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There are three tales of a wife confused with a sister within the Torah, all of which are strikingly similar. At the core of each is the tale of a Biblical Patriarch, who has come to be in the land of a powerful foreign overlord that has mistaken the Patriarch's wife to be the Patriarch's sister, and consequently has attempted to wed her himself, though later finds out his error. Two of the three stories are similar in many other details, including the antagonist's name - Abimelech. Image File history File links Stop_hand. ... Torah (תורה) is a Hebrew word meaning teaching, instruction, or law. ...

The stories

Abram and Pharaoh

The first of the stories is found at Genesis 12:10-20, and is the briefest of the three. The story begins by describing Abram migrating to Egypt in order to evade a famine. Noticing how beautiful his wife, Sarai, is, Abram worries that the Egyptians will kill him so that they can marry his wife instead, and so asks her to pretend she is his sister. On arriving before the Pharaoh, the Egyptians recognise Sarai's beauty, and the Egyptian princes shower Abram with gifts of livestock and servants to gain her hand in marriage. Sarai thus becomes part of Pharaoh's house, but Yahweh sends a plague to punish Pharaoh for (unknowingly) causing adultery. Pharaoh consequently realises the truth of the matter and so sends Sarai and Abram away from Egypt back from where he had come. This article is about Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). ... Abraham (אַבְרָהָם Father/Leader of many, Standard Hebrew Avraham, Tiberian Hebrew ʾAḇrāhām; Arabic ابراهيم Ibrāhīm) is the patriarch of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. ... A famine is a phenomenon in which a large percentage of the population of a region or country are so undernourished that death by starvation becomes increasingly common. ... Sarai can refer to: The Biblical figure Sarah. ... Pharaoh (Hebrew פַּרְעֹה (without niqqud: פרעה), Standard Hebrew ParÊ¿o, Tiberian Hebrew Parʿōh, Arabic فرعون) is a title used to refer to the kings (of godly status) in ancient Egypt. ... The Tetragrammaton in Phoenician (1100 BC to 300 CE), Aramaic (10th Century BC to 0) and modern Hebrew scripts. ... Plague is usually understood as a generic term for Bubonic plague, the mortal disease caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, which is spread by fleas from rats and some species of mice to human beings. ...

Abraham and Abimelech

The second of the stories is split into two parts, the first part at Genesis 20:1-16 and the second at Genesis 21:22-34. The first part begins with Abraham emigrating to the southern region of Gerar, whose king is named Abimelech. Abraham states that Sarah, his wife, is really his sister, leading Abimelech to take Sarah as a wife. However, God visits Abimelech in a dream and tells him the truth, acknowledging that Abimelech made the mistake innocently, but ordering Abimelech to restore Sarah to Abraham. Abimelech complains to Abraham, who states that he didn't exactly lie, since Sarah is his half-sister. Abraham (אַבְרָהָם Father/Leader of many, (circa 1700 BCE) Standard Hebrew Avraham, Tiberian Hebrew ; Arabic ابراهيم ; Geez አብርሃም ) is regarded as a patriarch of Israelite religion, recognized by Judaism and later Christianity, and a very important prophet in Islam. ... Sarah (שָׂרָה Princess, Standard Hebrew Sara, Tiberian Hebrew Śārāh, Arabic: سارة) is the first biblical matriarch. ...

Abimelech then restores Sarah to Abraham, and gives him gifts of livestock and servants by way of apology, and also allows Abraham to reside anywhere in Gerar. Abimelech also gives 1000 pieces of silver to Abraham to reprove Sarah by a covering of the eyes. The story then states for the first time that Abimelech, his wife, and household, had previously been punished for Abimelech's mistake concerning Sarah, by being made infertile; suggesting that Sarah had remained Abimelech's wife for quite some time before God visited him and corrected his error.

After an intermission concerning the birth of a son to Abraham and Sarah, the second half of the story begins with Abimelech requesting Abraham swears an oath of non-aggression towards Abimelech and his family, which Abraham agrees to.Abimelech's servants later violently take away a well, and so Abraham complains to Abimelech, who apologises. Abraham then sets aside seven ewes as witness to his having dug the well, and Abraham, Abimelech, and Philcol, Abimelech's chief captain, then make a covenant, and leave each other. The place the covenant was made is consequently named Beersheba, which translates either as well of oaths or well of seven/seven wells, and Abraham plants an Asherah grove there in memory. For the Scottish football team, see Motherwell F.C. The Whole Earth Lectronic Link (or The WELL) is one of the oldest virtual communities still online. ... Ewe is an ethnic group from West Africa, in Ghana, Benin and Togo. ... Soroka Hospital, Beersheba Beersheba or Beer-sheva (Hebrew: ▶ (help· info), Standard Hebrew Bəʼer Šévaʻ, Tiberian Hebrew Bəʼer Šéḇaʻ or בְּאֶר שָׁבַע Bəʼer Šāḇaʻ; Arabic بِئْرْ اَلْسَبْعْ ▶ (help· info)) is a city in Israel. ... For the small research submarine, see Asherah (submarine). ...

Isaac and Abimelech

The final story of the three is found at Genesis 26:1-33. Here it is Isaac who, in order to avoid a famine, emigrates to the southern region of Gerar, whose king is named Abimelech. Isaac has been told to do so by Yahweh, who also orders him to avoid Egypt, and promises to him the fulfilment of the oath made with Abraham. Isaac states that Rebekah, his wife, is really his sister, as he is worried that the Philistines will otherwise kill him in order to marry Rebekah. After a while, Abimelech spots Isaac sporting with Rebekah, and states that she must be Isaac's wife rather than his sister. An angel prevents Abraham from sacrificing Isaac in this illumation from a 14th century Icelandic manuscript. ... Rebekah or Rivka (רִבְקָה Noose or Snare, Standard Hebrew Rivqa, Tiberian Hebrew Riḇqāh) was a biblical matriarch and the wife of Isaac. ...

Abimelech then orders that Rebekah be left alone by the denizens of Gerar, on pain of death. Isaac goes on to spend a year in the area, and gradually built up a large household of servants, and a strong possession of livestock, leading to the envy of the Philistines of Gerar, so Abimelech sends Isaac away. Noting that the wells that Abraham had dug have since been filled in, Isaac re-digs them, giving etymologies for three:

• Esek (which means challenge) gaining its name due to the Gerar herdsmen contesting the ownership of the well
• Sitnah (which means opposition) gaining its name due to the Gerar herdsmen also contesting this well
• Rehoboth (which means enlarged space) gaining its name because Yahweh made room for Isaac

Isaac then travels to Beersheba (which does not yet have its name), and Yahweh appears to him, so Isaac builds an alter there. Abimelech then meets Isaac there, with a friend named Ahuzzath, and Philcol, Abimelech's chief captain. They then make an oath of non-aggression, hold a feast, and then depart from one another. Later on the same day, Isaac's servants report to him that they have found another well, so he names the place in such a way that it later becomes known as Beersheba. Beer is the Hebrew word for well, the other half of the word is explained as due to Isaac naming the location: This article describes minor characters who are named in the Book of Genesis, but about whom little else is known. ...

• Shibah, which means seven, according to the Masoretic text
• Shebua, which means oaths, according to the Septuagint

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text of the Tanakh approved for general use in Judaism. ... The Septuagint (LXX) is the name commonly given in the West to the Koine Greek Alexandrine text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) produced some time between the third to first century BC. The Septuagint Bible includes additional books of the old Jewish canon beyond those contained in the...

The parallels between the stories

The most striking parallels occur between the tales of Isaac & Abimelech and Abraham & Abimelech, both of which involve the names of Gerar, Abimelech, and Philcol, all taking the same roles in the story, with Philcol and Abimelech making the oath to the Patriarch at Beersheba, which was consecrated to the Israelite deity, and with Abimelech previously coming to realise that the Patriarch's wife is just that. The Egyptian story on the other hand resembles an abridgement, with the later treaty cut out of the story, and on the whole appearing in its own context to be an odd irrelevant aside. As they currently stand in the Torah, it appears that Beersheba is named for the first time twice, for the same reasons, consecrated for the first time twice, and that there are either two consecutive Abimelechs who are each king of Gerar in turn, and each have a captain of the guard named Philcol, or that these are the same long lived individual, with each instance of Abimelech correcting an earlier identification of the Patriarch's sister with his wife, and desiring to make a non-aggression pact covering multiple generations with the Patriarchs at Beersheba.

Biblical criticism thus views this as strong evidence for the documentary hypothesis, with each of the stories originating in different parallel partly independent sources, with a later redactor being responsible for the passages which explain why Isaac would be digging wells that Abraham has already dug (Genesis 26:15 and 26:18). The Isaac & Abimelech version is in this hypothesis seen as being a tradition recorded by the Yahwist, wheras the Abraham & Abimelech version is attributed to the Elohist. The Egyptian version of the story could be said to abridge the first part of either of these two, and is often attributed to the Yahwist as a deliberate foreshadowing of the later story, though with its vicious plague visited on Pharaoh for his innocent mistake, others see it as originating from the hand of the Priestly source, whose attitude towards non-Israelites, and frequent use of plagues as divine punishment, this resembles. Biblical criticism seeks to analyze the Bible through asking certain questions of the text, such as: Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? Why was it written? What was the historical, geographical, and cultural setting of the text? How well preserved is the original text... The documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed by many historians and academics in the field of linguistics and source criticism that the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... The Elohist (E) is one of the sources of the torah postulated by the documentary hypothesis Nature of the Elohist text In this source Gods name is always presented as Elohim (Hebrew for God, or Power) until the revelation of Gods name to Moses, after which God is... The Priestly Source (P) is one of the sources of the Torah postulated by the documentary hypothesis. ...

If it were to originate from the Priestly source, the Egyptian version would have been written with open knowledge of the other two^{[citation needed]}, and its lack of conciliation with the Pharoah reflecting the xenophobic attitudes towards the Philistines and Egyptians which had arisen within Priestly circles during the intervening period, and were later recorded in the Talmud and Midrash. This would also explain the apparently anachronistic mention of camels as valuable domestic posessions at Genesis 12:16; camels are thought not to have come into domestic use in Egypt until about 1000 BC ^{[citation needed]}, some 1000 years after the time when Abraham is traditionally supposed to have lived. Xenophobia denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown and comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning foreigner, stranger, and φόβος (phobos), meaning fear. ... The Talmud (תלמוד) is a record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, Jewish ethics, customs, legends and stories, which Jewish tradition considers authoritative. ... Midrash (pl. ... An anachronism (from Greek ana, back, and chronos, time) is something that is out of its natural time or appears to be. ... For other uses, see Camel (disambiguation). ...

Abimelech's name

Abimelech's name has three main translations, though neither treats the name as being completely Hebrew, and both are slightly contorted. The first is my father is king, which could be considered simply as a generic title given to a crown prince. The other two are more interesting, both essentially being my father is MLK, with MLK being the reference found elsewhere in the bible in prohibitions such as do not pass your children through the fire to MLK, in which case one of the two following possibilities arises Moloch or Molech or Molekh representing Hebrew מלך mlk is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of sacrifice associated historically with Phoenician and related cultures in north Africa and the Levant. ...

• Either MLK refers to a major Canaanite deity probably named Moloch, i.e. Abimelech being my father is Moloch - a reference to belief in semi-divine kings, such as Abimelech
• Or MLK refers to a type of (probably human) sacrifice probably named Molk, i.e. Abimelech being roughly my father is a sacrifice - a reference to Abimelech being pious

The wife and the sister

In the midrash, Abimelech's treatment of Abraham is viewed as an act by one of the few pious non-Israelites. His attempted marriage to Sarah is explained by his being childless and thus hoping for offspring by Sarah, and was thus acting from the best of intentions. Under the documentary hypothesis, the positioning of the story by the Elohist is sometimes interpreted as a slur upon Isaac, since Isaac is born almost immediately after this event, and although no sexual relationship between Sarah and Abimelech is present in the text, the implication is easily read into the text by anyone wishing to slur Isaac's parentage.

Conversely, the treatment of Isaac by Abimelech is attributed by the midrash simply to envy by Abimelech of the size of Isaac's livestock and household; Abimelech is described as cunningly setting the situation, of the confusion of Rebekah between sister and wife, up in order to cause a quarrel against Isaac. Paralleling the Egyptian story, the Midrash describes Abimelech being visited by a disease in punishment for his treatment of Isaac.

Abimelech's statement to Abraham made with the giving of 1000 pieces of silver - may this one that will be thine have a covering on her eyes - is interpreted in the midrash, and sometimes elsewhere, as a curse and re-translated ... his eyes, in order to interpret it as the reason for Isaac's later blindness in his old age. Such a curse was seen as righteously carried out, since Abraham's deliberate deceit was to blame for Abimelech's innocent error, and hence its visitation on Abraham's son was considered just. More modern critical readings view it simply as an instruction to purchase a veil for Sarah, so that she would be clearly identified as being married, in which case it forms a sly reproach against her for not already wearing one. Veils are articles of clothing, worn almost exclusively by women, which cover some part of the head or face. ...

Despite the deceit, the Bible still states that Sarah is a close blood relation of Abraham, specificaly his half sister, and hence many modern cultures would view her also being his wife as a form of incest. However, in some significant ancient cultures, such as the Hurrian and Egyptian cultures, biological sisters were often raised to the position of a wife in order to give the sister a greater standing in society, and this tradition is one with which Abraham would be likely to have come into contact during his migration. Incest is sexual activity or marriage between very close family members. ... The word Hurrian may refer to: An ancient people of the Near East, the Hurrians. ...

Beersheba

Between the two Abimelech stories, there are several different etymologies given for the origin of Beersheba's name: Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

• in memory of the oath of Abraham and Abimelech (well of the oath)
• in memory of the seven ewes which stood witness to Abraham and Abimelech's oath (well of the seven)
• in memory of seven wells dug by Isaac (seven wells), though only 3 or 4 are identified
• in memory of the oath of Isaac and Abimelech (well of the oath)

The underlying origin of the still existing site is uncertain, though it certainly exhibits archaeological signs of religious use. There are many wells on the site, but only 3 are dated as far back as the early first millenium, each having been refaced by the romans. These are likely to be the three wells mentioned in the Isaac story - Esek, Sitnah, and Rehoboth. The presence of 3 rather than 7 wells, together with the awkwardness of interpreting Beersheba as seven wells, which is more accurately Shebabeer, has lead this possibility to be generally discounted as a folk etymology. Folk etymology (or popular etymology) is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ...

The stories also state that a religious foundation was made by the patriarchs at the site, with Isaac building an altar, and Abraham an Asherah grove. Until the reforms of Josiah, it appears that Beersheba was regarded as an holy place of great importance, it being frequently mentioned in the later parts of the bible as a noteworthy location for people to have an association with. In critical thought, it is hence seen as something that needed to be explained by the biblical authors, who chose to use folk etymologies and myths to do so. The most likely etymology to be correct is that which renders Beersheba as well of the oath, though whether the oath refers to a single oath that took place in that location, or in fact refers to the general religious practice on the site - making of oaths - is a matter of debate. Josiah or Yoshiyahu (יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ supported of the LORD, Standard Hebrew Yošiyyáhu, Tiberian Hebrew Yôšiyyāhû) was king of Judah, and son of Amon and Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. ...

What is certain is that, under the documentary hypothesis, both the Elohist and Yahwist used a pre-existing source or folk-tale surrounding the site recording an oath having been made between a patriarch and Abimelech, the regional philistine overlord. Where they differ is in the atmosphere of the story - Abraham makes a fair treaty with Abimelech on friendly terms, but Isaac's makes his treaty with Abimelech in an atmosphere of squabbling.

The midrash exhibits a xenophobic attitude toward the Philistines and hence regards Abraham's league of friendship with Abimelech as something deserving reproach. The setting aside by Abraham of seven ewes, for a witness, are interpreted by the midrash to have directly condemned seven righteous descendants of Abraham to death by the hand of Abimelech's descendants, namely condemning Hophni, Phinehas, Samson, Saul, and Saul's three sons, to death by the Philistines. In addition, the midrash extends the numerology to also be the ultimate cause of the destruction of seven sacred objects - named as the Tabernacle of the Congregation, the Second and First Temples, and unnamed sacred objects in Gilgal, Nob, Gideon, and Shiloh - and the reason that the Ark of the Covenant comes to abide amongst the Philistines for seven months. Phinehas or Pinhas - פִּינְחָס, Standard Hebrew Pinəḥas, Tiberian Hebrew Pînəħās is a name shared by two characters in the Hebrew Bible. ... Samson or Shimshon (שִׁמְשׁוֹן Of the sun (perhaps proclaiming he was radiant and mighty) or [One who] Serves [God], Standard Hebrew Å imÅ¡on, Tiberian Hebrew Å imšôn) is the third to last of the Judges of Israel mentioned in the Tanakh. ... Saul (Hebrew Shaul meaning demanded) is: 1. ... Drawing of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the time of Herod the Great A stone (2. ... Solomons Temple was the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem which functioned as a religious focal point for worship and the sacrifices known as the korbanot in ancient Judaism. ... Gilgal is a place name in the Hebrew Bible. ... Nob is: Nob, a village mentioned in the Book of Judges a slang term for the penis a British slang term for a person of wealth and social standing Nob the short-hand title for the self-proclaimed emperor of the internet. ... Gideon (גִּדְעוֹן, Standard Hebrew Gidʿon, Tiberian Hebrew Giḏʿôn) is a character who appears in the Bibles Book of Judges. ... Shiloh refers to a number of place names: There is Shiloh the Biblical site, for which see Shiloh (Biblical). ... A late 19th-century artists conception of the Ark of the Covenant, employing a Renaissance cassone for the Ark and cherubim as latter-day Christian angels The Ark of the Covenant (ארון הברית in Hebrew: aron habrit) is described in the Hebrew Bible as a sacred container built at the command...

Origin

In one prominent school of critical thought, the whole underlying story is believed to have originally been one simply representing a treaty between the Philistines and Israelites, eponymously represented by a marriage between Abimelech, the Philistines' eponym, and Sarah, acting as eponym for the Israelites. The separation of the marriage part of the story from the treaty part being considered a result of these parts becoming gradually more seen as unconnected, mainly due to the element of deceit about Sarah's true relationship with Abraham. Apart from the religious belief in total biblical inerrancy, academic circles have put forward very few arguments for either side of whether the treaty at the core of the story is factual or simply a result of folk etymology concerning Beersheba's name, and hence this is academically a very unanswered question.^{[citation needed]} An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, whose name has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery, or other item. ... Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is in every detail infallible and without error in the original autographs. ...

There are different theories concerning the origin of the deceit element of the tale. The majority position is that it originates as a cunning trick by Abraham to get the treaty, the gifts that go with it, and still keep the woman, his wife. However, a significant minority theory, held for example by Robertson Smith, is that originally the early Israelite society was matriarchal and Abraham was not originally present in a significant way in any of the stories of Genesis whatsoever, his role being almost entirely taken by Sarah herself, particularly as the name Israel supposedly derives (Genesis 32:29) from the word Sarita (often translated you have struggled), which is thought to have a linguistic connection with Sarah (c.f. Hosea 12:3 - own sarah El=as a man he struggled with God). In this theory, Isaac is hence the result of the union between Abimelech and Sarah. The theory goes on to state that as the culture became Patriarchal, so the figure of Abraham was introduced and gradually took over Sarah's role, though obviously this was not possible in the tale of the marriage to Abimelech. Consequently Sarah became variously identified as Abraham's sister or as his wife, the deception part of the tale arising as a result of Sarah having to be Abraham's wife for them both to be parents of Isaac, but also Abimelech's for the treaty, and simultaneously not commit bigamy by having two husbands. The Book of Hosea is a book of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament, written by Hosea. ... Polygamy, literally many marriages in ancient Greek, is a marital practice in which a person has more than one spouse simultaneously (as opposed to monogamy where each person has a maximum of one spouse at any one time). ...

Archeological and historical evidence has suggested that there were no Philistines in Canaan from before about 1200 BC, i.e. after the timeframe of the Exodus, not before it; thus the many references in Genesis recounting interaction between Abraham and Philistines are generally regarded as anachronisms. As for Gerar, the archaeology shows it only to have been an insignificant village until 800 BC, when it began to become a major centre of commerce, very shortly before the time period that the documentary hypothesis assigns to the Yahwist and Elohist writers of the Abimelech tales. The Exodus was the departure of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. ...

References

• Israel Finkelstein (2002). The Bible Unearthed, Free Press. ISBN 0684869136.
• Robin Lane Fox (1992). The Unauthorized Version. pp 409f
• Richard Elliott Friedman (1987). Who Wrote The Bible?, Harper and Row, NY, USA. ISBN 0060630353.
• Richard Elliott Friedman (2003). The Bible with sources revealed, HarperSanFransisco. ISBN 0060530693.
• Jewish Encyclopedia, edition {{{edition}}} ([[{{{year}}}]]). Article: {{{article}}}
• Robinson (1977). Biblical Researches, Arno press. ISBN 040510281X.
• New American Bible. ISBN 00000000000. — note the footnotes for Genesis 26 and 20-21