCALYPSE (Chapters IX.-XXXII.). Abraham receives a Divine Command to offer Sacrifice after Forty Days as a Preparation for a Divine Revelation (Chapter IX.; cf. Gen. xv.).