Forefather Forefather Ragau (Reu)

CRITICAL: category corrected from "righteous" to "forefather" — following this database's established practice for Old Testament figures named only in genealogical lists (cf. the correction of Righteous Aaron in an earlier batch). The template artifact in the life-years field, "I-XV century," has been removed — Ragau lived in the deep pre-Abrahamic antiquity; he has no individually fixed feast day, being commemorated only on the movable Sunday of the Holy Forefathers.

Ragau (Hebrew Reu) is mentioned in Scripture only within genealogical lists, with no separate narrative episode. He is the son of Peleg ("in his days the earth was divided," Genesis 10:25) and father of Serug, standing five generations before Abraham in the Shemite line recorded in Genesis 11 and repeated in 1 Chronicles 1:25. Luke's Gospel includes him in the ascending genealogy of Jesus Christ (Luke 3:34-36), tracing the Savior's human kinship through Abraham and Shem all the way to Adam and God — unlike Matthew's descending, Davidic-focused genealogy.

Ragau lived in the post-Flood, pre-Abrahamic patriarchal age, which Scripture records mainly through lifespans and lineage rather than events. In Orthodox tradition, all such genealogical patriarchs, including Ragau, are venerated collectively as "forefathers" — righteous ancestors who, though living before the Law and without seeing the Messiah, are honored for preserving the messianic hope and the lineage through which Christ was incarnate. The Church commemorates them together on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, two weeks before the Nativity of Christ, rather than on a separate fixed calendar day.