Did Abraham ever worship a moon god?

Once I was asked whether prior to God’s call Abraham was a polytheistic pagan who worshiped a moon god? Scriptures tell us that God called Abraham out of a place full of pagan idolatry but Abraham had faith in God and that faith was demonstrated through Abraham’s obedience to God.

Joshua prophesied, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac’” (Josh. 24:2-3).¹ Interestingly, Terah and Nahor are identified as the worshipers of other gods, but Yahweh takes Abraham away from that.

Genesis 11-12 tells us that Abraham was born in Ur and that God called him from there into the land of Canaan and that God would eventually give Canaan to Abraham’s descendants. Ur was a city in southern Mesopotamia situated on the Euphrates River. Mesopotamia was “a land with polytheistic religious traditions” and “Abram and his family worshiped many gods, including the patron gods of their city as well as ancestral deities and individual gods whose properties were to cure illness or provide fertility.”² It is also believed that “the Babylonians worshiped many gods, but the moon god Sin was supreme” and “the city of Ur was a kind of theocracy centered in the moon deity.³ Again, the pagans of Ur worshiped many gods, a moon god in particular, but Yahweh calls out of that place, and Abraham positively responds to the Lord.

Perhaps Abraham prior being called by the Lord joined with the paganism common to Ur, but focal emphasis in the Scriptures is the patriarch’s life with Yahweh. The lives of Abraham and Sarah were in fact radically transformed by the Lord, and they were given new names. Their former names were Abram and Sarai (Gen. 17:5, 15).

God called Abraham out of a decaying world full of paganism and the patriarch put his faith in God. Whatever paganistic practices dominated the people of Ur, Abraham forsook that life in exchange for a life with the Lord. The Epistle of the Hebrews says: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God…By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb. 11:8-10, 17-19).

Abraham did have his faith struggles. Twice he gave his wife Sarah to be married to another man — Pharaoh (Gen. 12:10-20) and Abimelech (Gen. 20:1-18). Abraham and Sarah had even gotten the impression it was the Lord’s plan for them to produce an heir through a third-party surrogate — Hagar (Gen. 16:1-16). These incidents reveal that Abraham either misunderstood or doubted the Lord’s proclamation about patriarch bearing an offspring with his wife and their descendants becoming a nation that blesses other nations. Nevertheless, Yahweh intervenes in each of these occasions to redirect Abraham back on course, and in the most extraordinary way, despite the great ages of the parents, Isaac, the child of promise, is born (Gen. 18:1-15; 21:1-7). Yet, the true colors of Abraham’s faith are revealed in the patriarch’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, knowing that God would provide a way for all His promises to come to pass (Gen. 22:1-19).

Christians are identified as heirs to the promises of Abraham (Gal. 3:29). Like our forefather, we are call out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Whatever sinful and fallen ways of the past, they are set aside in a new life in Christ. Nevertheless, we are fallible creatures, and like Abraham we have our own struggles and doubts, but God is relentless in seeking us out to bring us to redirect us in the way we should go. Though this we learn that God is trustworthy, and our faith in Him is strengthened. How good it is to be in the hands of a merciful and patient God who relentlessly pursues us when we go astray, spurring us on to eternity.

—WGN

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1. All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
2. Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Jos 24:2.
3. Ronald F. Youngblood, F. F. Bruce, and R. K. Harrison, Thomas Nelson Publishers, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1995), s.v. “Ur.”