Genesis 12:10-20

Bible Study Lesson for July 15

Genesis 12:10-20

In the next two weeks’ lessons we will explore two stories about Abram, at the beginning of his journey with God. Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann explains that these two stories seek to explore two questions:

1) Will Abram (later Abraham) trust God to keep the promise God made in 12:1-9?

2) Will God keep the promise?

These questions are crucial for every person of faith. When we come to faith in Jesus, we have to ask ourselves if we will trust God. It is only in life with Jesus that we begin to understand that this God does keep promises. The first story, in Genesis 12:10-20, will take us on quite a journey with Abram, and we must spend a moment putting ourselves in his shoes.

V. 10 Famine

Genesis 12:1-9 was a simple story of promise and trust: two fundamental parts of Biblical faith. God makes promises and calls people to trust in not only the promises, but also in the Promise-Maker. God promises Abram land and Abram goes to the land. In verse 7, God tells Abram, “this is the place.” We might be forgiven for thinking the story is anticlimactic. But verse 10 introduces the first real conflict into the story of Abram’s new faith. Abram has seen the promised land, but here he encounters a threat to the promise. There is a famine in the land. In the land of Canaan (modern day Israel), they experienced between 2 and 8 inches of annual rainfall. Abram’s final destination in verse 9 is on the low end of that. So when a famine hit, it was bound to be severe. 

It is difficult for us to imagine “famine” here in our comfortable place in the world. I remember a few years ago I was talking to a soil biologist and cattle farmer from south of Austin Texas named Betsy Ross (yes, that was her name), and when she found out I was from Central Virginia, her eyes got misty and she got a far-off look and she said, “you can grow anything up there.” I remember drought years growing up, around 2001 and 2002, but nothing that would be considered a famine. In Hebrew the word for famine is the same word for “hunger.” Often in our world today, we might experience drought, but we can usually get the food we need at the grocery store, shipped in from somewhere that isn’t as dry as we are.

In ancient Canaan, famine would have been severe, almost unbearable. The people seeking to live on the land were very aware of their marginal existence. They were literally just a few miles from the desert, and in bad years the desert would seem to overtake them.

Abram responds to the famine in a very practical way: he goes to Egypt. Egypt would be a constant source of aid, and at times refuge, for Israel’s ancestors. Egypt was not as vulnerable to famine because they had a good source of water in the Nile River and they had done extensive irrigation to increase the amount of crop land the Nile could serve.

V. 11-13 Abram’s Plan

It is important to note the vulnerability of Abram and Sarai in this story. They came to Egypt as refugees, seeking the food they couldn’t get in their new land of Canaan. But they were also wealthy. Abram and Sarai didn’t travel alone. They had servants and animals and Lot’s family along with them as well. To enter a place like Egypt with their considerable resources might put quite a target on their backs. Abram’s anxiety fixed on a further complication.

Abram tells Sarai that he is worried that her beauty will make her desirable to Pharaoh. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, would have almost godlike power to claim anything he wanted. Abram is concerned that if Pharaoh should fancy his wife, he might do whatever it takes to get Abram out of the way. So Abram comes up with a plan to keep himself safe. Abram and Sarai will tell everyone that she is his sister, so that they won’t see Abram as a threat. In doing this, Abram relocates his vulnerability onto his wife. This will happen again in Genesis 20 and Genesis 26.

Abram is failing to trust God to keep promises in this story. Abram takes his and his wife’s safety into his own hands and compromises Sarai’s safety in order to preserve his own life. It is a “realistic” move, to accept something as bad as the exploitation of his wife in order to prevent his own death. It is striking, but not unexpected, that we do not have Sarai’s perspective on this.

V. 14-16 Activity at the Court

In these verses, we see the high drama of the Egyptian court. Officials see Sarai, indeed finding her beautiful and eligible, since she just moved into town with her “brother” Abram. They recommend her to Pharaoh, who brings her into his harem. The irony is that Abram has indeed averted his death, but also gains a lot of material wealth as a result of the transaction. Effectively he has sold his wife and the payoff is “sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels.” I wonder if Sarai thought it was worth it.

V. 17 God’s Protection

This is the decisive verse in the passage. The first question we began with (Will Abram trust God?) has been answered: not yet. But in this verse, we find the answer to the second question (Will God keep God’s promises?). God moves to protect Sarai even as Abram endangers her to save his own skin. In a foretaste of the Exodus story, the Lord afflicts the house of Pharaoh with plagues. Now we might point to Pharaoh’s innocence and ask why Abram doesn’t receive some punishment, but the text is not troubled by this turn of events. What is important is that God moves even in spite of Abram’s failure to live faithfully. God keeps God’s promises even when humans fail.

V. 18-20 Pharaoh Responds

Somehow— the story doesn’t tell us how— Pharaoh figures out that Sarai is the source of his woes. He discovers that Abram’s “sister” is really Abram’s wife, and that Pharaoh claiming her as his own wife has causes his household to experience divine retribution. He accuses Abram, but instead of killing him as Abram feared he would, Pharaoh blesses him with safe passage and apparently lets him keep all the gifts he had given Abram as the bride-price for Sarai. In 13:2, we will find Abram “very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.”

Conclusion: God is Faithful

In this passage, we receive a clear reminder about the nature of the story we are hearing. It is so easy to get distracted by all the characters in the story in Genesis. We started with Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, Noah, and so many others. But this story is not about them. Even though Abram will occupy the spotlight for the next 13 chapters, this story is not about Abram. Abram is not the main character and Abram is not a totally good guy. God is the main character of Genesis. God alone is good.

God keeps God’s promises even in Abram’s lack of faith. This story presents us with a tension between a faithless Abram and a faithful God. Abram’s lack of trust in God has disastrous consequences... for Pharaoh. This story raises the question for us as people of faith: what consequences does our faithlessness have for our neighbors?

In the final analysis, God will be proven faithful. God will use even our sins and our failures to keep the promises made to us in Christ. I think this lesson of this story teaches us something of what Paul meant when he wrote, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Too often we hear that verse and it gives us the idea that Paul thinks life will be a neat story, like a TV sitcom that ties up neatly at the end of the half hour, with a moral lesson and everything basically the same as we started. Abram’s story in Genesis shows us time and again that life is and always has been far messier than that. But God is faithful and works even in our mistakes and missteps to keep God’s promises.