Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

THE PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH 12:lO-20
thus famine is brought on. Because the fertility of her
soil was guaranteed by the annual inundation of the Nile,
Egypt as a rule enjoyed protection from drought; hence it
was customary for peoples of Syria and Palestine to seek
refuge there in times of famine in their own lands, as did
Jacob later. Thus it will be noted that insofar as the
Promised Land is considered, it was literally true that
Abram simply “passed through the land” (v. 6). The
first journey was apparently one of exploration and it
seems to have been rapidly consummated and then termi-
nated in a brief sojourn in Egypt.
Abram in Egypt: The Problem of Sarai’s Age
Abram’s wife, Sarai, is now thrust forward into what
was an unenviable situation, and surely not one of her own
making. Abram testified to her attractiveness: “thou art
a fair woman to look upon” (v. 1 1) and the princes of
Pharaoh on seeing her beauty “praised her to Pharaoh”
(vv. 14, 1j). The statement Sarai was so fair as to attract
the attention of Pharaoh, even to the peril of her husband’s
life (12:1l, IS) is said by the critics to be incompatible
with 12:4 (cf. 17:17), according to which she was at that
time upward of sixty-five years old. It is said to be still
more incongruous that she should have attracted Abimelech
when she was more than ninety years old (20:2’-7, 7:17).
Green (UBG, 167) : “The only point of any consequence
in this discussion is not what modern critics may think of
the probability or possibility of what is here narrated, but
whether the sacred historian credited it. On the hypothesis
of the critics R (redactor) believed it and recorded it.
What possible ground can they have for assuming that J
and E had less faith than R in what is here told-of the
marvelous beauty and attractiveness of the ancestress of
the nation? If the entire narrative could be put together
by R, and related by him with no suspicion of discord,
the same thing could just as well have been done by one
original writer. It may be added, if it will in any measure
77