Abraham's Prayer for His Father

It’s interesting to look at what happened to Abraham’s family as he journeyed from Haran to the land of Canaan.  Abraham had traveled from Ur to Haran and dwelt there for a time with his father.  There was apparently a famine there, and Abraham’s father Terah “turned again to his idolatry” (Abraham 2:5).  The Lord told Abraham to leave Haran, and he left with his family towards the land of Canaan.  His father, though, did not go with him, and we have this detail of what Abraham did as he was making the journey: “I, Abraham, built an altar in the land of Jershon, and made an offering unto the Lord, and prayed that the famine might be turned away from my father’s house, that they might not perish” (Abraham 2:17).  That’s the last that we hear of Abraham’s father in the Pearl of Great Price account, but we learn a little bit more in the Bible. 

After describing how Terah and Abraham went from Ur to Haran, Genesis tells us, “The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran” (Genesis 11:32).  The next verse says, “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house” (Genesis 12:1).  The Lord had told Abraham to leave Haran, and the use of the word “had” in the phrase suggests that Abraham was told to leave before his father died.  From the account in the book of Abraham we see that clearly Abraham left before his father died because he was praying for the life of his father on his journey.  Stephen’s account relating Israelite history adds a little bit more detail: “Then came [Abraham] out of the land of the Chaldæans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell” (Acts 7:4).  So taking the language precisely at face value, we learn that before Abraham arrived in Canaan, his father had died.  Putting the three accounts together, then, we gather that Abraham left Haran while his father was still alive, journeyed towards Canaan while praying for the life of his father, but by the time he made it to Canaan his father had died.  To me what stands out about this is the fact that we have a prophet praying for the life of his family member, and his desire in fact was not granted.  The Lord’s will was not to preserve the life of his father—perhaps in part due to his idolatry—and so Abraham’s prayer that his father “might not perish” was not answered as he wanted by the Lord.  I think the lesson for us is simply that even prophets don’t always know what the Lord is going to do with their family.  While we pray and fast for those blessings we think are most needed for our loved ones, in the end we still must trust God that He may have different plans for us.