TO SAVE HIS OWN SKIN, THE ALPHA PATRIARCH PIMPS OUT HIS WIFE

 

Genesis 12:10-20  | Genesis 20: 1-18 > Exodus

WARNING: Serial adultery, abject cowardice, bare-faced lying, disease
CONTEXT: ~ 2000 BCE  The patriarch of three religions wanders with his herds into Egypt and back to Canaan.

 

The original patriarch

Abraham – whose non-historical existence is dated in the Biblical timeline around 2,000 BCE– is portrayed as patriarch of three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.¹ Strangely, although his character is central to Judaism, Abraham is not even a little bit Jewish.²

It is Muslims who can most legitimately claim the wandering sheep herder as the forebear of the Arab people. The biblical text clearly describes him as having been born in Ur or Uriwa of the Chaldees. Ancient Ur was a major Sumerian city that still exists in eastern Iraq as modern Tell el-Mukayyar; therefore Abraham’s only possible ethnicity is Arabic (Mesopotamian, Chaldean or Iraqi).³

 

A Cowardly Patriarch Indeed

A large chunk of the Book of Genesis deals with Abraham and his offspring: the junior elders Isaac and Jacob/Israel. Most of these stories are Sunday School fodder: the rejection of his father’s polytheism, the building of altars in Canaan, the repetitive covenants, the Sodom and Gomorrah interlude, the night raid on the Elamites, conflict with Lot over grazing rights, his wife Sarah’s inability to conceive, his sudden circumcision at the age of 99 and the banishing of his slave wife Hagar into the desert.

Yet there are two studiously and consistently ignored episodes in the midst of these adventures: Abraham’s for-profit loan of his wife Sarah to Pharaoh and a similar incident involving Abimelech, a Canaanite king. 

The first story begins with a journey to Egypt to escape famine in Canaan (a theme echoed later in the Joseph cycle). Upon entering Egypt, Abraham instructs Sarah to pretend to be his sister rather than his 65 year old wife.⁴ His fear is that the Egyptians will kill him and steal his lovely bride.

The plan works too well, however, when somehow Pharaoh’s officials catch wind of Sarah’s beauty.⁵ This in spite of her somewhat advanced age of 65 (desert air is great for a gal’s complexion). 

She is ordered to join the harem of the king of Egypt and in return, the nomadic tribal chieftain receives a significant dowry for his sister/wife. The King grants Abraham “flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels.” As his “sister,” Sarah would have been his property to do with as he pleased.

We do not have access to Sarah’s reaction to the deal with Pharaoh. We don’t know what her specific duties were as Pharaoh’s concubine, although we do know in general what a concubine’s duties typically are.

But all is not well. In a preview of YHWH’s punishment of Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus, the creator of the universe curses the Egyptian court and the king’s household with several unspecified plagues. Once the deception is discovered, Pharaoh complains bitterly to Abraham about the big lie, returns his wife and sends them on their way. Abraham gets to keep all the swag.

As the font of all moral guidance, the Bible once again provides a curious example of divine justice. On one hand, Abraham – founder of the chosen people – committed a compound sin beginning with a big whopping lie and ending with profiting from his wife’s humiliation. On the other hand, Pharaoh committed no crime. Yet Pharaoh is punished and Abraham is rewarded. A benefit of being favored by YHWH.

 

The original context of “sister wife.”

Time goes on and everything seems to be fine as Abraham returns to the oft-promised land. He is richer than ever thanks to newly acquired Egyptian loot and livestock. As a bonus, God promises that Sarah will give birth to a great nation in spite of the fact that she is now well past child-bearing age. 

At some point in the narrative, Abraham et al arrive in Gerar (near Gaza) where he once again claims Sarah is his sister. Abimelech, the king of the town, decides he can use another wife so he acquires the 80 year old Sarah, who is presumably just as alluring as she was at 65.

The Lord appears to the king in a dream and threatens his life for the crime of taking another man’s wife. For good measure, he makes everyone in Abimelech’s household barren. But Abimelech pushes back. Swearing that he has not laid a hand on her, the king points out that he is innocent by virtue of having been lied to by Sarah’s husband. God agrees and says he will let him off the hook if he just returns the little wife to her spouse.⁶ 

Once again, Abraham benefits financially. Abimelech gives the patriarch sheep, oxen, men-servants and women-servants⁷ plus a thousand pieces of silver. We are told nothing of Sarah’s thoughts concerning being rented out to yet another king. There is no record of the conversation that surely took place between Abraham and his wife / half-sister. 

So again we find the founding patriarch of three world religions guilty of cowardice and moral turpitude with no reprimand from YHWH. Instead, the Lord punishes the victims and bestows more largess on Abraham. Although Sarah is described in other passages as quite spirited, in this instance the trafficked wife has no comment.

At the very least, this lesson in abject tribalism has been projected millennia into the future, justifying the behavior of anyone in the same demography as the chosen. Goodbye Indians, Hello Cowboys.

And is it any wonder that misogyny is a core principle for fundamentalists of all three patriarchal religions?

 

Abraham’s for-profit loan of his wife Sarah to Pharaoh and a similar incident involving a Canaanite king

 

NOTES:

1. These are the “Abrahamic” or “patriarchal” religions, so called for obvious reasons..
2. See Jesus’s Lineage Part I: When Did The Hebrews Become Jews
3. There are any number of Jewish and Christian theologians who really really want Abraham to be Hebrew, so much that they twist the scripture into a word jumble. The gist of that argument is that he just sort of “morphed” into a Jew. Nevertheless, none of those claims are backed up in the text. The Bible says only that he was born in Arabia and then moved to Syria. The term “Jew” is eventually derived from his great-grandson Judah (who parents were both Syrian as well).
4. She is also his half-sister according to the Hebrew Bible: she is “my father’s daughter, but not my mother’s.” – Gen. 20:12.
5. Abraham is a nomadic shepherd chieftain of a tribe numbering in the hundreds at most, so it is unclear exactly how his entry into the advanced urban civilization of Early Dynastic Egypt would have been notable..
6. Back then, it was no big deal to have a conversation with the architect of the universe and make a deal with him. Simpler times.
7. This means slaves. It has been sanitized for modern readers.
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