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We left the text at the point last week when we say Abram facing a dilemma and needed to make a choice. It seems he has two possible options.

Number one, he could have trusted the Lord – would that have been a good option. The Lord had already revealed himself to him, and had also provided for him up until this point. So, he could have stayed put and trusted God 

The second option was that he could leave the land where God had placed him and go to Egypt in the hope of finding food and water there. 

So, we see he makes the second choice, and it tells us he went down to Egypt to live there. Now to be fair to Abram the word “live” is more accurately translated as “sojourn there. It is possible the stay was to be temporary until the famine was over. Anyway, he arrives at the border of Egypt, and he says to his wife. 

As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will /let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

(Gen 12: 11-13)

So, he arrives at the border of Egypt and says to his wife, “we’ve got a problem you are a very attractive, beautiful woman. 

Someone I know who was visiting Israel and their local tour guide was telling them about this story and he said that some of the early Jewish writing on Sarah said that she was a stunningly beautiful woman. Where a woman’s beauty was defined by their value in camels, and the normal price for an attractive wife was 5 camels, she was described in some ancient writings as 10-camel wife. 

However, returning to these verses in Genesis we can see, even in our modern translations, the text is making an issue of the fact that she was a good-looking woman. So, because he is afraid, he comes up with a plan. To say she is his sister is the strategy he comes up with. I wonder how that will work out? This plan may appear get Abram out of trouble, but I suspect it is going to get Sarai into all sorts of trouble.  It goes without saying that Abram is committing a sin here, and some might say it is a whopper. He is making a huge error here, and clearly, he is only thinking of himself. Furthermore, can you imagine how that made Sarai feel? But that’s the plan he come up with, and he goes with it and in doing so Abram will lie, and Abram will fail, and fail catastrophically. 

And that my friends is the point of these opening verses. He is not trusting the Lord and remembering God’s promise to keep him safe and now he is getting his wife into all sorts of serious trouble. Before we get too hard on Abram maybe we should remember there is probably a little bit of Abram in all of us. We have all done things where we have failed the Lord and maybe even let down those we love. But it’s true, Abram was sinful and selfish and ultimately, he acted out of fear, not out of faith, however the truth is we are all like this sometime, particularly when scared or afraid. 

This opening section in this passage is about the failure of Abraham. The second part of the story looks at the fascination of Pharaoh and we shall look at that next time.