Gen 12:11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance,
Gen 12:12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
Gen 12:13 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.”
Gen 12:14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
Gen 12:15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
Gen 12:16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
Gen 12:17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
Gen 12:18 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?
Gen 12:19 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.”
Gen 12:20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
For once I printed our whole text because, I realize now that there was more than just Abram's lack of trust going on here. Abram brought a bushel-basket of sins to Egypt with him, and I want to tease them out to where we can see where we do the same.
Of course, it started with not trusting God - either in the land God told him to stop in, or in a land of different culture. But it's more than that. The fact that this would happen again with Abimelech many years later points out something I hadn't seen before. Abram was prejudiced against cultures not his own. He was fine with the Amorites, Babylonians, and the other peoples of similar culture in Mesopotamia, but when it came to vastly different cultures- like Egypt, and later, the Canaanites of Gerar- he was fearful, and distrusted them and their customs. So much so, Sarai became his 'protection'- he would tell them the half-truth that she was his sister (since they had the same father, but her mom was apparently a Hittite); that way, these strangers wouldn't kill him for his one prized possession.
You can heap onto that, then, a lack of respect for Sarai- she was a possession he might be killed for. Realizing that HIS is a different culture than mine, still it doesn't seem to me- here or later on- Abram shows her a lot of love- love that would become evident early in the stories of both Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Rachel.
Here's a third behind the scenes failing of Abram- Lot, his nephew, was still with him, and he was setting such a wonderful example for him about his women- the fruit of which will come up in the Sodom and Gomorrah story upcoming. You don't do stupid stuff in a vacuum- and Lot was watching.
One of the things I did to prepare for this study was ask, "So how long did an Egyptian courtship last?" wondering just how long they were in Egypt. While I didn't exactly get an answer on that, I did learn some important facts. There was a divide on marriage rules in Egypt between the rulers and everyone else- the common people had a big taboo against incest, while the rulers could follow the 'example of the gods' and marry whomever, as long as it wasn't an adulterous marriage. There was no actual ceremony- you were married as soon as you set up housekeeping together. Divorce was just as simple.
So now, go back to verses 15-16. Pharaoh was very very good to Abram because this was part of the ritual- the groom prospective would lavish the father ( or in this case, brother) of the bride-to-be with gifts, sort of a dowry. And then the father/brother would give her to the groom. And Pharaoh was very giving. We see after Abram got the bum's rush from Egypt:
Gen 13:1 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb.
Gen 13:2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.
And since a rich man would likely not have fled the famine to Egypt in the first place, we can figure Pharaoh's courting of Sarai provided most of this riches. So here's the next thing- Abram got comfortable with the process. Abram kept soaking up the gifts Pharaoh gave him, knowing darn well they were essentially ill-gotten under false pretenses, and Pharaoh kept waiting for Abram to say, "Okay, she's all yours". And while God left him keep these gifts- God has a tradition of letting his people plunder Egypt- He wasn't real pleased about what was going on. At least, I would assume so; but God has different ways of seeing faithful vs pagan than we do. So despite Abram's mistrust, his prejudice, his poor example, his disrespect for Sarai and manipulation of Pharaoh- when the boom came down in verse 17, it came down on Pharaoh and Egypt. Why?
For an answer to that, we have to look ahead at situation #2 with Abimelech:
Gen 20:7 (God said to Abimelech) Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
Abram had a special protection from God. God wasn't finished building him, let alone the people that would come from him. And he was going to make mistakes, that God in His mercy was going to forgive. Because, despite Abram's faults...
Rom 4:3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
Like us when we accept Christ as Savior, Abram's sins were/were being/ will be forgiven by God. And so, we assume that, as Abram (and for various reasons, probably Sarai as well) didn't tell Pharaoh the truth, God must have given a similar revelation to Pharaoh. And he was aghast, and more than just the plagues. Had he married another man's wife, he would have broken the one cardinal rule of Egyptian marriage, and his soul's journey into the Afterlife would have been in jeopardy. He believed he would literally have went to hell over this, and Abram was only too glad to send him there as he piled up his "gifts". Thus he ordered his men to "kindly show him the door", and off they went back to face God in the land they were promised.
But they took some baggage with them, on top of the gifts and the hard (and hardly learned) lessons. They took Sarai's growing disrespect for Abram; they took Lot's future character failings; and they took an Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, whom Satan would use to turn everything upside down.
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