Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

2 3 : 1-2 5 : 1 8 GENESIS
by any moral feeling which would not also have hindered
him from taking Hagar. It has also been noticed that
Keturah is called a concubine, which is thought to imply
that the proper wife was still living; and that Abraham
was a very old man at the death of Sarah. But, on the
other hand, it is to be remembered that these sons were
in any case born after the birth of Isaac, and therefore
after Abraham was renewed in vital powers. If the re-
newal of vigor remained after the birth of Isaac, it may
have continued some time after the death of Sarah, whom
he survived thirty-eight years. His abstinence from any
concubine until Sarah gave him Hagar is against his taking
any other during Sarah’s lifetime. His loneliness on the
death of Sarah may have prompted him to seek a com-
panion of his old age. And if this step was delayed until
Isaac was married, and therefore separated from him, an
additional motive would impel him in the same direction.
Ha was not bound to raise this wife to the full rights of
a proper wife, even though Sarah were dead. And six
sons might be born to him twenty-five years before his
death. And if Hagar and Ishmael were dismissed when
he was about fifteen years old, so might Keturah when
her youngest was twenty or twenty-five. We are not
warranted, then, still less compelled, to place Abraham’s
second marriage before the death of Sarah, or even the
marriage of Isaac. It seems to appear in the narrative
in the order of time.” “The promise (17:4-6) that Abra-
ham should be exceedingly fruitful and the father of many
nations, looks beyond the birth of Isaac, and finds its ful-
filment in other descendants as well. This, like most other
alleged discrepancies, is found not in the text itself, but
in arbitrary critical assumptions.” (UBG, 308). There is
no way of determining with any degree of certainty
whether Abraham was still living when Issae and Rebekah
were married, or, if so, how long he lived after that event.
480