Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

20 : 1-2 1 : 34 GENESIS
would certainly have told this more plainly, if he had not
on a like occasion stated in more detail what moved Abraham
to it (12:~ 1-13). WBS it necessary now to repeat it
here? The rapidity with which he hastens on to the fact
itself shows what he presupposes in the reader. But while
in the first event of the kind (cf. 12), in Egypt, the narrator
briefly mentions Pharaoh’s gifts and plagues, he sets
forth in more detail the cause of Abraham’s conduct.
The reader might certainly be surprised that the same
thing could happen twice to Abraham. The narrator is
coinscious of this; and in order to remove every doubt of
this sort which might so easily arise, he lets Abraham clear
up the puzzle in what he says to Abimelech (vs. 11-13).
Thus the narrator himself meets every objection that could
be made, and by the words, ‘when God caused me to wander
from my father’s house’ (v. 13), he looks back so plainly
over all thus far related, and at the same time indicates so
exactly the time when he first thought of passing his wife
off as his sister, everywhere in foreign lands, that this can
only be explained from the previous narrative in ch. 12.”
Certainly there are similarities between this episode
and those recorded in Genesis 12 and Genesis 26. However,
as Leupold writes (EG, 579): “It is foolish to claim the
identity of the incidents on the ground that they merely
represent three different forms of the original event, forms
assumed while being transmitted by tradition. Critics
seem to forget that life just happens to be so strange a
thing that certain incidents may repeat themselves in the
course of one life, or chat the lives of children often constitute
a strange parallel to those of their parents.” Smith-
Field (OTH, 79) “Here the deceit which Abraham had
put upon Pharaoh, by calling Sarah his sister, was acted
again with the like result. The repeated occurrence of
such an event, which will meet us again in the history of
Isaac, can surprise no one acquainted with Oriental manners;
but it would have been indeed surprising if the author
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