Somehow this time it all seemed different to him.
The people he read about were altered to his vision.

Heretofore a poetic light had shone about them, where indeed they had not glowed in a halo of sanctification.

Now, by some chance, this light was gone, and he saw them instead as untutored and unwashed barbarians, filled with animal lusts and ferocities, struggling by violence and foul chicanery to secure a foothold in a country which did not belong to them--all rude tramps and robbers of the uncivilized plain.
The apparent fact that Abram was a Chaldean struck him with peculiar force.

How was it, he wondered, that this had never occurred to him before?
Examining himself, he found that he had supposed vaguely that there had been Jews from the beginning, or at least, say, from the flood.

But, no, Abram was introduced simply as a citizen of the Chaldean town of Ur, and there was no hint of any difference in race between him and his neighbors.