THARE (Hebrew Terah, Septuagint Ôgêza, Ôgêza). — Father of Abraham and his two brothers Nahor and Haran, to whom, together with him, some historians therefore give the name of Terahites. With Abraham, Sarah, Lot (v.), he emigrated Haran (v.), where he died (Gen. 11:26-27, 31; Luke 3:34).
With the abandonment of Ur and the emigration toward the Mediterranean lands, the Terahites moved into the regions that were later to be the seat of the glorious history of Abraham’s descendants. Hence the importance of T. Genesis specifies the reason for the emigration. Jewish tradition (Jub. 57 sqq.) suggests that the emigrants were in reality forced to flee because they were monotheists, not adhering to the local Chaldean cults; provided that this information concerns all the Terahites who emigrated and T. himself, the notice in Josh. 24:2, that the “ancestors” of the Hebrew people, among whom T. is expressly named, “served other gods,” must be understood as referring to a prior period. Traces of paganism are also found later among the Terahites who remained in Chaldea (Gen. 31:19; 35:2).
The same name (Hebrew Terah, Septuagint Têgêz) is given to a locality in the desert, mentioned in Num. 33:27.