The Lord God of heaven, which took from my father's house,
and
from the land of my kindred
Jarchi distinguishes between his father's house, and the land of
his kindred; the former he takes to be Haran, in which he seems
to be right; for his father and his family came with him from Ur
of the Chaldees to Haran, and there stayed, from whence Abraham
was taken and separated from them; by the latter he understands
Ur of the Chaldees, interpreting the phrase of the land in which
he was born, as Onkelos and Jonathan, and the Septuagint version
render it: but the same is meant as before, for Haran was the
land of his kindred, where Terah his father died, and Nahor his
brother and family lived; from whence he was taken and removed
into the land of Canaan, by the call, direction, and providence
of the Lord God, who made the heavens, and dwells therein:
which spake unto me, and that swore unto me;
made a promise to him, and confirmed it with an oath, ( Genesis
15:18 ) ( Genesis
22:16 Genesis
22:17 ) : saying, unto thy seed will I give this
land;
the land of Canaan; and therefore his son, in whom his seed was
to be called, must not be removed from hence, and settled in
another country: he shall send his angel before
thee;
Aben Ezra takes this to be a prayer or wish, "may he send his
angel before thee"; for if it was a prophecy, he adds, why did he
say "if the woman will not be willing?" but from ( Genesis
24:10 ) ; and from what follows, that the servant should take
a wife to his son from thence, and the encouragement he had for
his faith in it, and from what God bad done for him, and said
unto him, it seems as if he was fully assured in his own mind of
the event: this angel may be either understood of a created
angel, such being frequently made use of in the affairs of
Providence, directing and succeeding men, or of the uncreated
Angel, the Son of God, since the servant attributes his direction
and success wholly to the Lord.