The journey that will become the spine of the Hebrew Bible begins not with Abram but with his father. In (Genesis 11:31) Terah takes his son, his grandson Lot, and his daughter-in-law Sarah, and he sets out from Ur of the Chaldees toward the land of Canaan.
They never arrive. They stop at Haran, pitch camp, and remain.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the verse almost plainly here — a rare restraint from a Targum that usually floods the gaps with legend. The Aramaic does two small things. It names the city of origin Ura of the Kasdai, preserving the old Aramaic for furnace — the very word for the flame from which Abram had just escaped in the previous chapter's Targumic expansion (Genesis 11:28). The word choice whispers: this family is fleeing not just a city but a furnace.
And then the verse simply ends. They came unto Haran, and dwelt there. No explanation. No reason. Terah, who began the journey, stops halfway.
The Sages read this gap with enormous sympathy. Terah begins the call and cannot finish it. He leaves the furnace but not the familiar. Abram will have to complete what his father started. Every covenant in Jewish history has been like this — a generation begins, a generation stalls, a generation finishes. The Targum lets the silence stand. Sometimes the most honest thing Scripture can say about a man is that he got halfway, and his son walked the rest.