The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Terah’s Descendants
Genesis 11:27–32 — Terah’s Descendants. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
27This is the account of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·’êl·leh tō·wl·ḏōṯ te·raḥ te·raḥ hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- ’aḇ·rām ’eṯ- nā·ḥō·wr wə·’eṯ- hā·rān wə·hā·rān hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- lō·wṭ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-these [are] the tôldôt of-Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and-Haran; and-Haran begot Lot.
Where the English smooths the original
This tôldôth, which extends to Genesis 25:11 , is one of the most interesting in the Book of Genesis, as it gives us the history of the patriarch Abraham, in whom God was pleased to lay the foundation of the interme diate dispensation and of the Jewish Church, by whose institutions and psalmists and prophets the light of true religion was to be maintained, and the way prepared for the coming of Christ. But though Abraham is the central figure, yet the narrative is called the Tôldôth Terah, just as the history of Joseph is called the Tôldôth Jacob ( Genesis 37:2 ).
Out of Adam's three sons he selects one to be the progenitor of the seed of the woman; out of Noah's three sons he again selects one; and now out of Terah's three is one to be selected. Among the children of this one he will choose a second one, and among his a third one before he reaches the holy family.Barnes traces the recurring narrowing of the line of promise from three sons to one.
Now (literally, and , intimating the close connection of the present with the preceding section) these are the generations - the commencement of a new subdivision of the history (Keil)
He makes mention first of Abram, not because he was the first born, but for the history which properly belongs to him.
28During his father Terah’s lifetime, Haran died in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
‘al- pə·nê ’ā·ḇîw te·raḥ hā·rān way·yā·māṯ mō·w·laḏ·tōw bə·’e·reṣ bə·’ūr kaś·dîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Haran died upon-the-face-of Terah his-father, in-the-land-of his-birth, in-Ur of-the-Chaldeans.
Where the English smooths the original
Haran died before his father. —Heb., in the presence of his father. This is the first recorded instance of a premature death caused by natural decay.
i.e. In the presence and during the life of his father.Poole's whole note on the verse — the entire “upon the face” idiom in one line.
Ur—now Orfa; that is, "light," or "fire." Its name probably derived from its being devoted to the rites of fire-worship. Terah and his family were equally infected with that idolatry as the rest of the inhabitants (Jos 24:15).
the Jews (e) have a fable concerning the death of Haran; they say that Terah was not only an idolater, but a maker and seller of images; and that one day going abroad, he left his son Abraham in the shop to sell them, who, during his father's absence, broke them all to pieces, except oneGill reports the rabbinic furnace-legend that read “Ur” as “fire”; offered as legend, not fact.
29And Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. Abram’s wife was named Sarai, and Nahor’s wife was named Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran, who was the father of both Milcah and Iscah.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’aḇ·rām wə·nā·ḥō·wr way·yiq·qaḥ nā·šîm lā·hem ’aḇ·rām ’ê·šeṯ- šêm śā·rāy nā·ḥō·wr ’ê·šeṯ- wə·šêm mil·kāh baṯ- hā·rān ’ă·ḇî- mil·kāh wa·’ă·ḇî yis·kāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Abram and-Nahor took for-themselves wives: the-name-of Abram's wife [was] Sarai, and-the-name-of Nahor's wife [was] Milcah, daughter-of Haran, father-of Milcah and-father-of Iscah.
Where the English smooths the original
Iscah. —Not the same as Sarai, for we learn in Genesis 20:12 that she was Abraham’s half-sister—that is, a daughter of Terah by another wife. Nor was she Lot’s wife, as Ewald supposed, for she was his full sister.
Iscah is either Sarai, as the Jews and many others think, or rather another person. For, 1. Why should Moses express Sarai thus darkly and doubtfully? Had he meant her, he would have added after Iscah, this is Sarai, according to his manner in like cases
“Sarai” is believed to be an archaic form of “Sarah” = “princess”: cf. Genesis 17:15 . The fact that Sarratu (= “princess”) was a title of the moon-goddess, consort of Sin, and Malkatu (= “queen”), a title of Istar, among the deities worshipped in Harran, raises questions with regard to the origin of the Hebrew proper names, Sarah and Milcah.Cambridge notes the names' resemblance to moon-cult titles at Harran — a critical observation, offered as a question, not a conclusion.
if Sarai is not Iscah, no account is given by Moses of her descent, which may seem strange; and it can hardly be thought he would omit it, when it must be so agreeable to his people to know from whom they descended, both by the father's and mother's side.
30But Sarai was barren; she had no children.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
śā·ray wat·tə·hî ‘ă·qā·rāh lāh ’ên wā·lāḏ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Sarai was barren; [there was] no child to-her.
Where the English smooths the original
But Sarai was barren. - From this statement it is evident that Abram had been married for some time before the migration took place. It is also probable that Milkah had begun to have a family; a circumstance which would render the barrenness of Sarai the more remarkable.
But Sarai was barren; she had no child . Perhaps in contrast to Milcah, who by this time had begun to have a family (Murphy).
Aben Ezra observes, there are some that say that Abraham was impotent, and not Sarai barren; the very reverse of the Scriptures; but as he rightly adds, his son Ishmael and his sons by Keturah show the contrary
It concerns us to hasten out of our natural state, lest death surprise us in it.Henry's pastoral application of the section, drawn from his note covering 11:27–32.
31And Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai the wife of Abram, and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan. But when they arrived in Haran, they settled there.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
te·raḥ ’eṯ- way·yiq·qaḥ bə·nōw wə·’eṯ- ’aḇ·rām ben- ben- lō·wṭ bə·nōw hā·rān wə·’êṯ kal·lā·ṯōw śā·ray ’ê·šeṯ bə·nōw ’aḇ·rām way·yê·ṣə·’ū ’it·tām mê·’ūr kaś·dîm lā·le·ḵeṯ ’ar·ṣāh kə·na·‘an way·yā·ḇō·’ū ‘aḏ- ḥā·rān way·yê·šə·ḇū šām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-took Terah Abram his-son, and-Lot son-of-Haran his-son's-son, and-Sarai his-daughter-in-law, wife-of-Abram his-son, and-they-went-out with-them from-Ur of-the-Chaldeans to-go to-the-land-of Canaan; and-they-came-as-far-as Haran and-they-settled there.
Where the English smooths the original
They went forth with them. —This may possibly mean that they went forth in one body; but the phrase is strange, and the Samaritan, followed by the LXX. and Vulg.,by a slight transposition of the letters reads, “And he (Terah) brought them forth.”
they went forth with them ] The words, as they stand, are meaningless. The Syriac reads “and he went forth with them.” Better as LXX, Sam. and Lat. “and he brought them forth,” which only requires the omission of one letter.Cambridge candidly calls the received text “meaningless” as it stands — a textual difficulty, marked as such.
Though the oracle of God came to Abram, yet the honour is given to Terah, because he was the father.
The prime motive to this change of abode was the call to Abram recorded in the next chapter. Moved by the call of God, Abram "obeyed; and he went out not knowing whither he went" Hebrews 11:8 . But Terah was influenced by other motives to put himself at the head of this movement.
32Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ṯe·raḥ way·yih·yū yə·mê- ḥā·mêš ū·mā·ṯa·yim šā·nāh šā·nîm way·yā·māṯ te·raḥ bə·ḥā·rān
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-were the-days of-Terah five and-two-hundred years; and-Terah died in-Haran.
Where the English smooths the original
two hundred and five years ] For this figure the Samaritan version gives 145, obviously in order to make the year of Abram’s departure from Haran (when Abram was 75 years old; see Genesis 12:4 ) coincide with the year of Terah’s death, since Abram was born ( Genesis 11:26 ) in Terah’s 70th year. It is this tradition which is followed by Stephen, Acts 7:4 .Cambridge lays out the chronological crux — 205 (MT) vs 145 (Sam.) and Stephen's harmonization — plainly.
So that if Abram was born in Terah's 70th year, Terah must have been 145 when Abram left Haran, and must have survived that departure sixty years (Kalisch, Dykes); whereas if Abram was born in his father's 130th year, then Terah must have died before his son s departure from Haran, which agrees with Acts 7:4.
His days are summed up as none of the rest are in this genealogy, that it might be observed; his death being the time of Abram's leaving Chaldea and coming into the land of Canaan, given to him and his seed for an inheritance; see Acts 7:4 .
According to the Samaritan text, Abram left Haran in the same year as that in which Terah died.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The section opens not with Abram but with “these are the tôldôt of Terah” (H8435, “begettings”). Charles Ellicott (1878) sees the design at once: this tôldôth “extends to Genesis 25:11… it gives us the history of the patriarch Abraham, in whom God was pleased to lay the foundation… and the way prepared for the coming of Christ,” and yet “the narrative is called the Tôldôth Terah, just as the history of Joseph is called the Tôldôth Jacob.” The heading names the father; the story belongs to the son. Albert Barnes (1834) names the pattern that governs the whole Bible's opening: “Out of Adam's three sons he selects one… out of Noah's three sons he again selects one; and now out of Terah's three is one to be selected.” The Hebrew waw on wə-ʾêsleh (“and-these”) is, as the Pulpit Commentary (1880s) notes, “literally, and, intimating the close connection of the present with the preceding section” — the funnel from Shem is still narrowing. And the Geneva Study Bible (1599) explains the order: Abram is “mentioned first, not because he was the first born, but for the history which properly belongs to him.”
The unit is bracketed by two death-notices using the same verb wayyāmāṯ (H4191): Haran dies (v.28), Terah dies (v.32). Ellicott marks the first as singular: “Haran died before his father. —Heb., in the presence of his father. This is the first recorded instance of a premature death.” The Hebrew idiom is concrete — ʻal-pənê, “upon the face of” — and Matthew Poole (1685) gives its whole sense in a line: “in the presence and during the life of his father.” Keil & Delitzsch (1860s) catch the same nuance from the Hebrew — the dying son is “upon the face of his father, so that he saw and survived his death.” The setting is explicitly pagan. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown (1871) read Ur as “devoted to the rites of fire-worship. Terah and his family were equally infected with that idolatry as the rest of the inhabitants (Jos 24:15).” Joseph Benson (1810s) names it without flinching: this is “An idolatrous country, where even the children of Eber themselves degenerated,” and Terah “served other gods on the other side the flood; so early did idolatry gain footing in the world.” John Gill (1746–63) faithfully records, but does not endorse, the rabbinic legend “that Terah was not only an idolater, but a maker and seller of images,” and that Abraham “broke them all to pieces, except one” — a tale that grew from reading Ur as “fire.” Whatever the legend's worth, the canonical witness of Joshua 24:2 stands: this is a household called out of the worship of other gods.
Twice the verse weighs the word shêm, “name” (H8034) — the same word the men of Babel grasped at seven verses earlier (11:4). Here the women are named: Sarai, Milcah, and the unexplained Iscah. The commentators divide honestly. Ellicott is firm that Iscah is “not the same as Sarai, for we learn in Genesis 20:12 that she was Abraham's half-sister.” Poole reasons the same way from the silence of the text: had Moses meant Sarai, “he would have added after Iscah, this is Sarai, according to his manner in like cases.” John Gill presses the opposite weight: “if Sarai is not Iscah, no account is given by Moses of her descent, which may seem strange.” Over all this the Cambridge Bible (1880s) drops a sober philological note: “Sarratu (= ‘princess’) was a title of the moon-goddess… and Malkatu (= ‘queen’), a title of Istar… raises questions with regard to the origin of the Hebrew proper names, Sarah and Milcah.” The names of the matriarchs carry, perhaps, the memory of the very cult they were called away from.
Then the hinge: ʻăqārāh (H6135), “barren” — a rare word (eleven occurrences) whose root means to be uprooted, torn out at the source — and the absolute negation ʾên wālād, “there is no child.” The patriarchal history begins with a closed womb. Albert Barnes sharpens the contrast: “it is also probable that Milkah had begun to have a family; a circumstance which would render the barrenness of Sarai the more remarkable,” and the Pulpit Commentary agrees the barrenness stands “perhaps in contrast to Milcah.” John Gill corrects a misreading at the root: against those who said Abram was impotent, “as he rightly adds, his son Ishmael and his sons by Keturah show the contrary.” The defect is named where the text names it, in Sarai's body — so that whatever comes will plainly be gift, not nature.
Terah took (wayyiqqaḥ, the marriage-verb of v.29) his household and “went out” — wayyēṣəʾû (H3318), the same verb God will use in 15:7, “I brought you out of Ur.” The text here is famously rough. The orphaned ʼittām (“with them”) and the Cambridge Bible's blunt verdict — “The words, as they stand, are meaningless… Better as LXX, Sam. and Lat. ‘and he brought them forth,’ which only requires the omission of one letter” — expose a real textual fork, which Ellicott also records (“the Samaritan, followed by the LXX. and Vulg.… reads, ‘And he (Terah) brought them forth’”). The Geneva Bible resolves the leadership question theologically: “Though the oracle of God came to Abram, yet the honour is given to Terah, because he was the father,” and Barnes agrees that “the prime motive… was the call to Abram,” Abram who “obeyed; and he went out not knowing whither he went (Hebrews 11:8).” Keil & Delitzsch are more cautious about the textual fork, refusing to over-read 15:7: “it is not stated there that God called Abram in Ur, but only that He brought him out. But the simple fact of removing from Ur might also be called a leading out, as a work of divine superintendence and guidance, without a special call from God.” Yet they came only ʻad-Haran, “as far as” Haran, and there settled — and Terah died in Haran, his “days” numbered at 205 (MT) or 145 (Samaritan). Keil notes the destination itself was a sister-city of Ur in its cult: Haran “was a leading settlement of the Ssabians, who had a temple there dedicated to the moon, which they traced back to Abraham.” The Cambridge Bible lays the crux out plainly: the 145 figure is given “obviously in order to make the year of Abram's departure… coincide with the year of Terah's death… It is this tradition which is followed by Stephen, Acts 7:4.” The journey toward the land of promise stops at the threshold, in a city of the moon, under a textual question the church has never fully closed.
Read under Sola Scriptura, this little genealogy is the gospel's hinge written in negatives. Everything that should drive a toledoth forward is cancelled: the eldest son dies before his father (v.28); the home is steeped in idolatry (Joshua 24:2 names it); the chosen wife is barren, and the clause ends not with a child but with the bare particle of non-existence, ʾên wālād, “there is no child” (v.30); and the migration toward the land of promise stops short, settling “as far as Haran,” where the patriarch is buried (vv.31–32). Scripture front-loads the impossibilities. By the time God speaks in 12:1, the reader already knows there is no natural future here to build on — no living heir-line through Haran, no fertile womb, no completed journey. That is the point. The line of promise advances only by the same divine “bringing-out” (wayyēṣəʾû, v.31; “I brought you out,” 15:7) that will later define the Exodus and, the New Testament will say, every salvation. The God who calls Abram is from the first verse the God who creates where there is nothing — a name out of Babel's failed name-grasping, a nation out of a sterile body, a homeland out of an arrested caravan. I hold this reading as fallible and offer it to be tested against the text.
Genesis seats the promise in a barren womb and an unfinished road, so that what comes can only be called gift. (a fallible synthesis, not Scripture)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
Sarai's barrenness (v.30) is announced with the rare technical word ʻăqārāh (H6135), found in only eleven verses. The same word marks Rebekah — “Isaac prayed… because she was barren” (Genesis 25:21) — and reappears in the prophet's command to the barren woman to sing (Isaiah 54:1). Because the lexeme is genuinely rare and verbally identical across all three Hebrew texts, the Verifier records this as a true verbal link, not a vague theme: the barren womb is a recurring, deliberate Old Testament marker that the next stage of redemption will come by gift, against nature.
Genesis 11:30 · Genesis 25:21 · Isaiah 54:1
basis: shared rare lexeme H6135 ʻâqâr (“barren”), freq 11 across all of Scripture — Verifier-computed verbal identity in Hebrew across Genesis 11:30, Genesis 25:21, and Isaiah 54:1
“Ur of the Chaldeans” (vv.28, 31) is fixed by two rare names: ʼÛwr (H218, only five occurrences) and Kasdîm (H3778). Later Scripture consciously recalls this exact phrase: “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 15:7), and Nehemiah's prayer, “you… brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees” (Nehemiah 9:7). The shared rare lexeme ʼÛwr plus Kasdîm, together with the recurring “bring out” verb yāṣāʾ (H3318) in 11:31 and 15:7, makes this a verbal echo — a single remembered event named the same way each time.
Genesis 11:28 · Genesis 11:31 · Genesis 15:7 · Nehemiah 9:7
basis: Verifier-computed shared rare lexemes H218 ʼÛwr (freq 5) + H3778 Kasdîm; H3318 yâtsâʾ (“bring out”) shared by Genesis 11:31 and Genesis 15:7
The narrator's restraint (vv.27–31) is filled in by Joshua's later covenant recitation: “Your fathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods” (Joshua 24:2). The link rests on the shared rare names Terach (H8646, freq 11) and Nâchôwr (H5152). Because Joshua 24:2 is an explicit historical recollection that names both Terah and Nahor in order to declare them idolaters, the verbal identity of the names carries real weight — Scripture interpreting Scripture about the same persons.
Genesis 11:27 · Joshua 24:2 · 1 Chronicles 1:26
basis: Verifier-computed shared rare lexemes H8646 Terach (freq 11) + H5152 Nâchôwr (freq 17); Joshua 24:2 is an explicit later recollection naming the same patriarchs
“These are the generations of…” (ʾêsleh tôldôt, v.27) is the repeated section-marker that organizes all of Genesis. It recurs at, e.g., “These are the generations of Isaac” (Genesis 25:19), built from the same words tôldôt (H8435), yālad (H3205), and ʾêsleh (H428). This is a shared compositional pattern, not a quotation: the formula structures the book without one passage citing another, so the honest tier is structural, not verbal.
Genesis 11:27 · Genesis 25:19
basis: Verifier-computed shared lexemes H8435 tôwlᵉdâh (freq 39) + H3205 yâlad + H428 ʾêl-leh — a recurring structural formula, not a quotation
The verb yāṣāʾ (“go out,” v.31) that carries the family from Ur becomes, in the New Testament's reading of the patriarch, the very shape of faith: “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out (Greek exelthein) to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). Barnes already drew the line here, citing Hebrews 11:8 over the Genesis text. This is a cross-Testament link (Greek ↔ Hebrew) with no shared Strong's lexeme — the Verifier finds none — so it cannot be tiered verbal; it is a structural/figural reading in which Hebrews interprets the Genesis departure as the archetypal venture of trust. Honest tier: structural, argued from theme and the NT's own appeal, not from a verbal echo.
Genesis 11:31 · Hebrews 11:8
basis: Verifier found no shared original-language lexeme (cross-Testament Greek↔Hebrew); the link is structural/figural — Hebrews 11:8 reads Abram's going-out from Ur/Haran as the pattern of faith, argued from theme, not quotation
Genesis 11:32 records Terah's death at 205 (Masoretic) after the migration is told; Stephen in Acts 7:4 says Abram moved into Canaan “when his father was dead.” If Terah was 70 at Abram's birth (11:26) and Abram left Haran at 75 (12:4), Terah was only 145 and lived 60 more years — unless one reads the Samaritan's 145 for his total age, which is the figure Stephen's statement presupposes. This is a cross-Testament link (Greek ↔ Hebrew) with no shared Strong's lexeme; the connection is real but the harmonization and the underlying text-form (MT 205 vs. Samaritan 145) are genuinely contested. It is flagged accordingly: the basis must be argued from chronology and textual criticism, never asserted as a verbal quotation.
Genesis 11:32 · Acts 7:4
basis: Verifier found no shared original-language lexeme (cross-Testament Greek↔Hebrew); the link depends on a contested chronology and the MT-205 vs. Samaritan-145 textual variant — must be argued, not asserted
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Genesis opens the line of promise on a closed womb (ʻăqārāh, v.30) — the first of a series of barren matriarchs through whom God brings the covenant child by gift, not nature. The New Testament reads this whole pattern as pointing forward: Paul takes the once-barren Sarah's son as “born through promise” and the type of those “born according to the Spirit” (Galatians 4:23, 28), quoting Isaiah 54:1 to the barren woman who sings. The trajectory — sterile body, then promised son — runs toward its furthest term in the virgin who bears the Seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15; Luke 1:37, “nothing will be impossible with God”). Held as a figural reading, this is a widely-held Christian typology, though it is built on theme and citation, not on a shared Hebrew–Greek lexeme.
Genesis 11:30 · Isaiah 54:1 · Galatians 4:27 · Luke 1:37
The toledoth of Terah is the funnel through which, as Ellicott wrote, “the way [was] prepared for the coming of Christ” — the line drawn from Shem (11:10) down to the one barren-married man God will call. The New Testament makes the terminus explicit: “the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his Seed… who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16), and Matthew's genealogy opens “the book of the generation [the Greek biblos geneseōs, the toledoth] of Jesus Christ, the son of… Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). The selecting pattern Barnes traced — one son chosen out of three, again and again — reaches its end in the single promised Offspring. This is the ancient and mainstream reading of the patriarchal genealogies; it is typological and structural, argued from the line's design and the NT's own use of genesis/toledoth, not from a verbal lexeme link.
Genesis 11:27 · Galatians 3:16 · Matthew 1:1
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Three honest caveats specific to this unit. (1) The textual seam at v.31. The phrase “they went forth with them” (ʼittām) is grammatically orphaned; the Cambridge Bible calls it, as it stands, “meaningless,” and the Samaritan, LXX, and Vulgate read instead “and he [Terah] brought them forth” (a one-letter difference). Our literal rendering keeps the harder Masoretic reading and flags the variant rather than silently emending. (2) The number in v.32. “205 years” is the Masoretic figure; the Samaritan reads 145 to align Terah's death with Abram's departure (Acts 7:4). We report both and do not adjudicate. The Genesis 11:32 ↔ Acts 7:4 thread is deliberately tiered flagged — verify source: it is cross-Testament (no shared Strong's), and its harmonization is genuinely disputed. (3) Iscah (v.29). Whether Iscah = Sarai (Josephus, Jerome, many rabbis) or is a distinct person (Ellicott, Poole, weighing Genesis 20:12) is unresolved in the sources themselves; we present the dispute, not a verdict. On the proper-name threads: the Verifier auto-scores shared rare proper names (Ur freq 5, Terah freq 11) as “verbal,” and we retain that tier only where a later passage is consciously recalling the same event or persons (Genesis 15:7; Nehemiah 9:7; Joshua 24:2); the bare recurrence of a name in a parallel genealogy (e.g., 1 Chronicles) is recollection of the same people, not literary quotation, and should be read as such. One caveat on weight: the Ur-of-the-Chaldeans thread shares three lexemes, but two of them — Kasdîy (H3778, freq 80) and yāṣāʾ (H3318, freq 991, an extremely common verb) — are not rare; the verbal weight of that link rests almost entirely on ʼÛwr (H218, freq 5), the genuinely rare place-name. We let the tier stand because the later texts are demonstrably recalling the one Ur-event, but the reader should know the verbal force is the place-name, not the common verb. The toledoth thread is tiered structural, not verbal, because it is a shared formula rather than a citation. (4) The cross-Testament threads (Hebrews 11:8; Acts 7:4; and the Christ-section's Galatians 4:27 / Luke 1:37) share no original-language lexeme by definition — Greek cannot share a Strong's number with Hebrew — and are therefore tiered structural, typological, or flagged, never verbal, and argued from theme and the NT's own use of the texts.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)