Genesis 20

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   The Negev is the dry south (12:9). Kadesh and Shur mark its southern edge toward Egypt: Hagar met the messenger "on the way to Shur" (16:7), and the well of 16:14 lies "between Kadesh and Bered." Gerar lies north of them, between Gaza and Beersheba (10:19; 26:1). "Sojourned" is גּוּר, the life of the alien without land (12:10; 19:9). This is the second of three stories in which a patriarch passes his wife off as his sister: Abram and Pharaoh (12:10–20), Abraham and Abimelech (here), Isaac and Abimelech (26:1–11).

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   אֲבִימֶלֶךְ is "my father is king," or "the king is my father," a royal name: a ruler of Tyre in the Amarna letters is Abi-milki. The same name is the king of Gerar in Isaac's day (26:1), and the title of Ps 34 gives it to the Philistine king called Achish in 1 Sam 21. Unlike Gen 12, there is no famine, no fear spoken before the act, and no account of Sarah's beauty, though by 17:17 she is ninety. The narrator gives only the sentence "She is my sister" and the taking.

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 10, 2

   מֵת is the participle "dead, dying," the state already reached. With הִנֵּה it announces what is about to be: "Look, I am dying" (48:21; 50:5), "look, I am going to die" (25:32). The KJV and RSV have "a dead man." The bare participle is printed; Abimelech is a dead man before the verdict, because of whom he has taken.

4. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "she is a man's wife" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 39, 2, 95

   בְּעֻלַת בָּעַל is the passive participle of בָּעַל "own" with its own noun: "owned by an owner." Deut 22:22 has the same phrase in the law of adultery. בַּעַל is "owner" (H1167): of an ox (Exod 21:28–29), of a house (Exod 22:7), of dreams (37:19). The husband as owner is the Hebrew's idiom, and Hosea takes it up and refuses it: "you will call me 'my man,' and you will no longer call me 'my owner'" (Hos 2:18). The KJV and RSV give the social fact, a married woman; the WPRB does too. The WPB prints the words that say what kind of fact it was.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 9, 49

   The written אֲדֹנָי, pointed with qamets and addressed to Elohim, is the divine title Adonai (49). Abimelech's question takes up Abraham's at Sodom: "will you sweep away the just with the guilty?" (18:23–25). He calls himself and his people a "nation" (גּוֹי), the word of the promise to Abraham (12:2). Rashi reads it: will you kill a nation even when it is just, as you did with the generation of the flood?

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 39, 2

   תֹּם is the noun of תָּמִים "whole" (6:9, Noah; 17:1, "walk before me and be whole"). Abimelech claims the wholeness asked of Abraham two chapters earlier, and Elohim grants it (v. 6). נִקָּיוֹן is from נָקָה "be clean, be clear of guilt" (Exod 21:19; Num 5:19): "I wash my palms in cleanness" (Ps 26:6; 73:13). "Integrity" and "innocency" are Latin abstractions; the WPB keeps the whole heart and the clean palm. כַּף is "palm," the home gloss.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 9, 92, 107

   הָאֱלֹהִים with the article and a singular verb (וַיֹּאמֶר) is printed "the Elohim": the capital by agreement (9), the article because the Hebrew has one. Ruling 92's lowercase covers the article without agreement. At v. 17 Abraham prays "to the Elohim" with no verb to agree, but the referent is the one who spoke in vv. 3 and 6 and the subject of the next clause, "and Elohim healed," so the capital stands by reference (107).

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 74

   נָבִיא occurs here for the first time, and the first prophet in the Bible is Abraham. What makes him one in this verse is intercession: "he will pray on behalf of you, and live." Ps 105:15 remembers the patriarchs among the kings: "touch not my anointed ones, and to my prophets do no harm." The word is usually tied to Akkadian nabû "call": either "one called" or "one who calls out." Hebrew use does not decide between them. 1 Sam 9:9 notes that "the prophet of today was formerly called the seer." The expected English is printed, and the lexicon row fixes it.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 89, 74

   חֲטָאָה גְדֹלָה "a great sin" is a fixed phrase. In Egyptian marriage contracts and in Ugaritic texts "the great sin" names adultery (W. L. Moran and J. J. Rabinowitz, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 1959). In the Bible the phrase is used of the golden calf (Exod 32:21, 30–31) and of Jeroboam's calves (2 Kgs 17:21), the sin against the bond with Adonai. "Deeds that are not done" is the language of 29:26 and 34:7, "thus is not done": what custom forbids.

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the fear of God" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 38, 92, 46

    יִרְאַת אֱלֹהִים has no article and no agreeing verb, so ruling 38 prints "elohim," lowercase. Abraham is speaking about a foreign city, and the phrase elsewhere names the reverence for divine order that any people may have or lack. Joseph, in Egyptian guise, says "I fear elohim" (42:18). The midwives "feared elohim" and did not kill the boys (Exod 1:17, 21). Amalek "did not fear elohim" (Deut 25:18). Whether Abraham means the Elohim he knows or any god at all, the lowercase keeps both. The irony is the chapter's own: at v. 8 Abimelech's men "feared very much." רַק is "solely," the home gloss, here before a whole clause: the one thing lacking, as Abraham reckoned it, was the fear.

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 74, 46

    אָמְנָה "truly" (Josh 7:20) is Abraham's defence. Marriage to a father's daughter is forbidden in Lev 18:9, 11; 20:17 and cursed in Deut 27:22. Tamar's plea to Amnon, "speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you" (2 Sam 13:13), suggests that it was once possible. b. Sanhedrin 58b and Rashi read "daughter" as granddaughter and identify Sarah with Iscah, the daughter of Haran (11:29), which would make her Abraham's niece. The text calls her only Terah's daughter-in-law (11:31). The narrator does not confirm or deny Abraham's claim.

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "when God caused me to wander" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 38, 9, 107, 46

    הִתְעוּ is a plural verb with אֱלֹהִים as its subject, and the agreement rule prints "elohim," lowercase (9, 38). Elohim takes a plural verb of the God of Israel at 35:7 ("there the elohim were revealed to him") and 2 Sam 7:23, so the plural may be the speaker's idiom and not a claim about gods. Abraham speaks to a Philistine king, and may speak as a Philistine would. The versions repair it. The LXX has the singular (ἐξήγαγέν με ὁ θεός "God led me out"). Targum Onkelos turns the verse around: "when the nations strayed after the works of their hands, the LORD brought me near to his fear from my father's house." Rashi gives Onkelos's reading and also takes the plural as one of lordship. Ruling 107 gives a capital by reference where Elohim is the speaker or stands beside the name, and neither holds here. The report raises the choice. The verb תָּעָה is to stray, to go wrong (21:14, of Hagar; 37:15; Isa 53:6). Abraham describes his call from Harran (12:1) as being made to wander off course.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 34, 76, 122

    The gifts are property: "slaves" for the עֲבָדִים (34) and "maids" for the שְׁפָחוֹת (122f), as in Pharaoh's gift of 12:16. Abimelech's own "servants" in v. 8 are his court, under the same split. Hagar the Egyptian was Sarai's maid (16:1); at v. 17 and in 21:10–13 the word is אָמָה "slave-woman" (76).

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee" (KJV) / "it is your vindication in the eyes of all who are with you" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 40, 39, 8

    כְּסוּת עֵינַיִם is "a covering of the eyes," and the phrase occurs only here. The likeliest sense is that the gift covers the eyes of others so that they do not see a wrong. Jacob says of his gift to Esau, "I will cover his face" (32:21, כָּפַר), and Job 9:24 says the judges' faces are covered. So the silver is Sarah's compensation and her public exoneration. Rashi takes it so: it will keep people from looking down on her. Others take it as a veil for a married woman. b. Bava Kamma 93a hears it as a curse, "a covering of the eyes" fulfilled in her son, whose eyes grew dim (27:1). The literal phrase is printed and holds all three. הוּא can be "it," the silver, or "he," Abraham, whom Abimelech pointedly calls "your brother": the KJV has "he," the RSV "it." The nearer noun is the silver, so "it" is printed (41). A "thousand of silver" names no unit; shekels are understood (23:15–16).

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "thus she was reproved" (KJV) / "before every one you are righted" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 20, 74

    וְנֹכָחַת is the niphal of יָכַח, the verb of arguing a case and deciding it either way: to reprove (21:25; Prov 9:7–8), to arbitrate (31:37, 42; Isa 2:4), and so, in the passive, to be shown wrong or to be shown in the right. The versions divide. The LXX reads an imperative, καὶ πάντα ἀλήθευσον "and tell the truth in all things"; the Vulgate memento te deprehensam, "remember that you were caught"; the KJV "reproved"; the RSV "righted." "Set right" is both, the rebuke and the vindication, so the crux stays open (1). וְאֵת כֹּל "and with all" is printed as it stands: before everyone, or in every respect.

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 90, 20

    וַיֵּלְדוּ is a masculine plural, with Abimelech, his woman and his slave-women together as its subject. The qal of יָלַד keeps "bore" with a male subject in its company (90). The text implies that the healing undid the closing of v. 18, and that the house could bear again; Rashi reads "they were opened and bore." The verse is the only healing in Genesis, and it comes through the prayer of the man who caused the harm.

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 10, 115

    עָצֹר עָצַר is the finite verb with its infinitive absolute, "holding back, he had held back" (6, 10). עָצַר is the verb of Sarai's barrenness: "Adonai has held me back from bearing" (16:2). Now every womb in Gerar is held back on Sarah's account, and in the next verse Sarah's own is opened (21:1–2). "On the word of" (עַל־דְּבַר) is kept, as at v. 11 and 12:17: on account of Sarah, and of the word said about her. The divine name returns in this last verse, after Elohim throughout the chapter.