Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Shoshanna,

> In Gen 20:12, Avraham is purposely coloring the truth.  Avimelech had 
> abducted Sarah, so Avraham told him that Sarah was his sister, his 
> father's daughter, so the word daughter is used, not daughter-in-law 
> (but he never said she was NOT his wife)
>
> But here Rashi says that although Sarah was his BROTHER'S daughter 
> and not his FATHER'S daughter, so that she was not his sister in the 
> literal sense, Avrahams's statement was justified since 
> "Grandchildren are considered as children"  Thus he could call Sarah 
> his sister in the accepted FIGURATIVE sense of the word.
>  

HH: Coloring the truth, the way you have interpreted it, would involve 
Abraham basically lying. There was no absolute need for him to lie at 
this point, even if the king was angry. The king could have accepted 
that Abraham had spoken as he had for self-preservation. Why should I 
believe Rashi rather than Abraham? If Sarah was married to Abraham, then 
she was Terah's daughter-in-law, even if she was also his daughter by a 
woman different than Abraham's mother. It could be the narrator who 
withheld the latter information until Gen 20:12.

Gen. 20:12 And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my 
father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.

HH: In the narrative flow of Genesis 11, it may have been simpler for 
Sarah simply to be identified as Abraham's wife (thus Terah's 
daughter-in-law), without gettting into the details.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard