Respecting the Patriarchs: Isaac

 

My favorite. 

Isaac is a much more likable patriarch. Importantly, he is monogamous. He bears 20 years of his wife’s infertility with none of the affairs of his father or sons. Rather, he prays for his wife and his prayer is heard when she conceives twin sons. 

He also shows faith, and unconditional faith, at a much earlier age than the others. 

In Genesis 22, he carries enough wood to burn a ram and then voluntarily surrenders himself to be sacrificed by his father Abraham. Some traditions hold that he was 33 years old at the time, which would be fitting as it would mirror Christ’s age at the Crucifixion, and both sacrifices took place on Mount Moriah. This is to say nothing of Isaac accompanying his father on the three day journey just to get there. The sacrifice of Abraham might well be called the sacrifice of Isaac. 

There is no real strife to speak of between him and his older brother Ishmael or his six younger brothers, the sons of his stepmother Keturah. He buries his father reverently alongside Ishmael, and there is no Godfather-esque violence afterward. Nor is there any attempt by Isaac to seize headship of the family as we we see with Ham, Reuben, and later Absalom. Isaac steps smoothly into the leader role when his father’s servant returns from Paddanaram with Rebekah (It is my master the servant says on seeing Isaac afar off, whereas he spoke of Abraham as his master the whole journey). 

Though Isaac flees to the land of the Philistines during the famine, he avoids all of the pitfalls of his father, not allowing riches to alienate himself from family, not acquiring problematic Philistine servants, and it is clear that Rebekah has no relations with the local chiefs. 

Still, Isaac comes across as fabulously competent, with his land yielding a hundredfold and giving him similar riches as his wealthy father. 

He is peaceful. When the surrounding nations tussle over wells, Isaac’s solution is to simply dig new ones until he finds one for which the locals don’t start fights. This despite Isaac’s significant riches that would’ve enabled him to field an army. 

Notably, lasting peace between Isaac and Abimelech comes immediately after Isaac builds an altar to the Lord at Beersheba, pitches his tent there, and calls upon the name of the Lord. In a physical and spiritual way, Isaac centers his life around faith. 

So what’s the problem?

The problems begin when the twin boys grow up. God’s preference for Jacob over Esau is clear, as is Rebekah’s. Yet Isaac favors Esau, and does so “because he ate of his game.” In the story of Jacob deceiving Isaac into giving him the firstborn blessing, some variation of “savory food such as Isaac loves” is mentioned six times.

Isaac is guilty of thinking with his stomach, thereby indulging a less worthy son, to the point where his spoiled son unwisely and sinfully marries two Hittite women who make his parents’ last years miserable. That Isaac took the marriage choices of his sons seriously is shown clearly when he commands Jacob to go to Paddanaram and take a wife from his kinsmen there (ie not from the local Canaanites). Once his father’s wishes are made clear, even Esau tries to save face by marrying an Ishmaelite woman. One wonders how things might have gone differently had Isaac showed a sterner but even hand with Esau and Jacob from the beginning. 

Moreover, Isaac’s favoritism likely had a bad effect in encouraging Jacob to strive after his father’s favor in underhanded ways in the first place. 

In the end, Isaac’s example was enough to bring about peace between his sons when Jacob returned after 20 years in Paddanaram. 

So all in all, very little not to like, and a bona fide miracle given he was the only son of his parents who came in their old age, and those often turn out spoiled rotten. 

We can draw inspiration from Isaac’s constant acts of faith, peace, honest work, marital fidelity, and patient humility. Just go easy on the food, especially if one of your kids turns out to be a gifted chef. 

Bible Study Thoughts: Martha, Martha

 

Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10: 38-42

What is the Lord trying to tell us here? Many things. 

One is practical hospitality. What is the purpose of hospitality? To provide for the guest. But how often do we wrap ourselves up in so much busy work that we lose the opportunity to build relationship (and communion) with our guests? I’ve been on every end of this situation dozens of times. Entertaining guests while getting glares from the kitchen, buried under cooking and cleaning while my visitors’ time slips away, and trying to relax after a nice meal only to have a host grumbling and stomping around washing dishes instead of enjoying the conversation. 

Avoiding this cycle requires a certain simplicity: one should avoid self importance and showing off when hosting. 

The second is perhaps the most obvious: the surpassing beauty of a contemplative spiritual life on an individual level. This is in harmony with the disciples later direction in Acts 6: It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 

The third is the added social dimension of the contemplative and the active life. Once upon a time, many villages had monasteries that were the center of spiritual, liturgical, and even economic life. The poor had recourse to monastery land where rent was low and the landlords were friendly, until the lands were stolen by monarchs who sold them to penny pinchers. A society whose calendar, ideals, and ritual are centered around the monastery is superior to one centered around business. 

A fourth is a lesson on the life of prayer. Martha’s request is a prayer: she prays to God that He tell her sister to help her. He answers her prayer- by doing the opposite and taking the invitation to pull Martha out of a life of anxiety. 

A fifth is a warning against a life of anxiety. Martha is a type A personality. She is fond of reproving God to remind Him that things must be done her way. Here she demands He interrupt His teaching and remove her sister Mary from his presence to help with serving a meal. In John 11 she rejects the command to roll the stone away from Lazarus’ tomb because of the likely stench. It is notable that the house is described as Martha’s house, not Lazarus’ house, unusual given the times and culture and another nod to Martha’s strong, industrious personality.

Many modern people live this life of anxiety: striving to make everything a certain way and to fill up the day with activity without ever stepping back to contemplate what the activity is for and whether it is drawing us closer to spiritual perfection. 

A sixth is a redirection and not a rejection of those called to the active life. Martha is not reproved because she is serving. Martha is reproved because she interrupted our Lord, demanded that her sister give up listening to Him, and because she allowed her serving to distract her from the Lord Himself. There are healthier examples of serving that Christ explicitly approves, such as this one shortly before in Luke 7 (and which some say involves the same Mary):

Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." And he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." 

Our serving must be born of genuine love and not self importance. There is also this passage in John 12:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Beth'any, where Laz'arus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; Martha served, and Laz'arus was one of those at table with him.

While it is possible this was the same dinner as the one in Luke 10, I would like to think this was a later dinner and that Martha was living our Christ’s gentle guidance. 

A seventh is a reminder about what lasts. One day we will not be physically laboring, but we will always be able to contemplate the teachings and the face of the Lord. 

Respecting the Patriarchs: Judah

 

Why are King David and Jesus Christ born of the line of Judah? Judah was not the oldest of Israel’s (Jacob’s) sons- that was Reuben. Nor was he Israel’s favorite son- that was Joseph. Nor were Judah’s sons blessed by Israel in Genesis- that honor went to Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh. The line from which the Kings rose did not even come from Judah’s legitimate son Shelah. 

Why?

If Jacob in Scripture is a lying cheat, Judah is practically a demon. 

By the time of Judah’s birth, his mother Leah had given up hope that her husband would ever love her. “Judah” means praise, and his mother said “This time I will praise the Lord” instead of basing the name off of the hope that her husband would finally love her, as with her older sons Reuben and Levi. 

If you thought that this name would make Judah “true and teach the way of God truthfully and care for no man, for you do not regard the position of men”, let’s just say you’d be disappointed. 

While Judah is not specifically named, it is likely that he participated in deceiving the men of Shechem then plundering the city after his brothers Simeon and Levi slaughtered the men in retaliation for the rape of their sister Dinah. 

We next see Judah encouraging his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery as a way of profiting while escaping the guilt that would have come with his murder. 

Judah grows up to take a Canaanite wife, never a good sign in that he refuses the great effort his father and grandfather went to avoid taking Canaanite wives. He also mirrors the life of Esau, whose Canaanite wives made his parents miserable. Sure enough, his first son Er is so wicked that God slays him, and his second is also slain by God after giving Scripture readers an example of contraceptive sex. Here Judah is a type of the nation of Israel, leading the family into wickedness by conforming to the ways of the surrounding pagan peoples. 

Judah compounds a disastrous situation by refusing to give his third son Shelah to his daughter-in-law Tamar, who was entitled to support and the hope of a family after losing her first two husbands and was unlikely to find it elsewhere. Judah does this out of fear that Shelah will die, though Er and Onan’s deaths were due to their own wickedness and not Tamar. In this, he is a foil to God who does not withhold his only begotten son from the world. 

By this point, Judah’s wife has died and so he has a tryst with a woman who appears to be a prostitute but who is actually his daughter-in-law in disguise. 

On finding out soon after that Tamar is with child out of wedlock, Judah’s first outburst is that she should be burned. This is a wicked, and likely defensive reaction from a man who had just spent a night with a prostitute three months earlier. Moreover, Judah knew she was with child (children, it turned out), so he is thoughtlessly condemning her children to death as well. 

Much like Ross’s red sweater in the tv series Friends, Tamar shows the cord and staff of the man who fathered her children as she is hauled out for burning on her father-in-law’s orders. 

After a life of lying, plundering, selling his own flesh and blood, abysmal fatherhood, and lewd bedroom behavior, Judah makes like the Prodigal Son and comes to his senses as he hits rock bottom. As with the Prodigal Son, repentance involves a return to his father.

While he could have watched the primary witness of his sin burn, he publicly acknowledges his sin, and even admits that Tamar was more righteous than him for he not only committed fornication but caused the situation by refusing to give his son Shelah to Tamar in marriage. Here Judah reverses the response of Adam: rather than blaming the woman who sinned with him, he takes the responsibility upon himself and proclaims the woman to be more righteous. 

Would any of us have the courage to confess such a thing publicly?

It is the firstborn of the resulting twins, Perez, who becomes the ancestor of the kings of Judah and the Messiah according to Matthew and Luke. Matthew’s genealogy of Christ mentions Tamar by name. 

Judah does not lay with Tamar again. The next time we see him, he personally guarantees his younger brother Benjamin’s safety to Jacob on the journey to Egypt for grain, then offers himself as a slave to Joseph to release an imprisoned Benjamin back to his father Jacob. In this, Judah is atoning for his selling of Joseph into slavery and the devastation that came to Jacob afterward. Would we volunteer ourselves for slavery to save our brother and to preserve our father from mourning, even after our father lavished favoritism on said brother?

When Jacob comes to dwell in Egypt, he sends Judah to Joseph before him. Judah now has the authority of speaking and acting for his father and in a sense is the head of household. 

Next, Jacob pronounces an astounding prophetic blessing on Judah, in contrast to the curses leveled at Judah’s three elder brothers: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his legs, until he comes to whom it belongs, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” 

It is not the most righteous son, nor the favorite, nor the eldest, nor the most successful in the world whose line gives rise to God made man, but the penitent. 

Respecting the Patriarchs: Jacob

 

This article is much harder to write than the Abraham article because I spent so many years hating Jacob. His polygamy and concubinage are disgusting. His scheming Esau out of his birthright, first with food, then by disguising himself as Esau to deceive their father (my favorite patriarch) was lower than low, and his favoritism for Joseph nearly proved deadly. His faith seemed mercenary, as he pledged in Genesis 28 to worship God IF God gave him bread, clothing, and safety on his journey. Even at birth he was grasping for first place. 

It’s noteworthy that Jesus himself points out Jacob’s sins. When Jesus first sees Nathanael (Bartholomew) in John 1:47, he says: Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile. This is a clear reference to the original Israel (Jacob), who came to Isaac with guile. 

The problem with Jacob is that his misdeeds are highlighted in great detail, while his repentance and faith are more subtle. A key passage is Genesis 31:38-42:

These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your she-goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks. That which was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it myself’ of my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. Thus I was; by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night. 

Imagine working for the same boss for 20 years in dangerous conditions with your every mistake coming out of your salary, which itself gets changed on the whim of the boss. Imagine living with your in-laws for 20 years. Now combine the two. Would any of us be willing to endure this to build our family? I struggle getting up in the middle of the night with my kids, working during a hot summer day, or spending a night at my in-laws’ even once. 

It is important to remember that Jacob started life as a mama’s boy who was goaded by his mother to steal his brother’s fatherly blessing, and likely the birthright as well. Jacob was probably also resentful of his father’s favoritism for Esau, which was due mainly to Isaac’s love for savory meat dishes (this is mentioned five times in Scripture). 

Moreover, Jacob pays dearly for decades, and bears it like a man. 

Immediately following his deception of Isaac he is forced to flee home, never to see his mother again. As with Abraham, such a journey all by itself is highly dangerous. 

And now for the polygamy. Jacob worked in good faith for Laban (shown as greedy even in the days when Abraham’s servant visited to find a wife for Isaac in Genesis 24) for seven years to earn Laban’s blessing to marry Rachel. Then Laban tricks Jacob into marrying (and consummating) with Leah, twisting the knife by saying “It is not so done in our country to give the younger before the first-born”. This is Scripture’s way of showing the punishment Jacob receives for his own deception in taking what belonged to his elder brother. 

What was the right thing for Jacob to do at that point? Forego marrying Rachel, whom he had loved for seven years and who presumably had pledged herself to him for that same time? Divorce Leah and leave her without a husband and sons to support her, at the mercy of her mercenary father and brothers? She was already unmarried at an older age: no man would have taken her after she consummated a marriage with Jacob. Remain legally married to Leah but only have relations with Rachel? Judging by Leah purchasing a night with her husband with her son’s mandrakes, this seems close to what happened. 

And at least Jacob married Semite wives as commanded by Abraham and Rebekah. Esau’s Canaanite wives made his parents miserable, and Judah’s Canaanite wives gave rise to wicked sons. 

The liaisons with the maids Bilhah and Zilpah were unforced errors, but those were prompted by Rachel and Leah. Even then, Jacob is punished for one of them when his eldest son Reuben sleeps with Bilhah to show the family who’s boss once his father grows old. 

The punishments don’t stop there. In returning home to find his brother Esau approaching with 400 men, Jacob sends more than 550 animals as a gift to Esau. Jacob is essentially restoring the material wealth that came from the blessing Jacob stole from Esau. This after Jacob has already had to work for 20 hard years to obtain such wealth. 

Here Jacob illustrates full awareness that this wealth and success is not of his own making:

I am not worth of the least of all the mercy and all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies (Genesis 32:10)

The genuine reconciliation that follows between brothers is a first in Scripture and the answer to Jacob’s prayer for protection. 

Jacob’s punishments aren’t over though. His sons Simeon and Levi put the whole family in great danger by deceiving the men of Shechem into circumcision and then murdering them in retaliation for Shechem’s rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah. One senses Jacob’s flair for deception flourishing in uncontrolled fashion into the next generation. 

His favoritism is heavily punished when he loses his son Joseph for many years to the murderous actions of his other, offended sons. That he is deceived by his elder sons dipping Joseph’s coat in the blood of a beast illustrates that this is yet another punishment for Jacob’s use of animal skins to deceive his own father. 

His favorite wife Rachel also dies relatively young. The positioning of her death from childbirth in the same chapter as Jacob’s command to put away the foreign gods, together with the earlier mention of Rachel stealing her father’s household gods and then pretending to be menstruating so as not to get caught, makes it seem as though her death is a punishment for her idolatry. 

With Joseph gone, Jacob is left with his less loved wife and concubines, and a hornet’s nest of unstable sons including the earlier examples and then Judah. Judah’s eldest sons are so wicked that God kills them, and then Judah himself sleeps with his own daughter-in-law.

This is probably why Jacob tells Pharaoh in Genesis 47:9:

Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.

Then comes a dreadful famine, which deprives Jacob of his sons amidst journeys to Egypt and then incarceration by Joseph. 

Still, the patriarchs’ story comes full circle in Genesis 46, when Jacob takes his family to Egypt, this time on God’s command (unlike Abraham in Chapter 12). Jacob offers a sacrifice to God in spite of the ongoing famine. This is the final time God appears directly to Israel until the time of Moses 430 years later. By now, his sons have mostly repented of their sinful ways, most especially Judah.

As with Abraham and the Hittites, Jacob blesses Pharaoh, and he and Joseph go out of their way to maintain peace with the Egyptians. This is in tune with how Jacob endeavored to keep the peace with the men of Shechem even after Shechem raped his daughter. 

Jacob’s final words to his sons in Genesis 49 are prophetic and impartial. The eldest three sons are cursed: Reuben for his sexual aggression, Simeon and Levi for their wrath on Shechem. Judah, the model of repentance, is given the royal line of descendants that produces King David and Christ himself.

Finally, Jacob commands his sons to bury him in the cave in the field at Mach-pe’lah, which Abraham purchased from Ephron. Jacob reveals that there he buried Leah. After all is said and done, it is Leah and not Rachel who is given pride of place in the family tomb that also holds Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah. I think we are meant to gather that Jacob solidified his marriage with Leah later in life and repented of his initial neglect of his first wife.

What are we to make of all of this? 

Jacob’s example is harder to learn from than Abraham’s or Isaac’s. Jacob’s story is a story of faith like Abraham’s, but also a cautionary tale of how God’s justice and providence can draw good from evil. This is borne out in Jacob’s own life, where deception leads to exile and betrayal, followed by reconciliation and a new homeland, followed by more deception and violence, followed ultimately by peace. It is also borne out in Israel’s later history of dwelling in plenty in Egypt followed by (largely self-imposed) slavery, followed by a journey to freedom and the Mosaic covenant, followed by more sin and violence. It is a story of the real opportunity each generation has to learn hard lessons about what is right, the consequences of sin, and the hard-won fruits of repentance. 

If an ambitious deceiver like Jacob can receive divine visions and become the father of a holy nation after being chastened by God’s justice, then there is hope for us as well, no matter how many times we find ourselves in the confessional wrestling with God as we confront our habitual sins. 

Respecting the Patriarchs: Abraham

 

400 shekels of silver, what is that between you and me? (Genesis 23)

It is common for self-aggrandizing moderns like me to heap judgment on the Biblical patriarchs. 

Nevertheless, a closer look at the patriarchs is enough to inspire a sense of awe and distill timeless lessons for our spiritual lives. 

I like to think we struggle with this because Scripture is unselfish. It does not compel binge page-turning the way modern novels do. Scripture is often sparse, giving us just enough to invite us to pursue more. 

On the question of their existence: modern scholarship, especially around the Biblical world, has been subsequently disproved by later modern scholarship so often that I will not even bother engaging with this argument. Suffice it to say that I trust tradition handed down by those closer to the events, places, and cultures described more than I trust biased scholars who use relatively little archaeological and textual evidence to try to prove a negative hypothesis. 

We begin with Abraham. 

Biography

Given his genealogy, it is possible that he, Nahor, and Haran were triplets. Abraham suffers the death of his brother Haran early. It is likely the two were close, explaining Abraham’s attachment to Haran’s son Lot. 

Whether Abraham’s Ur was the famous capital city Ur is not really relevant. The point is that Abraham left an advanced urban civilization for a life of perpetual wandering in a faraway, dangerous land based first on following his father (to Haran) and then on a call from God (to the Holy Land) and nothing more. This journey all by itself would have meant death for many given the threat of famine, thirst, and banditry.

To the Atheists of today, I would say that if God were looking to reveal himself to humanity, it made complete sense to choose a man receptive to strong faith and trust in God through thick and thin.  

Immediately upon arrival in the Holy Land, there is a famine. Those who have not struggled with food insecurity or taken on voluntary extended fasting do not know the terrifying gnaw of hunger that can shake even determined faith. 

Afterward, Abraham gives his nephew Lot full choice over which land to take.

Abraham then returns to a war zone, with four kings “subduing” the entire area. It is likely that this was a terrifying experience involving mass burning, torture, salting of farmland, and all the rest. We know it involved kidnapping, likely into slavery. That Abraham dodged the initial conflict is a testament to his political savviness and ability to make friends. 

That he was then able to take 318 men far into the north of the Holy Land, conduct a successful night raid, and chase recently victorious army past Damascus is astonishing. We do not know what signals, codes, lighting, or other techniques were used to keep the army together and avoid friendly fire during a night raid, but night raids are notoriously difficult to pull off, even for those coming from an advanced society of the time. 

Abraham then refuses to take any recompense from the King of Sodom after recovering his people and goods, then gives a tenth of what he does have to Melchizedek. 

A brief note here: tradition holds that Melchizedek is Shem, the rightful owner of the land of Canaan and that his blessing bestows the land on Abraham as his rightful inheritance, just as Noah blessed Shem and granted him the land earlier. This means that Abraham, and not the local tribes, is the rightful ruler, yet he exercises his authority with extreme mercy and generosity. 

After this, Abraham scrambles to serve the three visiting angels as though he were a butler by trade, followed by begging the Lord for mercy on Sodom, a city so depraved it threatens to rape the visiting angels and attack Lot for sheltering them. This type of humility and mercy is almost unheard of today, or any day. 

Then comes the sacrifice of Isaac. In his comments to his servants “The lad and I will go worship and then come back to you” is shown Abraham’s belief in the resurrection. This even after Abraham’s call from God has led him to famine, war, separation from his family, and instability in a foreign land. 

But what most strikes me is the next chapter. When Abraham’s wife dies, Abraham bows down before the people of the land three times and begs to pay a high price for a burial tomb for her. Scripture is careful to note that he measures out 400 shekels of silver according to the weights then current among the merchants and pays in the presence of the Hittite officials. 

For all the violence in the Bible, it is amazing the lengths to which Abraham went to keep the peace with his neighbors, and how successful he was. This gives the lie to modern accusations that the later Jewish conquests were a genocide. Despite his demonstrated military superiority, his fabulous wealth, his large household, and his precarious status as a foreigner with no legal claim to a plot of land, Abraham never once makes an aggressive move against the local tribes. 

Then comes Isaac. Isaac becomes a sterling man, with hardly any of the issues that we see with Abraham and Jacob (outside of lying about Rebecca being his wife to another Abimelech). In addition to raising this just man, Abraham ensures a happy and healthy marriage for his son. There is no trace of strife between Isaac and Rebecca as there was between Abraham and Sarah then later Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. Abraham also keeps Isaac away from harmful influences. One imagines Abraham thought of Lot’s time in Sodom as he instructed his servant never to take his son back to the land of Haran. 

The Issues

One of the ways in which Scripture makes a case for its own authenticity is its bald telling of embarrassing faults of its heroes. There are a few examples of this with Abraham. 

The issues with Abraham begin with the journey to Egypt. God called Abraham out of Haran to the land of Canaan. God never commanded Abraham to go to Egypt, yet he went straight there when famine struck. This is understandable but leads to a cascade of trouble. 

First, Abraham acquires excess wealth, which leads to him and Lot parting. This in turn leads Lot to Sodom, not only putting his family in danger of the later destruction but exposing them to Sodom’s grave sin and leading to both Lot’s capture in the war of the kings and then the dreadful episode with Lot’s daughters later on. 

Second, it’s likely here that Sarah acquires her Egyptian handmaid Hagar, leading to the Hagar and Ishmael episode. 

Had Abraham remained in Canaan near his new altar and trusted in God’s promise of descendants, waiting upon the Lord to guide him through the famine, it is likely that the separation from Lot, the military raid, and Abraham’s misstep with Hagar (and all that came from it) never would have happened. It is also possible that the promise of a son through Sarah would have been fulfilled significantly earlier rather than being deferred by 25 years. 

Egypt is also where the patriarchs’ habit of lying about their wives first shows up. Once again, instead of trusting in the Lord’s promise of descendants, Abraham resorts to equivocation about who his wife is to escape a perceived threat. While this was likely what Abraham experienced growing up in Ur, it leads to trouble. Given that Scripture qualifies that in the second such episode “Abimelech had not approached her”, it’s likely that in the first instance pharaoh was sleeping with Sarah. Why else would Abraham have received such riches, and pharaoh have received great plagues? This may have even given Sarah the idea of giving Abraham an Egyptian maid. 

Abraham cannot be judged too harshly for the misstep with Hagar, though it was very wrong. For one thing, Abraham only acted on the command of his wife Sarah, when he was in his late 80s, with no evidence that he was ever unfaithful to her of his own accord. For a man to remain monogamous with his wife for likely five decades despite infertility was and remains almost unheard of. Secondly, it occurred over 12 years after his initial call from the Lord, after he had been put through the gauntlet. Abraham waited upon the Lord for longer than almost any of us would have in his shoes. 

His marriage to Keturah after Sarah’s death is weird, but one can imagine a man wanting a fertile wife after a century of childless marriage. 

Where does this leave us?

Abraham’s faith and works (the first thing he does on arriving in the Holy Land is build an altar, he tithes, he waits on the angels, he intercedes for Sodom, he offers a sacrifice of that which is most precious to him), through famine, war, and years of wandering in an alien land; his profound generosity and goodwill with surrounding pagans, and his fruitful management of his resources are rich examples for men living the life of faith. Use them well, and consider removing the wood beam from your eye before judging Abraham too harshly.