Abraham gets a bad rap, and I think lots of it extends from bad reading.
We are talking, of course, about what is sometimes called the ‘sister fib.’ Abraham—still called Abram at the time—tells Pharaoh that Sarai (Sarah) is his sister rather than his wife, and hilarious hijinks ensue (Genesis 12). Actually no, not hilarious hijinks, incredibly dangerous situations for Sarah.
Then he does it again (Genesis 20), though this king reacts very differently.
There’s a common list that gets banded about how various Old Testament characters sinned, which is mostly accurate. However, they always brand Abraham as a liar. Which he isn’t. If we are to learn from these stories, it’s vital that we read them carefully and see what the characters actually did (or didn’t) do wrong. By-the-by, I’m not sure that characterising Noah as a drunkard is the best reading of that story either, but that’s for another day.
Did Abram lie?
This should be straightforward: no. Sarah is his sister. I’ve heard preachers sometimes say that she’s ‘technically’ his sister, which is impinging Abram unfairly, she is his sister (Genesis 20). We would want to say ‘well, half-sister,’ but that’s not how they would have thought about it. Joseph and Judah are not ‘half-brothers’ they share a father and so are brothers. Abram and Sarah are brother and sister.
We don’t like admitting this because it makes us uncomfortable, but it’s true. He did not lie. Compound that with sibling relationships being at least as close, and perhaps closer, as marriage relationships in their cultural milieu, there’s an argument to be made that he told of the most important relationship.
That argument leaves us with a question because the story makes it clear he left out important information that put Sarah in peril. We need to ask whether he did the right thing, but he is not lying. He is, potentially, putting his wife in danger in order to save his own skin—I’m not trying to argue that’s better or worse, but I am trying to argue that careful and truthful reading matters.
Did he do the right thing?
Why did Abram do it? In the text he suggests it’s about protecting himself, because they will kill him if they think he’s her husband. This makes sense culturally, if you kill a man then his wife is now unprotected and fair game. This is, in the broadest sense, the plot of Homer’s Illiad. A woman with a brother, however, would require that you ask her brother’s permission before touching her, without killing her brother ever crossing into the frame. This would include negotiations, so Abram would have warning and could do something about it.
It’s reasonable to think that Abram thought he was trying to protect both of them by tricking Pharaoh with truths. Tricking the ‘son of the snake’ is a wider theme in Genesis.
Of course, it goes wrong, and it seems incredibly callous towards Sarah that he would behave this way. The outcome of his actions is not a good one, but do consider the options he was presented with. He would have assumed that Pharaoh would obey the common-law and not take his sister from him. We learn here much of what Pharaoh is like; a king who thinks he’s a god. This is one of the themes that bubbles in Genesis. He blames Abram for his own sins as well, as many of us still want to do.
I’m not trying to claim that everything here is rosy on Abram’s part, he plays along with this to the extent that the Pharaoh treats him very well. This doesn’t speak brilliantly of him, but he may have had little choice. The evil here is on Pharaoh’s part.
We should always ask: what exactly did we expect Abram to do? While the scriptures don’t always tell us who is in the wrong directly in a situation, inviting meditation to learn wisdom, we do notice that someone is cursed with plagues. It is not Abram.
Obviously, the story’s primary point in Genesis is the way that Egypt would forcibly take the wife such that plagues are required to have them sent away richer—this is the Exodus story in miniature. That’s got to be one of our main considerations in preaching and interpreting it.
We could also tell the story of Satan attacking the woman, the bearer of the seed, like he attacked Eve and attacks the church. This would be an important consideration in preaching and interpreting as well.
2 Sister 2 Fib
Of course, it happens again in chapter 20. Again Abraham (by now) is not plagued by God but the king, Abimelech, is. This king is desperate for children, so Satan attacks the woman who will bear the seed for a second time through him.
Abimelech proves, just like Pharoah, that he has no interest in God or custom and seizes Sarah (by now). This time though it plays out differently, God stops Abimelech from sinning in a dream, Abimelech repents, offers Abraham the best part of the land and asks for his prayers.
We are not meant to think Abraham a chump for repeating his terrible lies but think him canny and the kings terribly evil. The repeated occurrence draws attention not to Abraham but to the different response of this Philistine king to the Egyptian one. We see Abraham operating as a prophet whose prayers stop plagues and as an evangelist who brings people into the worship of Yahweh.
The swirling themes in these stories are picked up and repeated throughout Genesis, and then throughout the Bible. The moralistic reading of Biblical characters where we look for their flaw so we can see whether or not we have the same flaw, is (forgive me) flawed.
I’m not suggesting we can’t do that, or that Abram’s behaviour in these stories is heroic. I think its desperate and his desperation is taken out on his wife, but it’s much more complex than most of our tellings make out. He’s not the villain. The snake is.
What I am suggesting is that we should read these texts looking at the warp and woof of the Bible, the texture of the whole story, and considering why these stories are in Genesis at the point that they are. We’ll notice that they have more to do with the grand narrative and with Jesus than we might just think; this isn’t just by contrast either. Jesus does treat his wife differently in the presence of evil kings to Abraham. The point isn’t that he doesn’t disown us, because Abraham doesn’t and Jesus is our brother, but that he can protect us from snake-like kings. Some of them might even turn to God because of the church’s beauty.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
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