Protect the Vulnerable: Rebekah’s Story- Genesis 26:6-16

Bible Study Lesson for February 3

For the next two lessons we will be looking at the story of Isaac in Gerar. Back in 26:1, we are given the inciting incident for a story. There was a famine in the land, much like a famine that had happened earlier in the days of Abraham (see 12:10-20). That famine led Abram to Egypt, where he lied and called Sarai his sister, out of fear for his life. Today’s story also echoes the story of Abraham in Gerar (20:1-18), where Abraham again claims that Sarah is his sister. In both stories, God intervenes to save Sarah from the advances of the kings who Abraham fears so much. In Genesis 26, Isaac repeats his father’s strategy with similar results. Just like Abraham in Genesis 20, in Genesis 26 Isaac spends time in Gerar, the king duped is named Abimelech, and that no one takes advantage of Rebekah. Some scholars assume that this Abimelech might be the son of the Abimelech from Genesis 20. That is a possibility, but Genesis does not say and it is possible that it is the same king in both stories.

The main difference from the two earlier “sister-wife” stories is that God does not directly intervene in the story. No one is afflicted with plagues and no one is visited by God in a dream. The way out is much more mundane. Abimelech happens to look out a window and sees Isaac and Rebekah together and figures out that they are married. All three of these instances all have themes of guilt and an interesting look at the way women are treated in the Bible.

In these stories, a common theme is the fear of disastrous punishment for wrongdoing. It becomes clear in these stories that the characters imagine guilt very differently than we do. Abimelech’s complaint to Isaac in verse 10 is a good example of this: “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” Guilt in Genesis is not just a feeling of remorse or an attack of conscience. It is a real condition that results from sin and it has consequences. Indeed, it seems that in Abimelech’s mind, an individual in the community sleeping with a refugee’s wife would have consequences for the whole community. He takes it so seriously as to declare that anyone who harmed their guests would face capital punishment.

Perhaps Abimelech’s concern goes back to Abraham’s visit in Genesis 20. Because the king took Sarah into his harem, though he never had sex with her, God afflicted Abimelech with disease and closed the wombs of the women in his court (Genesis 20:17). Throughout the Old Testament, we see guilt working this way. There is very little personal sin in the Bible stories. Most of the time, when someone sins, the whole community bears the consequences. Later, in the Law, certain sins require temporary or permanent expulsion from the community in order to prevent or get rid of guilt. Usually there is a greater penalty for intentional sin, but even unintentional sins have consequences that must be dealt with.

If we aren’t careful, we begin to use these Bible stories as an excuse to assume that bad things happen to other people as a direct result of their sin. Jesus makes it clear that even though natural disaster, sickness, and loss in war can be a consequence of national guilt, it is not necessarily so (Matthew 5:45, Luke 13:1-5). But I think we often stray too far in the direction of personalizing and spiritualizing our guilt. How often do we think, “My sin is between me and God?” I think these stories in Genesis invite us to look for ways our sins impact our community. For example, if we gossip and find out later that the story we told wasn’t true, we need to not only apologize to the person we lied about, but also reach out to the people we told the story to in order to set the record straight. Otherwise, the lie will take root in our community, and the people who tell it may never find out the truth of the situation.

The second point I want to discuss is the treatment of women in these three passages. In all three stories, the women are treated as property. Abraham, Isaac, and the kings and people of Egypt and Gerar all see Sarah and Rebekah as sexual objects. Abraham and Isaac worry that their wives’ desirability is a threat to their survival. Apparently both are willing to subject their wives to sexual exploitation as a way of preserving their own lives. And the kings see the women in the same way. They can just take any women they want and add them to their harem. Nobody worries about or asks what the women want.

Sarah and Rebekah fade from these stories. They have no agency: no power or no ability to act for themselves. They are treated as property. We have obviously come a long way since these days. On a societal level, we do not view women as property to be exploited. We need to allow these stories to shock us. However, we do live in a world that objectifies women. The past few years have revealed a deep rot in our society around exploitation, from human trafficking to sexual assault. There are things that happen in the Bible that should rightly cause us to criticize the patriarchs. The ways in which they pass of their wives as their sisters and do not proactively protect them from rape and mistreatment should remind us that these are not perfect people. Abraham and Isaac treat Sarah, Rebekah, and all women as property. In doing so, they fail as husbands: they do not use their power and privilege to protect their wives who have no power or agency. We can do better.

The Old Testament witness is consistent that a society must answer for its treatment of the vulnerable. Women in the Bible are always among the vulnerable. In these three “sister-wife” stories, vulnerable women barely escape violation. The theme of the precarious place of women will continue to pop up as we study Genesis. As it does, I want us to think about how we can help to build a society today that better protects and honors women. Our current system relies on victim blaming, much the same way as Abraham and Isaac seem to do. “You are so pretty,” the men say,  “I know those men can’t resist the urge to take you.” Today, we encourage women to dress modestly or to practice self defense. In the event of an assault, we so often hear people try to make sense of why. “What was she doing out so late?” “What was she wearing?” Sexual assault survivor and activist Brenda Tracy leads a campaign against sexual assaults in college athletics with the basic idea of teaching male sports teams a simple mantra: “It’s on us.” One of the places we have so often failed in our efforts to combat sexual assault is in looking to men and saying, very simply, “Be better.” Do not view women as sexual objects. Call out bad behavior when you see it. We cannot hide behind trite old sayings like “boys will be boys.” We need to lift up better standards and seek justice in cases where people violate those standards. Otherwise, we risk bringing guilt upon our institutions, our church, our business, our town. And guilt will not always be without consequence.