Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“When he had come near to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman to look at. It will happen that when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ They will kill me, but they will save you alive. Please say that you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that my soul may live because of you.””
(Genesis 12:11-13)

Abram went to Egypt in deceit. He put his wife at risk of being both a stumbling block and entering into sin. If God had wanted Abram in Egypt (remember Abram hadn’t consulted God on it), He would NEVER have had Abram go down in this manner. God is a God of TRUTH. Lying is NEVER the right thing to do. There is NO SUCH THING as a white lie. ALL lies are ungodly, wrong, and never EVER appropriate. In ANY way.

Sarai was, in fact, Abram’s sister (Genesis 20:12). They shared the same father, but had different mothers. So was he lying? Yes. He was twisting a technicality to represent their relationship in a way that was favourable to a single line of thinking. He did it out of fear. He did it to protect himself. He essentially was throwing Sarai under the bus to save his own skin in advance. He was bearing false witness. He was not trusting in the Lord.

Sarai was a godly woman. She agreed to this only because (a) it was her husband’s wish and (b) she didn’t want harm to come to Abram. Through everything that was going to happen, she had to trust in God to get through it.

It is interesting that Sarai was not a young woman at this point. She was only nine years younger than Abram. Abram was around seventy-five at this point. Sarai was approximately sixty-six. Imagine what that was like. At sixty-six she was so beautiful Abram feared people would kill him in order to be able to stake a claim to her. One of the biggest lies of the devil is that women have ‘aged out’ in their thirties or forties. What garbage!

The sage Abarbanel writes: ‘As he came near. Avraham did not employ this subterfuge when he entered Canaan because he came there at God’s command and was confident that God would protect him.’

The sage Sforno writes: ‘לבא מצרימה, a country which was equivalent to a giant brothel. This is mentioned even more forcefully in Ezekiel 23,20 where the prophet describes the carnal attitudes of the Egyptians as אשר בשר חמורים בשרם, וזרמת סוסים זרמתם, “those whose flesh is the flesh of donkeys, and whose sperm is the sperm of horses.”’

The sage Da’at Zekenim writes: ‘הנה נא ידעתי כי אשה יפת מראה את, “I am well aware that you are a physically attractive woman;” according to the interpretation of Rabbi Joseph Kara, the Torah abbreviated what Avraham said to Sarah, the full sentence including what is reported here as a separate sentence: “I know that because you are a beautiful –white skinned – woman as soon as they see you they will kill me and take you to the king’s palace to be part of his harem. In order to save my life, say that you are my sister, instead of my wife.” Although the Egyptians were idolaters, they observed the law of not sleeping with someone else’s wife. As a result, they resorted to murder instead. This sounds strange, as the same lawgiver that prohibited adultery also prohibited murder. Their reasoning was-presumably, that it is better to murder and commit that sin once, than to commit the sin of adultery day after day. Besides, they were afraid that any husband, whose wife had been kidnapped, would complain to their respective kings about this. Once the original husband was dead, no restitution could be made.’