Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN 16:l-16
But the faithful covenant-God turned the whole into a
blessing.”
Leupold would be more lenient in dealing with the
principals in this narrative. (EG, 494) : “As is evident
from v. 16, Abram had been in the land about ten years.
If we consider the advanced age of Loth Abram and Sarai,
they had surely waited a long time. . . . To Sarai the
thought comes that perhaps constomary devices may be
resorted to. Women of standing like Sarai had their per-
sonal maids, who were their own in a special sense. They
were the personal property of the wife and were appointed
specially to wait upon her. The maid under consideration
here happened to be an Egyptian, having been acquired, no
doubt, during the brief stay in Egypt (12:lO ff.). The
custom of those days allowed in a case of this sort that
the wife give her maid to her husband as a secondary wife
in the hope that the new union would be blessed with off-
spring, which offspring would then promptly be claimed
and adopted by the mistress. No stigma was attached to
the position of the maid: she was a wife, though not, in-
deed, of the same social standing as the first wife. For
Sarai to take such a step certainly involved self-sacrifice,
even a kind of self-effacement. It was this rather noble
mode of procedure on Sarai’s part that may in part have
blinded the patriarch’s eyes so that he failed to discern the
actual issues involved. Then, also, if we consider the chief
servant, Eliezer, and the excellent faith he later displays
we may well suppose that the chief maid may have been
a woman who was indeed imbued with the faith that
reigned in the household and may modestly have been de-
sirous of having a part in the achievement of the high
purpose to which this household was destined. Yet, in
spite of all that may be said by way of extenuating the
fault of the parties involved, it was still a double fault and
sin. First, it clashed with the true conception of monog-
amous marriage, which alone is acceptable with God,
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