Nimrod accordingly sent gold and silver to Terah, and asked his son in exchange, but Terah refused. Then the king sent and threatened to burn down and utterly destroy the whole house of Terah, unless the child were surrendered. In the mean time one of the female slaves had born a son; this Terah gave to the royal officers, who, supposing it to be the son of the householder, brought it before Nimrod and slew it.
Then, to secure Abraham, Terah concealed him and his mother and nurse in a cave.
But there is another version of the story, and it is as follows:—
Nimrod had long read in the stars that a child would be born who would oppose his power and his religion, and would finally overcome both.
Acting on the advice of his wise men, he built a house, sixty ells high and eighty ells broad, into which all pregnant women were brought to be delivered, and the nurses were instructed to put to death all the boys that were born, but to make handsome presents to the mothers who were brought to bed of daughters.
After seventy thousand male children had thus perished, the angels of heaven turned to the All Mighty, and besought Him with tears to stay this cruel murder of innocents.
“I slumber not, I sleep not,” God answered. “Ye shall see that this atrocity shall not pass unpunished.”
Shortly after, Terah’s wife was pregnant; she concealed her situation as long as was possible, pretending that she was ill; but when she could conceal it no more, the infant crept behind her breasts, so that she appeared to every eye as if nothing were about to take place.
When the time came for her delivery, she went in fear out of the city, and wandered in the desert till she lighted on a cave, into which she entered. Next morning she was delivered of a son, Abraham, whose face shone, so that the grotto was as light as though the sun were casting a golden beam into it. She wrapped the child in a mantle, and left it there to the custody of God and His angels, and returned home. God heard the cry of the weeping infant, and He sent His angel Gabriel to the cave, who let the child suck milk out of his fore-finger. But according to another account he opened two holes in the cave, from which dropped oil and flour to nourish Abraham. Others, however, say that Terah visited the cave every day, and nursed and fed the child.
According to the Arab tradition, which follows the Jewish in most particulars, the mother, on visiting the cave, found the infant sucking its two thumbs. Now out of one of its thumbs flowed milk, and out of the other, honey, and thus the babe nourished itself: or, say others, from one finger flowed water when he sucked it; from a second, milk; from a third, honey; from a fourth, the juice of dates; and from the little finger, butter.[297]