A Skeptic Reads the Bible 8: Abraham Lies, Cheats, and Swindles His Way to Grace

The story of Abraham takes up a fourth or so of the entire book of Genesis (covering his life from the early years as "Abram" to his rechristening as "Abraham" by God). So I will naturally have to touch on Abraham for a couple of successive articles, and not just this one. First, I want to try and take a look at why exactly God would choose Abraham to be his chosen instrument and "father of nations," along with his long-suffering wife, Sarai (rechristened Sarah).

This might sound like an obvious or pointless question, but it's not. God created Adam himself, and when he called Noah, he claimed Noah was more righteous than the rest of his generation. Abraham is often called "righteous" too, but it's tough to find any evidence of that righteousness in Genesis. During Abraham's "mission," if you can call it that -- the nearly lifelong period during which he leaves Ur, his father's home, and enters Canaan, where God promises his descendants will one day inherit all the land -- he cheats, swindles, and lies his way through life more often than not, and far too often, God seems to approve of this entirely. In effect, whatever morality motivated Abraham, it was alien to ours today.

Take Abram's adventure in Egypt, for example. He and his coterie of servants and slaves leave the Negev to escape famine and migrate temporarily into Egypt. Abram worries that Sarai, his wife, is so beautiful that the Egyptians will kill him in order to steal her. His solution? "Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake." Sarai obediently propagates this deception, to much success: "when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake." It's tough to say whether this verse simply means that she was invited to a ceremonial dinner, or whether Pharaoh took her to have sex with (and maybe even did).

You might think that Abram's decision to surrender his wife into service in the Pharaoh's harem might seem at least cowardly, but God doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he takes Abram's side and "inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household," forcing them to surrender Sarai back to Abram. The pharaoh is angry and orders Abram deported, but evidently lets him keep all of the loot originally paid for Sarai - "sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels." Essentially Abraham swindles the Egyptian government out of this wealth by pretending to sell them his wife. He does not offer any remorse, or even gratitude to God for getting his wife back.

Instead, Abram seems to have concluded that it was a very good scam indeed. On another occasion, he reached the land of Gerar and decided to present Sarah as his sister. That time, she was given to king Abimelech. Once more, God assisted Abraham by punishing Abimelech's entire household on behalf of Abraham, "clos[ing] up every womb in Abimelech's household." Abimelech is forced to come to Abraham, beg Abraham's forgiveness, and again presents him with "sheep and cattle and male and female slaves," plus a thousand silver shekels. Abraham's decisions to lie that Sarah was his sister, and imply that she was eligible for marriage, made him extremely wealthy. More significantly to my Biblical commentary, God helps him in these scams.

God also takes Abraham's side in another dubious conflict, over the inheritance of his illegitimate son Ishmael. Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Sarah's slave Hagar, whom Sarah sent to his bed when she believed herself unable to have children. (Using your slave as a surrogate womb would seem ethically as well as logically questionable, but Abraham offered no objection.) While pregnant, Genesis records, Hagar "despise[d] her mistress," so Sarah asked Abraham to send her away. Abraham refused, but allowed Sarah to undertake whatever justice she thought necessary, which turned out to be "mistreat[ing]" Hagar until she fled into the desert.

Then follows a very strange and questionable episode. Abused, pregnant Hagar meets an angel from God who convinces her to return to Abraham's camp on the basis of a divine promise that "your descendants... will be too numerous to count." God rarely makes any promises at all to women in the Old Testament, and this one stands out because (at least on its surface) it seems to be the same promise he offered to Abraham to entice him away from Ur. Can we conclude from this that God's original intention was to carry out his promise to Abraham through Ishmael's line?

If so, God changes his mind about as quickly as Abraham does. Sarah is jealous of her slave's fertility and eventually persuades Abraham to "get rid of" Hagar and Ishmael to prevent him from sharing in the inheritance of Abraham and Sarah's own young son, Isaac. Abraham is at first uncertain what to do, but happily enough sends Hagar away when God intervenes in the domestic dispute on his side, promising him that "it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Ishmael will still become the father of a nation, "because he is your offspring," but he is clearly playing second fiddle.

What about God's promise to Hagar? The promise of innumerable ancestors has been transferred from Ishmael to Isaac, and Hagar has lost out in the process. It's tough to find in the Bible a case of God actually breaking a promise, but this sorry affair certainly seems like a strong candidate.

In closing, it's worth pointing out that I've really only been concerned with Abraham here, but Sarah has to be mentioned as well. In an earlier commentary, I suggested that the author of Genesis thought very little of women, and generally includes them only when it's convenient to blame them for causing trouble. Eve eating the forbidden fruit is a classic example, but Sarah is another. Notice that she is often the cause of trouble in these chapters. Abraham blames her for causing trouble with the Egyptians and with Abimelech, although the Bible does not indicate that he offered her any of the reward money from either of those two scams. She is also repeatedly blamed for stirring up trouble between Abraham and Ishmael and Hagar, even though as a modern man I'd say Abraham is entirely to blame for all of the consequences of sleeping with a slave and having children with her outside of his marriage.

The "A Skeptic Reads the Bible" series is written by David Vogt and hosted on AssociatedContent.com. Feel free to comment on this page. For further reading:

"An Insecure God Trashes the Tower of Babel" (Genesis 10-11)

"God Destroys the World, Part 1" (Genesis 5-9)

"Genealogies Galore" (Genesis 5)

Check out the entire "Skeptic Reads the Bible" series index.