Abrade

n. [Lat. abradere, to scrape off.] To rub or wear off; to waste by friction. Abrad'ing, n. [Lat. ab, from and rado, I scrape or rub off. Applied to the sloping surface of banks of earth, which crumble down from the effects of frost, or the alternate action of drought and moisture. Abraham, [Heb. father of multitude , son of Terah, and brother of Nahor and Haran: the progenitor of the Hebrew nation and of several cognate tribes. His history is recorded with much detail in the Scriptures, as the very type of a true patriarchal life. His character is free, simple, and manly; full of hospitality and family affection; truthful to all who were bound to him by their ties, though not untainted with Eastern craft toward aliens; ready for war, but not a profe ed warrior or plunderer; free and childlike in religion, and gradnally educated by God's hand to a sense of its all absorbing claims. Terah was an idolater. Abraham appears as the champion of monotheism, and to him are referred the beginnings of the Mosaic polity. In obedience to a call of God, Abraham, with his father Terah, his wife Sarah, and his nephew Lot, left his native Ur of the Chaldees, and dwelt for a time in Haran, where Terah died. After his father's death, Abraham, now 75 years old, pursued his course, with Sarah and Lot, to the land of Canaan, whither he was directed by the divine command (Gen. xii. 5), when he received the general promise that he should become the founder of a great nation, and that all the families of the earth should be ble ed in him. As the country was suffering with famine, Abraham journeyed southward to the rich cornlands of Egypt. Fearing that the great beauty of Sarah might tempt the powerful monarch of Egypt, and expose his own life to peril, he represented her as his sister, but the deception was discovered, and Pharaoh with some indignation dismi ed him from the country. Abraham left Egypt with great po e ions, and, accompanied by Lot, returned to one of his former encampments between Bethel and Ai. As the soil was not fertile enough to support the two kinsmen, Abraham proposed that each should follow his own fortune. Lot, eager to quit the nomadic life, chose the fertile plain of the Jordan; and Abraham pitched his tent among the oak-groves of Mamre, close to Hebron, where the promise that his descendants should become a mighty nation, and po e the land in which he was a stranger, was confirmed with all the solemnity of a religious ceremony. At the suggestion of Sarah, who despaired of having children of her own, he took as his concubine Hagar, her Egyptian maid, who bare him Ishmael, in the 86th year of his age. Thirteen years elapsed, during which revelation was made, that a son of Sarah, and not Ishmael, should inherit both the temporal and spiritual ble ings. The covenant was renewed, and the rite of circumcision established as its sign. At length, Isaac, the long looked-for child, was born, and Ishmael was driven out, with his mother Hagar, as a satisfaction to Sarah's jealousy. Some 25 years after this event, Abraham received the strange command to take Isaac, and offer him for a burnt-offering at an appointed place. He hesitated not to obey, but the sacrifice was stayed by the angel of Jehovah. Sarah died at Hebron, and was buried in the cave of Machpelah, which Abraham purchased of Ephron; - the first instance on record of a legal conveyance of property. Abraham lived to seе the gradual accomplishment of the promise in the birth of his grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, and at the goodly age of 175 he was "gathered to his people," and laid beside Sarah, in the tomb of Machpelah, by his sons Isaac and Ishmael. Abraham'ic, a. Pertaining to Abraham; as, the Abra hamic covenant.