Abraham was still speaking to his father Terah in the courtyard of the house when a voice came down from heaven.
Not a whisper. Not an intuition. A voice, falling from the sky in a burst of fiery cloud, saying and crying: "Abraham, Abraham!"
"Here I am."
"You are searching in the understanding of your heart for the God of Gods and the Creator. I am He."
The words were absolute. No ambiguity. No riddle. The Creator of everything Abraham had reasoned his way toward, fire and water and earth and sun, all of it, was speaking directly to him.
"Go out from your father Terah, and leave this house, so that you are not killed in the sins of your father's household."
Abraham went. He did not hesitate. He walked toward the door of the courtyard, and before he had even passed through it, the world behind him ended.
A sound of tremendous thunder. Fire fell from heaven and consumed the house. Terah and everything in his household, everything he owned, burned to the ground in a radius of forty cubits.
The midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) would later say that "Ur of the Chaldees" (Genesis 11:31) really means "Fire of the Chaldees," and that God brought Abraham out of fire itself. This was that fire. The workshop of the idol-maker, the temple of dead gods, the home where Merumath lost his head and Barisat burned to ashes, all of it was swallowed by a divine blaze.
Abraham walked out. Behind him, only flame.