Acts 7:2

Acts 7:2 . The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham. That is, this God whose peculiar characteristic in the eyes of the Hebrew people was that visible shining brightness, that outward expression of majesty, the celestial splendour, which as a pillar of fire guided the desert wanderings, which as the Shekinah rested on the mercy-seat of the ark of the covenant in the Tabernacle and in the Temple. Paul speaks of this glory as one of the peculiar distinctions with which God honoured His own peculiar people (see Romans 9:14). It was the God whose visible symbol was that glory so well known by every child of Israel, who appeared to Abraham, the father of the race.

When he was in Mesopotamia. Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham first resided (Genesis 11:28), lay probably in the extreme north of Mesopotamia, near the sources of the Tigris.

Before be dwelt in Charran. In the Hebrew text, Haran; LXX., Charran. The Carrhae of the Latin writers, the scene of the disastrous defeat of the Triumvir Crassus, B.C. 51 (Lucan, i. 104; Plin. v. 24).