Selling Sarai

Suddenly we don’t know Abram anymore. He is no longer the adventurous traveler following divine direction. Throughout scripture Abram is commended because he believed the promise God gave him, in spite of the fact that twice scripture says he was willing to sell his wife to save his life. Sarai was his half-sister, daughter of his father by a different mother, and way back when the earth was still young there was no shame in marrying your half-sister. This woman, 10 biblical years younger than himself, strikingly beautiful, had grown up in the same household as Abram. She shared his memories and knew the names of his relatives. He asked her to do him a favor and not tell anyone they were married in case he was killed and his wife treated as the spoils of war.

Famine behind him, danger before him, who can blame Abram for arriving at a deception that afforded both of them relative safety. The romantically inclined among us would prefer Abram to have declared that he would die rather than loose his wife, but a woman without male protection would be at the mercy of everybody, whereas a woman whose brother was a cattle herder traveling with his household staff was in a much safer position.

It happened as Abram had expected, perhaps he had not expected the future husband of his half-sister to be the Pharaoh, but it was to Pharaoh’s harem that Sarai was taken. Pharaoh bought Sarai by paying Abram with much livestock and many servants.

God intervened. He plagued Pharaoh’s household with great plagues and Pharaoh learned that the woman Sarai was actually the wife of Abram. Pharaoh believed himself badly treated and lied to. He sent Sarai and Abram away; Abram left, taking with him the payment he had received. In Pharaoh’s eyes Abram must have appeared as a scheming liar.

The action detracted from God’s reputation because although he rescued Sarai the two people who had obeyed and trusted God left the palace in disgrace.

It would be (and actually was, I am editing this page) to moralize about the half-lie and to moralize about Abram acting out of his own wisdom and not waiting to be directed by God. That's what I did yesterday.

Now I'm editing those remarks out. Why? Because teaching morals is not why the Bible was written. The Bible was rehearsed and written that we might know God. As a person grows in their knowledge of God they are able to consider what was moral and what was immoral about the actions of the people God associated with. As they are impressed with the kindness of God so their moral courage and self declared standards emerge.

Most Christians hold the same standards that were taught by their Christian parents and confirmed by reading of the Bible. But do all Christians know why they accept certain standards and morals? Can they explain those morals to their rebel grandchildren in an understandable way? Usually our initial shock and concern blocks out all efforts to talk reasonably with our children and grandchildren who are considering doing something we totally disagree with. Our job as witnesses on behalf of God is to passs on the stories in the scriptures and use those stories as the basis for choosing morals, preferably before the time for decision arrives. For instance if someone wonders aloud if a half truth is a lie, we can re-tell the story of Abram's half-truth and ask the person to reach their own decision about the difference between the whole truth and suppression of half of the truth. Hopefully then, their morals will not be what they were taught but what they adopted.

The Spirit of Jesus dwells in everyone who calls him Lord and Savior, it is by shaping our actions to be like his actions that we become people with standards of conduct. Therefore let us leave the moralizing for people like myself who, yesterday, came to the task of exposition late at night and chose the easiest way of explaining it.