Genesis “Say you are my sister…”
Sarah and Abraham in the House of Abimelech
Parashat Vayera Genesis 18:1-22:24
This is a dark time so I feel compelled to look to darker times in Torah to find a source of light. Three obscure stories, all what Phyllis Trible calls ‘texts of terror’, punctuate the patriarchal and matriarchal narratives. They are known collectively as the ‘wife-sister tales’: Abraham and Sarah (then named Abram and Sarai) in Egypt in Pharaoh’s court (Genesis 12:1-10); Abraham and Sarah in the House of Abimelech, the Philistine King of Gerar (20:1-18); and Isaac and Rebekah, again with Abimelech in Gerar (26:6-11). In each of these stories, the patriarch, noting his wife is a beautiful woman, asks her to pose as his sister because he fears that he might be killed and she abducted. So Abram asks Sarai, as they near Egypt: “… ‘Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.’” (12:13, NRSV). Likewise in Gerar: “Abraham said of his wife Sarah, ‘She is my sister’” (20:2; see also v. 13). Similarly, Isaac said to the men of Gerar who inquired about his wife: “‘She is my sister’; for he was afraid to say, ‘My wife,’ thinking, ‘or else the men of the place might kill me for the sake Rebekah because she is beautiful.’” (26:7; see also v. 9). The wife-sister is considered a mere pawn in negotiations—taken by the king in question, silenced, and passed between powerful men. Only in this episode, with Abimelech, is there compensation offered directly to Sarah, vindicating her and granting her agency and voice.
How could our forefathers endanger their wives to preserve their own lives? It seems hardly humane, let alone ‘manly’! Did they assume that God would intervene to save them? Indeed God did in Egypt with a show of plagues (12:17, prefiguring the Exodus). God also subjected Abimelech to a death threat (20:3, 7), and closed up the wombs of his wife and household female slaves (v. 17). But one should not rely on such miracles! Ramban (Nachmanides on Gen. 12:10) condemns the patriarch, who committed “a great sin” by going down to Egypt and endangering his wife. Because of Abraham’s lack of faith (in leaving the Land during the famine), exile in Egypt at the hands of Pharaoh was decreed for his children (see Gen. 15:13).
But Abraham’s sin was not just ‘the lie’,1 endangering Sarah’s integrity, or his lack of faith in God, but also his distrust of the local inhabitants. Abraham, sojourning as an alien in a land not (yet) his own, is clearly fueled by distorted anxiety about the social mores in Gerar. After God’s revelation to Abimelech in a dream by night restraining him from committing adultery, Abraham explains to the outraged king: “I thought there was no fear of God [yir’at ’Elohim] in this place and that I would be killed regarding my wife” (Gen. 20:11).2 Yet Abimelech does show “fear of God”, in his restraint and moral fortitude. Further, in response to the king’s report to his subjects that Sarah was a married woman, “the people were very much afraid” (20:8). Moreover, Abimelech describes the act of taking a man’s wife as “a terrible sin” (v. 9). After Abimelech returns Sarah to Abraham, he offers him gifts of flocks and slaves (v. 14). And, as an extended sign of his goodwill, he permits the patriarch to settle anywhere in his land, guaranteeing his security (v. 15).
The most poignant moment in his conciliatory gestures is his direct appeal to Sarah:
To Sarah he said, “Look, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; it is your exoneration (kesut ‘einayim, lit. cover of the eyes) before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated (ve-nokhaḥat)” (Genesis 12:16, NRSV).
What is Abimelech’s motivation for appealing to Sarah? Perhaps she has influence on her husband’s supplication as Abraham prays for the healing of the king’s people (v. 17). Or he wants to appease the God who is the patron deity of those vulnerable to injustice—the widow, the orphan, and the stranger (as Sarah is).3 Or perhaps Abimelech feels genuinely guilty for having shamed this married woman. Nahum Sarna explains: “Interpreted figuratively, the phrase ‘a covering of eyes [kesut ‘einayim]’ tells us that the payment is a recognition that Sarah’s honor was not violated and so the eyes of others are henceforth closed to what occurred and she will not be an object of scorn. It is quite likely that some legal formula, not yet discovered, is being used here” (JPS Commentary: Genesis, p. 144).
Sarah’s personhood is further affirmed by the expression: “(by this), you are completely vindicated (ve-nokhaḥat, וְנֹכָחַת)”. This is the first instance of the root y.k.ḥ. [יכח], meaning “to rebuke, adjudge, or reprove”, as in “You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him [הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא]” (Lev. 19:17). Ramban steps in to conjecture that Sarah was not placated when Abimelech granted gifts to Abraham, but continued to argue and rebuke the Philistine king. Only when she was addressed directly was she vindicated [nokhaḥt]; Abraham then prayed for him and his household and the story resolves with healing and reconciliation.
We stand on the precipice of a dark time—for LGBTQ+ people, for women, for illegal immigrants, and for people of color. I am genuinely afraid for the state of the nation. But hope must prevail in the dark with the courage to rebuke, to stand up for truth against the abuse and misuse of power. Though her words are not recorded in the Torah, Sarah’s confrontation of Abimelech (and perhaps her husband Abraham) might serve as exemplary.
As an addendum, I offer an alternative reading of the patriarchs’ request, “Say you are my sister”, from the feminist collection of midrashim, Dirshuni: Israeli Women Writing Midrash, Tamar Biala (ed.) vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Yediyot Aharonot, 2018), 174 [Hebrew]. This midrash by Tamar Bitton transforms the wife-sister motif, where the woman is commodified as an object of exchange, into an expression of love and equality. The original Hebrew can be found on Sefaria here.
You are My Sister
Tamar Bitton, trans. Rachel Adelman
“Say you are my sister [‘aḥoti]” (Genesis 12:13).
Let us ask them (the sages): How could they (the patriarchs) call their wives “sisters”? Would one suppose that they distorted the truth for their own benefit, as it says: “Every brother deals crookedly” (Jeremiah 9:3)?
They answered: They (the patriarchs) only said “my sister” to invoke the language of affection [‘aḥvah], of equality, of parity as it says: “They were created with two faces” (Genesis Rabbah 8:1; “male and female He created them” [Genesis 1:27 and 5:2]). From one womb we emerged into the world, one destiny or purpose for both of us.
And it also says, “…(Open for me) my sister [‘aḥoti] …my perfect one [tamati]” (Song of Songs 5:2)—(like) twins [te’umim], paired, equal in stature, he is not greater than her and she is not greater than him (Song of Songs Rabbah 5:2).
They said “sister [‘aḥoti]” for she was a help-meet to them, to guard/keep them, and direct their ideas, as it says, “And his sister (Miriam) stood at a distance to know (what would become of him [Moses])” (Exodus 2:4), and it is written, “Know that wisdom is such (good) for your soul…” (Proverbs 24:14), and it is written, “Say to wisdom, ‘you are my sister [‘aḥoti]’!” (Proverbs 7:4).
***
Acknowledgment: I want to thank my Havruta, Noam Zion, with whom I have been studying the topic of “shame” and “rebuke” for the past year. Many of his ideas have been woven into this essay.
1Though he claims that she was his half-sister (Gen. 20:12), “daughter of my father”; Rashi, drawing on rabbinic tradition identifies her as Iscah, Iscah (Gen. 11:29; b. Baba Kama 92a), his brother Haran’s daughter; Terah’s granddaughter.
2The expression “fear of God [yr’ ’Elohim]” is often associated with non-Israelites in the Hebrew Bible, as in Job 1:1, 8; the sailors, who initially refuse to throw Jonah overboard (Jonah 1:10, 14-16); Joseph (posing as the Egyptian viceroy) in Gen. 42:18; and the Midwives of the Hebrews ((Exod. 1.17, 21, who, according to the LXX and Josephus, were Egyptian); alternatively, Amalek lacks “fear of God” (Deut. 25:18), and Abraham suspected that there was “no fear of God” in Gerar (Gen. 20:11). As Gerhard von Rad explains: “The fear of God is reverence and regard of the most elementary moral norms whose severe guardian was everywhere considered to be the divinity …. And it is humiliating for Abraham to be surpassed by the heathen in the fear of God” (Von Rad, Genesis, 224).
3As in Exod. 22:20-23 and Deut. 10:18.
Rav Rachel Adelman (PhD, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College, where she recently earned rabbinic ordination (2021). She is the author of several academic and popular articles in Jewish studies, as well as two books: The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha (Brill, 2009) and The Female Ruse: Women’s Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield Press, 2015), She is currently working on a new monograph: Daughters in Danger, from the Hebrew Bible to Modern Midrash. When not writing books, papers, or divrei Torah, it is poetry that flows from her pen.
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