This parsha begins the story of the Jewish people. Until now we have had a history of the world up until Abraham. Last week we learned about his father's family, which was from Ur, in Mesopotamia. Abraham's father, Terah, took his grown sons and all their households - actually more like a clan - and went to Haran, where this week's parsha begins, the start of Genesis 12.
1. And the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. א. וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל אַבְרָם לֶךְ לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ:
2. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and [you shall] be a blessing. ב. וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה:
3. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you." ג. וַאֲבָרְכָה מְבָרֲכֶיךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה:
4. And Abram went, as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him, and Abram was seventy five years old when he left Haran.
Abraham, we are told, was 75 when he left Harah. What of his life up until then?
There are many midrashim about Abraham as a child believing in one God. My Jewish Learning tells some of them here. Abraham's birth, some stories say, was announced with portents. In one of these stories, the king Nimrod is warned and seeks to kill the child of the prophesy (much as Herod would do much later) by killing all infants, and Abraham's parents hide him in a cave; when he emerges at three years old, he is enlightened. In some of these stories, he begins to walk and talk almost at birth. There are similar stories about Moses - and about various pagan heroes.
Probably the most famous stories are those about Abraham and the idols. I once heard a teacher say she had asked a class of young adults to find in the Bible the story of Abraham smashing the idols, and they began at once to look. They are not in the Bible, but you can find them at Wikipedia where the text of the midrash is also given.
In these stories, his father, Terah, is an idol maker who sometimes leaves Abraham to take care of the shop. Once, Abraham smashes all the idols, and leaves the hammer he used in the hand of the largest idol. He tells his father that the idols all had a fight, and the biggest one smashed all the others so he could have al. Terah, of course, is angry and does not believe the story at all and his son asks how he can worship idols when he doesn't believe they have minds to think with.
In other stories, Terah is a minister for the king Nimrod, and takes his son to Nimrod for his blasphemy.
That the king of Babylon would be Nimrod is questionable. In the genealogies, Nimrod is named in the fourth generation after Noah, and described as a strong man and a great hunter. He is often associated with the building of the Tower of Babel. Abraham is in the tenth generation after Noah, and I once figured out that there were more than 300 years (if I remember correctly, it was 320) between the births of Nimrod and Abraham. A more likely explanation is that the Nimrod in the confrontation with Abraham is the grandson of the Nimrod of Babel. There is one place where he is said to be an ancestor of Abraham.
The story of Abraham's confrontation is also given as an explanation of the death of Abraham's brother Haran, the father of Lot, who "died in the presence of his father." Nimrod has Abraham thrown into a large furnace, but God saves him and he emerges unharmed. At this, Haran says he believes in Abraham, not Nimrod, and is also thrown into the furnace. He doesn't survive since his answer was not based on faith.
In the "Ask the Rabbi" link above, the question asked is whether these stories were written by the rabbis in the second century CE to fight idolatry. Although they were written in that period, it is unlikely that the rabbis made them up. I think of them as tales told by generations, parents to children. Storytelling was the main source of entertainment for millennia, and the tales told by Israelite and Jewish parents and teachers would certainly have involved the heroes of the Bible. This is the way oral traditions grow, and would explain all the different versions of the stories.
The stories have continued being told, which is why those young adults looked in their Bibles for one of them. I know people who were told these stories as children and have a deep fondness for them.
I only learned them over the past 10 or 20 years, so for me they are not so intimately tied to the stories actually told in Torah. I think, rather, that Abraham was part of the culture of Ur as a child, and came to his beliefs in adulthood, whether gradually or as a result of the revelation at the beginning of this parsha.
The summons, with its promise of fathering a great nation, must have been very moving for the 75 year old, childless, Abram, and sorely tempting. Much of Lech Lecha is the repetition of the prophesy with more and more details. A good deal happens - the abduction of Sarah in Egypt, Sarah giving Hagar to Abraham and the resulting conception of Ishmael, the early stages of the bitter relationship between Sarah and Hagar, the convenant when Abraham is 99 and Ishmael 13, requiring circumcision and the birth of Isaac predicted. But through it all is God's repetition and refinement of the initial promise.
Shabbat shalom!