Terah Flees Ur and Abraham Is Crowned a Prince

"I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees" (Genesis 15:7). They bound Abraham and tied him up, and set him upon the ground, and surrounded him with wood on his four sides, five cubits on each side, and the height of the wood was five cubits; and until that hour Terah did not recognize his Creator. Immediately his neighbors and the people of his city came and slapped him on his head and said to him: You have been put to great shame and disgrace - the son of whom you used to say that he would inherit this world and the world to come, Nimrod has burned him in the fire. Immediately the mercies of the Holy One, blessed be He, were stirred, and He went down and saved him. Terah said in his heart: Perhaps they will arise and kill my son. He arose and went out from there, as it is said, "And Terah took," and so forth (Genesis 11:31). And in reward for going out from there for the sake of Heaven, the Holy One, blessed be He, made Abraham our father reign in his lifetime thirty-five years, as it is said, "You are a prince of God" (Genesis 23:6); and elsewhere it says, "when a prince sins" (Leviticus 4:22). Just as there [the prince is one] who has none above him but the LORD his God, [so here]. And forty years he reigned after his death, making seventy-five years; and concerning him it says, "You have ravished My heart, My sister, My bride" (Song 4:9).