Abraham, Session 2
Notes
Transcript
10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance,
12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”
14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.”
20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
We often talk about trusting God’s promises, but rarely does trusting God involve risking our lives. Yet this was the situation Abram faced in Gen 12:10–20. Confronted with difficult circumstances, Abram had to decide whether to trust in God’s promises or take matters into his own hands. Abram’s experience demonstrates that even when our faith falters, God remains faithful to His promises and to His people.
-We’ve all experienced this: One minute we’re confidently striding along God’s path for our lives, and the next we find ourselves at a crossroads with no markers and no sense of direction. Abram came to such a crossroads not long after arriving in Canaan. Just as he and Sarai had settled in their new home, severe famine struck the land. Abram was forced to choose: remain in the land of promise and risk death by starvation, or relocate temporarily to Egypt and risk death at the hand of foreign enemies. Abram had just received God’s promise that he would become a “great nation” (Gen 12:2), but that future now appeared to be in jeopardy. Rather than standing firm in faith, Abram allowed fear to sway him, and he chose Egypt over God’s promise. Yet, as the Bible demonstrates again and again, God remains faithful to His promise and His people, despite their decisions.
Historical & Cultural Background. Famines were not unusual in ancient Mesopotamia. Agriculture in Egypt was less dependent on rain than agriculture in Canaan: The regular flooding of the Nile provided water for crops. During times of famine, people living in Canaan often traveled to Egypt, knowing they would likely find food there.
Famines jeopardized the food supplies of animals and people alike, quickly becoming a matter of life and death. Not long after Abram had settled in Canaan, famine struck the land. Abram was forced to choose between remaining in the land of promise, risking death by starvation, or relocating temporarily to Egypt, risking death by foreign enemies. Agriculture in Egypt was less dependent on rain than agriculture in Canaan: The regular flooding of the Nile provided water for crops. During times of famine, people living in Canaan often traveled to Egypt, knowing they would likely find food there. Egyptian tomb carvings from around the 20th century BC such as the Beni Hasan mural show Semitic people traveling to Egypt.
The biblical accounts provide several examples of famines displacing God’s people. For example, famine forced Abram’s son, Isaac, to travel to Gerar (Gen 26:1), and a more severe famine forced Isaac’s son, Jacob, and his family to move to Egypt when Joseph was in power (Gen 41–47; compare Ruth 1:1).
Such accounts help us understand Abram’s decision to take matters into his own hands and travel to Egypt; they demonstrate that famine was an issue of life and death in the ancient world. Since the residents of Canaan often found refuge from famine in Egypt, staying in Canaan would have been illogical to Abram and Sarai.
Abram’s decision to travel to Egypt reveals a surprising lack of faith, especially since it came directly on the heels of God’s call and promise to him (Gen 12:1–9). God had instructed Abram to go “to the land that I will show you” (12:1). God brought him to Canaan and promised that he would become a “great nation” (12:2) and that the land would belong to him and his descendants (12:7). Abram’s actions at this point in the narrative indicate doubt: Would God really keep His promises?
-Once in Egypt, Abram further demonstrated a lack of faith by instructing Sarai to pretend to be his sister—a decision spurred by Abram’s fear of Pharaoh. Despite this, God remained true to His promise and carried Abram and Sarai through Egypt unscathed.
Shortly after this story, Abram’s faith was again tested by trial (Gen 13:2–7). While Abram failed the early tests in Egypt, he acted selflessly later, allowing Lot to choose the best area of land. The pairing of these two stories develops a fuller picture of Abram’s faith journey: He had both successes and failures when attempting to follow God’s will. Together, these stories teach us that although our faith might not be perfect, God’s continued faithfulness to us is.
REFLECTION
Reflect on times when you were carried along by someone else’s decision. Did you have faith in their leadership?
How can the drive for self-preservation cloud our judgment and obscure our view of God’s promises?
While the main thrust of Gen 12:10–20 makes sense—Abram chose to travel to Egypt to avoid famine—several aspects of the account raise more questions than answers. What rumors about the Egyptians and foreign women led Abram to fear for his life? While travelers in the ancient world were vulnerable to bandits and forms of discrimination or nationalism, why did Abram feel less safe among the Egyptians than among the Canaanites? What led Abram to suspect that the Egyptians might take advantage of him and his wife, or that they would take Sarai from him? And why didn’t Abram, a patriarch of faith, stop and ask God what he should do?
The account of Gen 12:10–20 gives very few details. It does not explain Abram’s motivation or show Sarai’s reaction to Abram’s choices. Genesis includes two similar stories—one also involving Abram (Abraham) and another involving his son, Isaac. Isaac also did nearly the same thing in Gerar (Gen 26:6–11). These parallel accounts establish a pattern in which the patriarch visited a foreign land with his wife and passed her off as his sister to avoid potential harm. In each case, the foreign ruler responded by taking the matriarch into his household (i.e., harem). When the ruse came to light, the ruler sent the patriarch away with his wife and property. In each account, the patriarch acted out of fear, not faith.
On some level, Abram’s lack of faith was driven by the overwhelming instinct of self-preservation: He didn’t want to die. This also manifested as a lack of concern for Sarai. Abram persuaded her to participate in his deception, claiming that he would be killed if she did not. He failed to recognize that because of their ploy, an Egyptian would take her as his wife. Abram’s concern for his own survival blinded him to the issues of Sarai’s purity and protection.
On another level, though, Abram’s actions can be understood as an attempt to preserve the future promised in Gen 12:2–3. In this light, Abram’s focus on his survival reflects a concern to neutralize threats against the fulfillment of God’s promise. How could a dead man father a great nation? This episode (and the parallel account of Gen 20) presents Abram struggling with fear—the fear of losing God’s promised inheritance. Such fears reflect his humanity: even though God Himself had promised him an inheritance and blessing, flashes of doubt and fear plagued him, calling into question his claims of faith. The story never attempts to defend Abram’s actions. Apart from the reference to Sarai’s beauty, the account likewise fails to explain why the Egyptians might have wanted to take Sarai and kill Abram. Sarai would have been about 65 years old at this time, making her an unlikely prospect for childbearing. A marriage for political alliance would have also been unlikely since Pharaoh stood to gain nothing from a marriage-based alliance with Abram.
Considering what the story does not explicitly say raises even more questions. Sarai was taken into Pharaoh’s house (Gen 12:15) and joined his harem (Gen 12:19). Pharaoh’s statement that he took her as a wife likely meant that their union was consummated. The consummation may have caused the affliction that later plagued Pharaoh’s household. If so, God punished Pharaoh for committing adultery with Abram’s wife. When Abram turned to this ruse again in Gen 20 (see Chapter 7), the story specifically tells us that Sarai was not violated by Abimelech, though his household was unable to bear children until Abram’s wife was restored (Gen 20:17). But again, the account of Genesis 12 leaves these kinds of questions unanswered. Upon realizing that the people in his palace were experiencing affliction because he had taken Sarai as his wife, Pharaoh summoned Abram, protested his deceptive actions, and sent him away with Sarai—a terse conclusion to an already unembellished account (Gen 12:18–20). Abram didn’t answer Pharaoh’s questions; he never explained himself. However, the pattern of these types of narratives suggests that all this was a result of Abram attempting to find some way to survive—either out of fear or out of a misplaced effort to fulfill God’s promise to him.
Ultimately, God preserved Abram and faithfully kept His promise despite Abram’s seemingly impossible choice—death in Canaan or death in Egypt—and his poor decisions. As we read these accounts, we can recognize times in our own lives when the choices we make seem to lead us off track and away from God. And yet, in such cases, God is still present and able to bring us through any circumstance. He is faithful to His promise.
A number of psalms recount God’s provision to the patriarchs and offer poetic summaries of Israel’s history. In particular, Psalm 105:12–15 seems to allude to the story of Gen 12:10–20 and others like it from the lives of the patriarchs. The passage speaks of God’s protection of the patriarchs as they wandered as “sojourners … among the nations” (Psa 105:12–13). Later, when the psalm recounts how God delivered Israel from Egypt in the exodus, it describes God’s motivation in terms of remembrance: “he remembered his holy promise and he remembered Abraham, his servant” (Psa 105:42). God’s faithfulness to His promise is central. The episode in which God saved Abram and brought him safely out of Egypt foreshadows His later deliverance of Israel—Abram’s descendants—who He brought safely out of Egypt for Abram’s sake.
This story reminds us that even the heroes of our faith sometimes allowed themselves to be moved by circumstance rather than conviction. As with Abram, God’s promise to finish the work He began in us cannot be deterred by our mistakes and shortcomings. God’s faithfulness to us ensures that even when we find ourselves off course—whether because of a decision made in fear or a sin that has overcome us—His grace will guide us back to His will. We can be thankful that God’s perfect promises are not dependent on our imperfect faith.
Grigoni, M. R., Custis, M., Mangum, D., & Whitehead, M. M. (2012). Abraham: Following God’s Promise (Ge 12:10–20). Lexham Press.