When the people of Babylon decided to build a tower reaching heaven, everyone had to make bricks. Everyone had to write their name on their brick. But twelve men refused. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by undefined Gaster in 1899, the dissenters included Abram, Nahor, Lot, and nine others. The people seized them and dragged them before the princes.
"Why did you refuse?" the princes demanded. The twelve answered: "We know but one God, and Him we serve. Even if you burn us in the fire together with the bricks, we shall not walk in your ways." The princes wanted them burned immediately, but Yoktan, the head prince, stalled. He gave them seven days to reconsider—secretly planning a rescue. That night, Yoktan summoned fifty warriors and ordered them to smuggle the prisoners to the mountains with provisions. Eleven of the twelve accepted gratefully.
Abram alone refused to run. Yoktan was baffled. "Why will you not answer like your friends?" Abram replied: "If we flee to the mountains, wild beasts may devour us or famine may kill us. I shall not depart from this place. If I am to die, I shall die by the will of God." Yoktan warned him: "Your blood be upon your own head." Abram stayed in prison.
When the seven days passed, the mob found only Abram. They heated a brick-kiln until it blazed fiercely and cast him in. But God sent a massive earthquake. The fire leaped from the furnace and became a wall of flame that consumed 84,500 of the surrounding men. Abram walked out unburned. He rejoined his eleven companions in the mountains, and they returned together, "happy and rejoicing in the name of the Lord." The people never spoke against them again, and from that day the place was called "The God of Abraham."