This text says nothing about Abraham being willing to have his wife sleep
with men of power in order to protect himself. What this text shows is
Abraham willing to refer to his wife as his sister, and he have his wife
refer to him as her brother, to prevent someone from rashly murdering him in
order to make his beautiful wife available to them.
My point exactly
Surely you understand
the difference between being willing to call your wife your sister, and
being willing for men to sleep with your wife.
In the previous sentence, you speak of killing Abraham to "make his beautiful wife available to them" and in the next breath you seem to insist that Abraham was not offering his wife sexually to them. So when you argue for the availability of his wife to them, were you thinking "chat room" or "good cook" availibility?
It may even be that the Lord
God Himself told him to do this.
You blast me into the next judgment for going beyond the written text yet you do that very thing here with far less justification than my observation.
Imagine if the Lord himself forsaw that
they would kill Abraham, and rather than simply blocking that action, saw
this way to get Abraham into Abimelech's household in order to establish
Abraham as a prophet to him. There is so much that might have happened here
that is not recorded.
I am reminded of a great theologian's view on the benefit of imagination when it comes to biblical interpretation. I would suggest a difference, however, between imagination and make believe. One can be used to read effectively between the lines, while the other can only produce Goofy (God bless Walt Disney for this particular moment in literary history.)
It may even be that Abraham told Abimelech not to
take Sarah. He even may have said, "if you take her, you and your household
will be barren." The text does not say, so I'm not going to press this idea
further. I only ask you to consider that this viewpoint is as viable as
your viewpoint that Abraham was willing for others to sleep with his wife.
The difference between us is that you surmise evil motives from the silence
of Scripture, while I am reluctant to do so.
So you think Abimelech was sweating arrows for what particular reason -- because he dared to consider Sarah as a sister rather than a wife. Do you imagine that Abimelech was not considering making this beautiful women one of his? In this case, I believe the silences of the scriptures is deafening.
The bottomline is that nowhere in the text do you see Abraham saying to the
king or anyone else, "here, this is my sister, sleep with her all you like,
just don't kill me." When the king took Sarah into his household, I have no
doubt that Abraham gave himself to serious heart wrenching prayer and asked
the Lord to intervene in the matter. The Lord did intervene, by prohibiting
anyone from having relations with Sarah,
Having relations .... hmmmmmmm -- what does this mean to David. Could it possibly exclude S .... E .......... X?! I don't think so (read "think " in higher tone of voice than the rest of the sentence -- say it with me now "I don't THINK so.")
and by closing up the wombs of
Abimelech's household. Do you really think God does such things for a man
who is willing for others to sleep with his wife just because he does not
want to be murdered? I can assure you that Abraham was no such coward.
God does such things for you and I. He did so for Samson. And he did so for Abraham -- not "because of " but "in spite of."
In the end of this event, Abraham became a light and prophet to Abimelech,
to bring him and those under him to greater righteousness and the ways of
the Lord. A man who would be willing for others to sleep with his wife in
order to protect himself simply does not bear this kind of fruit.
So you have completely given up on Gen 20:11 ????
Consider, also, Gen 26. Same Abimelech. Same circumstance -- only this time, it was the son of Abraham. There is no doubt that the transgression involved is that of having sex with another man's wife. Ignorance is obviously no excuse, and Abimelech knows this. "Like father, like son" seems to work well here, also.
John
