Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] daughters jacob never spoke of

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] daughters jacob never spoke of
  • Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:39:38 -0500

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




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page