Sarai in the Middle

When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. Genesis 12:14-15

To review the general outline of this story, Abram was called into Canaan, only to be met with a fierce famine. To escape the famine, he finds his way to Egypt. And here Abram makes a mistake, for he fails to trust that God will bless him in this land, in the place where God has called him, and promised him blessings. Abram fails to trust in God’s promises.

Along the way to Egypt, he asks Sarai to say she is his sister, rather than his wife, so no-one in Egypt would kill him for her. In our modern culture, we find this sort of thing hard to understand. We might understand well enough why someone would kill over a pretty woman, this is something that happens every day. What we don’t understand is why Abram being Sarai’s brother would make any difference. Wouldn’t they still kill him to get her?

No. Abram was counting on his position as Sarai’s brother to negotiate with anyone who approached him about Sarai. He could hold things off until he’d heard the famine was over, and then head back to Canaan, where God was waiting in the wings to bless him. Abram might have seen God as a sort of “local god,” who was only powerful with Canaan, since God had drawn him to that land in order to bless him. How could God reach him down in Egypt? Abram underestimates God; this isn’t some little local deity he’s dealing with, it’s God. And he’s not foreseen one possible outcome he hadn’t seen before, that Pharaoh himself would take Sarai. Kings don’t negotiate before they take things, they take things and then figure out what they think they might owe you for them.

So Abram has failed to trust God, and he has underestimated God. But what has any of this to do with Sarai being taken by Pharoah? Couldn’t God have taught him to trust, and to see His power, without putting Sarai in the middle? When we ask this question, we forget there is another person in the story. We have forgotten Lot. You see, the one promise of God Abram is really hanging his hat on is to give him a child, a child that would beget a nation. Abram is confused by this promise, because, you see, Abram is 75 years old before he even gets to Canaan. Abram is looking at himself in the mirror, and he’s looking at Sarai next to him, and thinking, “How can I have a child? Those days are over!”

And then Abram looks around his tent, and he sees someone else there. This person is the son of his dead brother, his nephew. It would be easy enough to adopt this person, and make him an heir, wouldn’t it? Why not Lot? Maybe Lot is the child God has promised. If Lot is the promised heir, then Sarai isn’t as important. Maybe he should just treat her as a sister, and Lot as his son.

And that is why Sarai is in the middle. Because God has to straighten Abram’s thinking out. Pharaoh didn’t take Sarai as his wife by chance; coincidence is not a Kosher word. No, God planned it that way, to show Abram he couldn’t figure this out on his own, and that the world’s way is not His way. That Lot is not Abram’s heir, that he needs to let go of Lot, and the promise Lot holds as an heir, and place his faith in God’s promises.