WAS SARAH ABRAHAM'S HALF-SISTER? (GENESIS 20:12)

On the American Atheist site I came across the following “contradiction” in the Bible: Abraham clearly violated the OT incest laws spelled out in Deuteronomy 27:22 and Leviticus 20:17 since those prohibit marriages between, among others, a man and his half-sister. But in spite of this fact, God clearly blessed their marriage and apparently overlooked its illegal nature.

There are several ways in which one can answer this allegation. One is simply to state that God in His grace can chose to forgive sinful mortals if it fits His divine plan. But it is doubtful that such an explanation would hold much water in the eyes of a critic. Let us see how Christian commentators have handled this situation.

    A. One logical approach is to point out that Abraham lived way before the law was given to the Jews, and therefore he cannot be blamed for disobeying a regulation of God that he had never heard. Thus, T.D. Alexander says that “there are several prominent examples of the patriarchs acting in ways that would have been abhorrent to those living under the legislation and customs associated with the Sinai covenant.” For example, he also cites the story of Jacob marrying two sisters.

Then there is V.H. Matthew's comment: “In the ancestral narratives, which predate the levitical prohibitions, there are instances in which close kin marriage does occur, but this seems to be based on the concept of endogamy and the maintenance of cultural and property rights. Thus Abram married his half-sister Sarai.”

Wenham states of Abraham, “His marriage is..one of several examples in Genesis of disregard for the principles of later pentateuchal law that point to the antiquity of the traditions behind Genesis.”

Expressing a contrary view, Payne cautions that “it is nevertheless precarious to make this brother-sister marriage one of the major evidences for the historicity of these chapters.”

    B. Another way to answer the objection is to say that God did indeed punish Abraham and Sarah for their incestuous relationship. Thus, Matthews states that is was “a match that was 'incorrect' and was marked by a long period of barrenness.” He similarly feels that the years of Jacob and Rachel going without having a child was due to God's prohibition against a man marrying two sisters. In my judgment, that is a rather flimsy argument in light of the repeated promises from God that there would be favored children from these two unions

    C. And then there is the attempt to excuse Abraham from the accusation of both lying and incest by invoking the legal principle of the sister-wife. In a 1983 publication, Walter Kaiser cited Speiser's research in order to make the following statement: “Now it is true that Sarah was his half-sister, and it is also true that in that culture it was sometimes possible to issue a 'sistership contract' along with a marriage contract that then gave the wife greater protection. But it is obvious that neither of these two nuances were caught by either monarch, if that is what it had intended to produce.”

Just five years later, Kaiser wrote, “There was the Hurrian legal form of sister-marriage. However, most scholars have now concluded that there is very little basis for assuming that Abraham had such a document in mind, since the details of patriarchal and Hurrian document are quite different.”

    D. But it turns out that not all scholars believe that Sarah was in fact Abraham's half-sister at all. For example, Wenham states, “Witness the attempts of medieval commentators and Calvin to make Abraham and Sarah cousins. This, though, is an impossible interpretation of the text.” Much more likely is the possibility that Abraham is merely piling on one more lie in an attempt to justify his action in trying to deceive the king. Thus, according to this view, with evidence given below, Sarah was not related to Abraham by blood at all:

“Sarai is identified as Terah's daughter-in-law in Genesis 11:31, but the issue of her genealogy remains complicated, in light of 20:12.” (Brauch)

“But Gen. 11:27ff., where one would expect to find details of this kinship, gives no genealogy for Sarah. She is never mentioned there as the daughter of Terah. On wonders why Abraham did not volunteer this information earlier, when he first came to Gerer...Then again, the writer may have intended it as a total fabrication on Abraham's part.” (Hamilton)

“This [Genesis 12:20] is the only verse in Genesis which justifies the claim that Sarah was indeed Abraham's sister, and some commentators take it as a lie on Abraham's part.” (Payne)

“The narrator never asserts that Sarah is Terah's daughter (cf. 11:27-30). Nevertheless, faced with Abimelech's passionate questioning, Abraham claims to be her half-brother by way of his father. Though many have taken his assertion at face value, it is read by others as an attempt to provide as many excuses for his behavior as possible (cf. 20:11).” (Carr)

This last explanation appears to me to be the most likely of all. It may clear Abraham of the charge of incest, but at the same time it only adds one more example of his willingness to deceive others.