middlemonk

the Egyptians… will kill me, but they will let you live.

— Genesis 12:12.

I’ve had a lot of revelatory moments in the past eleven chapters, but this is the first point in the Bible where I’m just kind of… lost. Perhaps it’s missiing context or it’s my failure to understand the writing, but the story of Abram entering Egypt is kind of an anticlimax.

So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me?"

— Genesis 12:18.

So Abram and his wife enter Egypt, but Abram believes having a beautiful wife will result in him being killed. He tells Sarai to act as his sister and the Pharoah accepts them both, marrying Sarai and treating Abram with great respect. God then plagues the Pharoah, who is shocked by the lie and sends them both on their way.

Something feels lost in translation here. I can accept Abram’s fear as some kind of ancient cultural threat, but the Pharoah’s response doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t like to consult bible study resources until after I’ve written the post (these are supposed to be my takes) but even those don’t entirely fix this for me.

There’s clearly supposed to be some lesson here about the sin of lying (or doubt, or something) but it’s all resolved so quickly and oddly that I can’t really see it. I won’t attempt to rewrite the Bible, but I guess not every ancient parable survives time unscathed.