Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

20 : 1-2 1 : 3 4 GENESIS
best that could be said by way of extenuation is the fol-
lowing comment by Leupold (EG, 593): “If the case in
hand is to be approached from the moral angle, then it is
seen to offer an illustration how even with God’s best saints
susceptibility to certain sins is not overcome by a single
effort. These men of God, too, had their besetting sins
and prevailing weaknesses. The repetition of the fall of
Abraham under very similar circumstances, instead of
constituting grounds for criticism should rather be re-
garded as a touch entirely true to life” (EG, 193).
Dr. E. A. Speiser, in his excellent work on Genesis
(Anchor Bible Series) presents an entirely different picture,
as derived from Hurrian (Horite) customary law. The
Horites evidently were a mixture of Semitic and Indo-
European peoples who occupied East Central Mesopotamia.
The chief center of Hurrian culcture was Nuzi, which was
east of the Tigris not too far southeast of Nineveh. (An-
other important center of archaeological findings was Mari,
the center of the Amorite civilization; Mari was on the
bend of the Euphrates, some distance northwest of Babylon,
a region in which the city of Haran was located, which
according to Genesis was the home of Abraham’s kinsmen.)
The Hurrian culture was not known until 1928-1929 when
the Nuzi cuneiform documents (some 20,000 in number)
were discovered. As a result we know that these people
had some strange customs having to do with the sister-wife
rela tionship.
Dr. Speiser writes (ABG, Intro., 39 ff.): “Among
the various patriarchal themes in Genesis, there are three
in particular that exhibit the same blend of uncommon
features: each theme appears to involve some form of de-
ception; each has proved to be an obstinate puzzle to
countless generations of students, ancient and modern; and
at the ‘same time, each was seemingly just as much of an
enigma to the Biblical writers themselves.” These three
are specifically: the problem of the sister-wife relationship
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