[Hmmmmm . . . you might pause and think about the details we fail to take into consideration when we simply rush through reading these chapters because we’ve read it a few times or, even for the first time, we think—what is the relevance of this to me?
When you imagine Abraham and Sarah in their old age, I mean really, not only ‘senior’ but maybe ‘elderly’, comparing them to the generations we see who belong to their age group, you would think as we did: aside from the divinely-promised son to come from this union, the reality is — it’s like looking at great grandparents with a baby! As if that’s not difficult enough to imagine, here we read that Abimelech actually desires Sarah in her old age! Wow, would that octagenarians and nonagenarians among the female population would still be desired by males; instead what you see are aging men with young women and if it’s the other way around, older women with young men are not only frowned upon but called the uncomplimentary term “cougar”. But as the Scripture says, Abimelech found Sarah still quite attractive in her old age and so must she have been. Probably in those days when longevity was the norm, the environment was invigorating, food was nutritious and health-promoting, no toxins at all to ruin the complexion of people — one could look as beautiful in old age like Sarah . . . and so we looked for the most complimentary illustration for her here.
As for Abraham’s 2nd-time-around cowardly behavior as a husband, he’s just trying to survive right? Men would probably agree, but please don’t bother asking a woman what she thinks of Abraham both times. Let’s just be kind and imagine that perhaps, the culture then allowed such faint-hearted men to use their wives for self-preservation. As we’re constantly reminded by the Rabbis, the Scriptures ‘say it like it is’, includes the strength as well as the weakness of biblical figures; after all, they’re just like the rest of us with human frailties. What we should look at is the pattern in their choices in life, the overall picture and not one or two failures during moments of weakness. Relevant enough?
Unbracketted commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorah’s, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation is Everett Fox The Five Books of Moses with commentary indicated by “EF” and additional commentary from “RA” for Robert Alter whose translation of the TORAH bears the same title as Fox.––Admin1.]
Genesis/Beresith 20
ABIMELECH
The promise of a son seems to have a rejuvenated Sarah. She is taken into the harem of the king of Gerar.
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[EF] The Wife—II (20): The second occurrence of “The Matriarch Protected” comes immediately before the story of Yitzhak’s birth, as if to emphasize God’s hand in the process one more time. In this long variation on the theme, God is most active and Avraham most revealing of his past. He emerges from danger as a man who clearly enjoys God’s full protection and bounty.
The story almost draws a web of magic around Sara. Avimelekh is nearly killed by God, and Sara’s childlessness is inflicted upon all the women int he king’s household—even though there is not the slightest doubt of his innocence (he “had not come near her”).
1 Avraham traveled from there to the Negev, and settled between Kadesh and Shur, sojourning
in Gerar.
from thence. From the terebinths of Mamre; see XVIII,1.
South. The Negeb; see XII,9.
Kadesh and Shur. See XIV,7 and XVI,7.
Gerar. Probably the Wady Jerur, 13 miles S.W. of Kadesh.
[RA] And Abraham journeyed onward from there to the Negeb region. This second instance of the sister-wife type-scene is in several ways fashioned to fit the particular narrative context in which it is inserted. The emphatic foreshadowing of the sojourn in Egypt of the episode in chapter 12 is deleted. Here there is no mention of a famine as the cause of the patriarch’s migration, and the place he comes to is not Egypt but Gerar, a Canaanite city-state in the western Negeb.
2 Avraham said of Sara his wife: She is my sister. So Avimelekh king of Gerar sent and had Sara taken.
my sister. Abraham adopts the same precautions as when he was in Egypt: XII,13.
Abimelech. Abimilki is the name of the Egyptian governor of Tyre in the Tell-el-Amarna tablets.
and took Sarah. Had her brought to his harem.
3 But God came to Avimelekh in a dream of the night and said to him: Here, you must die because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a wedded wife![EF] wedded wife: Heb. be’ulat ba’aal.
[RA] And God came to Abimelech. This potentate is immediately given a higher moral status than Pharaoh in chapter 12: to Pharaoh God speaks only through plagues, whereas Abimelech is vouchsafed direct address from God in a night-vision.
You are a dead man. Or, “you are about to die.” Abimelech’s distressed response to this peremptory death sentence is understandable, and leads back to the preceding episodes in the narrative chain.
4 Avimelekh had not come near her. He said: My Lord, Would you kill a nation, though it be innocent?A righteous nation. “innocent folk’ (Moffatt).
[RA] will you slay a nation even if innocent? This phrase, which might also be construed “slay a nation even with the innocent,” sounds as peculiar in Hebrew as in translation, and has led some critics to see the word “nation” (goy) as a scribal error. But the apparent deformation of idiom has a shart thematic point. “Innocent” (tsadiq) is the very term Abraham insisted on in questioning God as to whether He would really slay the innocent together with the guilty in destroying the entire nation of Sodom. If the king of Gerar choses, oddly, to refer to himslef as “nation,” leaning on the traditional identification of monarch with people, it is because he is, in effect, repeating Abraham’s question to God: will not the Judge of all the earth do justice?
5 Did he not say to me: She is my sister, and also she, she said: He is my brother! With a wholeheart and with clean hands have I done this.
[EF] With a whole heart: Lit. “In the wholeness of my heart.”
[RA] and she, she, too. This repetitive splutter of indignation is vividly registered in the Hebrew, though the existing translations smooth it over.
6 God said to him in the dream: I also know that it was with a whole heart that you did this, and so I also held you back from being at fault against me, therefore I did not let you touch her.[EF] being at fault: Or, “sinning,” which is perhaps too theological a translation.
[RA] I have not allowed you to touch her. The means by which consummation is prevented is intimated, cannily, only at the very end of the story.
7 But now, return the man’s wife —indeed, he is a prophet, he can intercede for you— and live! But if you do not return her: know that you must die, yes, die, you and all that is yours!
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a prophet. This is the first time the word occurs in the Bible. It is here used to denote a man who stands in a specially near relationship to God, and is consequently under the Divine protection.
8 Early in the morning Avimelekh called all his servants, he spoke all these words in their ears, and the men became exceedingly afraid.[EF] morning: Heb. boker sometimes has this more general meaning.
9 Then Avimelekh had Avraham called and said to him: What have you done to us? In what did I fail you, that you have brought me and my kingdom into such great fault? Deeds which are not to be done, you have done to me![RA] 9-10. And Abimelech . . . said . . . and Abimelech said. The repetition of the formula for introducing direct speech, with no intervening response from Abraham, is pointedly expressive. Abimelech vehemently castigates Abraham (with good reason), and Abraham stands silent, not knowing what to say. And so Abimelech repeats his upbraiding, in shorter form (verse 10).
10 And Avimelekh said to Avraham: What did you foresee, that you did this thing?what sawest thou? i.e. what hadst thou in view?
11 Avraham said: Indeed, I said to myself: Surely there is no awe of God in this place, they will kill me on account of my wife![EF] awe: Others, “fear.”
[RA] 11-12. When Abraham finally speaks up, his words have the ring of a speaker floundering for self-justification. Introducing the explanation of Sarah’s half-sister status—there might be a Mesopotamian legal background to such a semi-incestuous marriage—he uses a windy argumentative locution, wegam ‘omnah, “and, in point of fact,” that may hint at a note of special pleading.
and they will kill me because of my wife. What Abraham fears is that Gerar, without “fear of God,” will prove to be another Sodom. In Sodom, two strangers came into town and immediately became objects of sexual assault for the whole male population. Here again, two strangers come into town, one male and one female, and Abraham assumes the latter will be an object of sexual appropriation, the former the target of murder. In the event, he is entirely wrong: Abimelech is a decent, even noble, man; and the category of “Sodom” is not to be projected onto everything that is not the seed of Abraham. On the contrary, later biblical writers will suggest how easily Israel turns itself into Sodom.
12 Then, too, she is truly my sister, my father’s daughter, however not my mother’s daughter-so she became my wife.
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daughter of my father. The Bible sometimes uses ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ to denote a grandson or granddaughter (IX,24). Sarah may well have been Terah’s granddaughter and Abraham’s niece. Nachmanides, in his Commentary, severely denounces the Patriarch’s conduct on the ground that it again imperiled his wife: and he adds that it makes no difference whether Abraham told Abimelech the truth in calling Sarah his ‘sister’, inasmuch as he suppressed the all-important fact that she was also his wife. Scripture impartially relates both the failings and the virtues of its heroes.
13 Now it was, when the Power-of-god caused me to roam from my father’s house, that I said to her: Let this be the faithfulness that you do me: in every place that we come, say of me: He is my brother.God caused me to wander. The verb is in the plural, which is sometimes used when an Israelite speaks to a heathen; XXXI,52. It may also be the ‘plural of majesty’, I,26.
[EF] roam: A word which in Genesis suggests a wandering that is nevertheless directed by God. See 21:14 and 37:15 for other examples. This passage gives us a fascinating glimpse of Avraham;s own percetption of the events in Chap. 12. It is not unusual for the biblical storyteller to give out information in this manner (in a later speech of the protagonist). faithfulness: Or “favor.”
[RA] the gods made me a wanderer. The word ‘elohim, which normally takes a singular verb (though it has a plural suffix) when it refers to God, as everywhere else in this episode, is here linked with a plural verb. Conventional translation procedure renders this as “God,” or “Heaven,” but Abraham, after all, is addressing a pagan who knows nothing of this strange new idea of monotheism, and it is perfectly appropriate that he should choose his words accordingly, settling on a designation of the deity that ambiguously straddles polytheism and monotheism. It is also noteworthy that Abraham, far from suggesting that God has directed him to a promised land, stresses to the native king that the gods have imposed upon him a destiny of wandering.
in every place to which we come. The writer, quite aware that this episode approximately repeats the one in chapter 12, introduces into Abraham’s dialogue a motivation for the repetition: this is what we must do (whatever the problematic consequences) in order to survive wherever we go.
14 Avimelekh took sheep and oxen, servants and maids, and gave them to Avraham, and returned Sara his wife to him.[RA] And Abimelech took sheep and cattle. Unlike Pharaoh in chapter 12, who bestows gifts on Abraham as a kind of bride-price, the noble Abimelech offers all this bounty after Sarah leaves his harem, as an act of restitution.
15 Avimelekh said: Here, my land is before you, settle wherever seems good in your eyesmy land. This offer is to be contrasted with the action of Pharaoh in II,19.
16 And to Sara he said: Here, I have given a thousand pieces of silver to your brother, here, it shall serve you as a covering for the eyes for all who are with you and with everyone, that you have been decided for.a thousand pieces of silver. This is not mentioned in v. 14; probably an additional personal gift.
a covering of the eyes. Figurative for ‘justification’; to make them blind to the wrong which had been done her.
[EF] a covering for the eyes: Heb. obscure; apparently it has legal connotations (see also “decided for” at the end of the verse).
17 Avraham interceded with God and God healed Avimelekh: his wife and his slave-women, sothat they gave birth.
18 For YHVH had obstructed, obstructed every womb in Avimelekh’s household on account of Sara, the wife of Avraham.
[EF] YHWH had obstructed: On account of Sara, the “obstructed” one of 16:2.
[RA] For the LORD had shut fast every womb. Contrary to some textual critics who conjecture that this verse was inadvertently displaced from an earlier point in the story, it is a lovely piece of delayed narrative exposition. Shutting up the womb is a standard idiom for infertility, which ancient Hebrew culture, at least on the proverbial level, attributes to the woman, not to the man. But given the earlier reference to Abimelech’s having been prevented from touching Sarah, this looks suspiciously like an epidemic of impotence that has struck Abimelech and his people—an idea not devoid of comic implications—from which the Gerarite women would then suffer as the languishing partners of the deflected sexual unions. (Nahmanides sees an allusion to impotence here.) It is noteworthy that only in this version of the sister-wife story is the motif of infertility introduced. Its presence nicely aligns the Abimelech episode what precedes and what follows. That is, first we have the implausible promise of a son to the aged Sarah; then a whole people is wiped out; then the desperate act of procreation by Lot’s daughters in a world seemingly emptied of men; and now an entire kingdom blighted with an interruption of procreation. The very next words of the story—one must remember that there were not chapter breaks in the original Hebrew text, for both chapter and verse divisions were introduce only in the late Middle Ages—are the fulfillment of the promise of progeny to Sarah: “And the LORD singled out Sarah as He had said.” As several medieval Hebrew commentators note, the plague of infertility also guarantees that Abimelech cannot be imagined as the begetter of Isaac.