Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.
But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

• Genesis 12:10-20

Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Then Abimelek king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her.
But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.”
Now Abimelek had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister,’ and didn’t she also say, ‘He is my brother’? I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands.”
Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her. Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all who belong to you will die.”

• Genesis 20:1-7

Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.” So Isaac stayed in Gerar.
When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She is my wife.” He thought, “The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful.”
When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?”
Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.”
Then Abimelek said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”
So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: “Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

• Genesis 26:1-11

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“Note: Abraham to Abimelech, ‘Sarah is my sister.’   Isaac tells everyone that Rebekah is his sister.”

• My wife’s next comment in this notebook

The Discussion

My wife and I had a conversation about this, but I do not know if it is when she made this note in her notebook.  She had read the two stories of Abraham and Isaac with Abimelech, and she thought them beyond bizarre.  She wondered why God put up with Abraham and Isaac – liars to save their own skin.  No concern for what might happen to the wife in each situation.

It only added to her confusion when I said that it was Abraham’s second use of the tactic.

From a purely earthly perspective, it worked each time.  The first time, Abram (before becoming Abraham) went to Egypt during a famine.  When Pharoah saw that Sarai was beautiful, he gave Abram a lot of livestock.  When the ruse was discovered, Pharoah sent Abram away, but it says nothing of reclaiming the bride price.  What it does say, and in the other two cases the same, the ruler declares an edict that no one is to harm Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah or Isaac and Rebekah).

The patriarch got what he wanted.  In both cases with Abram (Abraham), Sarai (Sarah) was taken to the harem, but not into the king’s bedroom… yet.  This would have been catastrophic, in that Abram saved his own skin, but now he had no wife in which to carry out the promise God had made to him.  But Pharoah and his court became seriously ill.  Somehow, they narrowed down the cause to Sarai.  When Abimelech took Sarah into his harem, Abimelech received a dream.

Note: Sarai was the half-sister of Abram.  They had the same father, but they had a different mother.

With Isaac, it was a bald-faced lie.  He and Rebekah were cousins.  The term used for cousin or kinfolk is different.  In this case Abimelech stated the desire for Rebekah, but she and Isaac were still together.  The king looked down from his palace, into the tent of Isaac and saw them fondling one another in a way that brother and sister ought not to do.  The KJV and some older translations say that they were “sporting”.  I quoted an author a few years ago saying that “I don’t think they were playing ping pong.”

In Isaac’s case, he gets the same guarantee and when Isaac flees to Beersheba, Abimelech follows and makes a treaty with Isaac at the well there.

And note that this was probably not the same Abimelech with Isaac as the one who took Sarah.  Abimelech means “ruler of all” or “king.”  Thus, it is more of a title rather than their name.  Hadad and Ben Hadad (son of Hadad) are mentioned over many generations as the kings of Aram (Damascus).  And Xerxes, who married Esther, means ruler of heroes or king of all men.  This makes reading these biblical accounts a bit confusing, especially when you try to timeline the stories in Scripture versus the secular history of that time.  Knowing that these are titles avoids some of the confusion.

So, the half truth by Abram and the lie by Isaac, a ruse in all three cases, worked to the advantage of the patriarch, Abraham or Isaac.

Is this a case of God taking something that involved sin but making it something that was in the eventual good for his chosen family?

But does it not show a slight amount of a chink in the faith armor of Abraham and Isaac?  They did not have enough faith to walk into the king’s presence and know that God would protect them regardless of what they claimed to be.

And I think that is what made my wife a bit perplexed when she read those stories.

God is in control.  And sometimes, God must work overtime to get us out of the fix we got ourselves in.  And it does not always come out as clean as it did for Abraham and Isaac.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory