Genesis 12:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 12:11

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Now again, Sarai was 65 years old, but we note that she lived to just a little over double that age. Abram himself lived to a great age, so lifespans were long, and she was short of halfway through her life, so perhaps she was only an effective age of 40 or so at this stage of her life. Certainly she had retained her beauty. The people down in Egypt were very much darker in complexion. She was unusual and stood out. It was known that within the culture of Egypt the heads of regions, Pharaoh and others, might very well take possession for their harem of such a person. Abram feared that the Egyptians would kill him and save her alive. Since that almost happened, it was not such a far-fetched idea. They had respect for marriage in a strange way, the Egyptians. They respected marriage sufficiently to do this: if they wanted a woman badly enough, a pharaoh or a leader would have to bump off the husband in order to marry her. Well, in a strange way that is a respect for marriage. These days they would not bother to do away with the husband – just go ahead anyway. So there was some kind of ethical standard operating, even in godless Egypt, and Abram wanted to preserve his life. ‘Disgraceful!’, people say.Say you are my sister, he tells Sarai, and through your lie, I shall live. Now this is bad, but it isn't quite as bad – and we don't excuse it – as it looks, because in a strange way, Abram still has his faith and he knows the promises of God. Through him and through his heir the great descendant will come, who will be the Saviour of the world, the great descendant of Adam and Eve promised in Genesis 3:15, the one through whom all nations, all families of the world, will be blessed, the one who will do away with the consequences of sin, for billions. The Royal Seed is to come through Abram, so he must keep his life; his life must not be imperilled. It is a strange mixture in a way: intense faith which desires the preservation of his life, mixed up with a sudden lapse in faith, in that he failed to realise that God can protect him. He had a promise from God: ‘I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee.’ The God who can say that will not let him die. ‘make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee’ – how can that happen if he is killed in order that Sarai can be seized by Pharaoh? So we see a mixture of faith and fear, of faith and doubt.

Application

Actually, this is very important to us. Normally we must be at pains to defend the people of faith in the Bible. We must take the letter to the Hebrews, and say, ‘I will not allow an Abram or any of the other patriarchs or any of the heroes of faith to be unduly criticised, because they are called men of faith.’ But here there is no doubt he did wrong. We are not unfairly accusing him and yet even that speaks to us, because this hero of faith, this person who could trust God no matter what, was still a fragile man, and he could fall. So we cannot say, ‘He is no example to me; he is a superman; he is a man of iron strength and calibre. I am only weak; I cannot learn from Abram.’ No, we see faith and doubt mixed together. Abraham will fall again and again. So when you see him standing, you can stand too. He's a fallible man, and Scripture allows us to see that. It doesn't cover him in gold leaf. We therefore say, ‘What Abram accomplished and the heights of faith to which he attained, we can attain to also, because he was only a fallible man.’ So this actually is instructive to us, and helpful to us.

We are constantly tested by the Lord. Soon after conversion comes the first big test. But these are tests to prove us and to refine us and to teach us to lean upon the Lord and to look to him. Did Abraham pass the test? In one respect, yes. In another respect, alas, no; he fell. He realized that in Egypt it was possible for his wife to be taken into the harem of even Pharaoh. You say, ‘That's a little presumptuous for a visitor to think his wife is going to be seen by Pharaoh.’ But this is Genesis chapter 12, and some people have estimated that the population of Egypt would have been no greater than 12,000 people. That sounds astonishing to us. But this is very early on. Whether that's near the truth we can’t be sure, but it was much smaller than it was later to be. So yes, there was evidently every possibility that some very eminent one or Pharaoh himself would notice this strikingly fair, unusually beautiful woman. And the supposition was that he would be executed so that his wife could be taken into the noble harem.

Questions

Now at the time of Abram, you must not think this is unlikely to have happened. The land of Egypt was nothing like as heavily populated as it became later on. Pharaoh is a title, not a name. It means ‘a great house’, so Pharaoh was the one with the biggest house. He was the local sheik, the major person. But the population was not the teeming millions that it later became. It was quite a small population at that time, and it was fairly easy for Pharaoh's officers to scrutinise or take account of strangers who came into the territory, and if someone of a different nation, yet very beautiful, came in, then yes, that was their culture and their way. They would inform about that person. So the lie was told: ‘she is my sister’. She was of course his half-sister. This was before the laws of consanguinity and so on, but they were close relations. She was Abram's half-sister, same mother, different fathers in their case.

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Genesis 12:11 Commentary and Bible Study