The Bible for Big Fat SinnersChapter 8 - How to Swindle a Pharaoh

This is the fifth installment in a series; each one composing a separate chapter of the book, "The Bible: for Big Fat Sinners," by Daniel Lee Baker.   See previous posts:
 Introduction  *   Chapter 1 - In the Beginning  *   Chapter 2 - Adam and Eve   *    Chapter 3 - Cain and Abel  *  Chapter 4 - Noah  *  Chapter 5 - The Tower of Babel    *  Chapter 6 - The Genealogies  *  The Call of Abram (Abraham) 

How to Swindle a Pharaoh 

No sooner does Abram arrive than does a famine strike the Promise Land.  So, Abram decides to move down to Egypt where the milk and honey still flows freely.  His plan is to hang out by the Nile River and enjoy the good graces of the Egyptian people for a year or two until the Promise Land starts growing food again.  There is only one small detail that needs to be ironed out first.

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It seems that Abram’s wife, Sarai was one hot looking chick (way to go Abram!).  Not a problem when you are living the life of a wanderer and hardly ever come into contact with city folk.  But now that they were moving into Egypt, Sarai’s hotness was going to be a problem.  
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Apparently, while the Promise Land was experiencing a food famine, Egypt was having a famine of beautiful women (probably because the Pharaoh was taking all the hotties for himself).  Abram knows that when they get to Egypt, the men there are going to see Sarai and want some-o-dat.  So Abram stops just outside of town to have a chat with Sarai about the situation.
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He says to her, in effect, “Look, you’re more woman than these guys have ever seen and if I introduce you as my wife, they’ll kill me just to make you single again so that one of them can have you.  If, on the other hand, they think you are single, they will treat me well in order to win your hand in marriage.  So, don’t tell them you’re my wife.  Tell them that you are my sister.  After all, you were my sister before you became my wife, so we’re not really lying.”  (Genesis 12:10-13)
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So, telling the truth about Sarai's marital status will result in Abram's death; that seems true enough.  Still, this deception is likely to result in riches coming his way and Abram knows this.  When he tells Sarai that they will “treat me well for your sake,” not only does that mean that they won't kill him; it means he will likely be given many gifts for the purpose of persuading him to give up his "sister" in marriage.  That was how it worked in the middle east back then.  By our western standards it is only a step or two above slave trading but in their culture, marriage had much more to do with the economy than with love.
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You must understand.  Life was hard back then.  There was no running water.  If you needed water you went down to the river and fetched it.  There was no gas or electricity.  If you needed to cook something you had to find some wood and build a fire.  If you wanted wheat for flour, you plowed the ground, planted the seed, reaped the fields, and ground the wheat with stone tools.  Everything required physical effort, and lots of it.  When it comes to such a physically demanding environment, women could not compete the way they do now in the information age.
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So, for a man to take a woman as a wife meant he wold have to see to her well being - food, clothing, shelter.  She would, in his eyes, be something of a burden.  Why should a man take on more of burden than he already had?  Well, LUST is one very big reason, though not the only one.  But let's stay with lust for a moment.  If a woman was beautiful there were plenty of men willing marry her.  But if that beautiful woman happens to be my daughter or my sister, I want to make sure she is well taken care of.  If you want to marry her, you need to demonstrate that you can provide for her.  Giving me extravagant gifts might help convince me of it.  And while I might appreciate your fine gift, there are many other suitors bearing gifts as well.  So, I'll wait and enjoy all the fine gifts coming in before I make a decision.  If you really want my beautiful daughter or sister, you need to impress me.
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In a situation like this, a guy could clean up!  On the other hand if my daughter or sister is not beautiful, the situation is reversed.  In order to get some guy to marry her, I need to sweeten the pot with a dowry.  You may not find my ugly daughter or sister sexually attractive, but would you take her if I threw in thirty sheep and a donkey?  Besides, you may not be able to afford a hot chick anyway, and an ugly wife is better than no wife because she can still bear you lots of children who will all work in your fields one day.  So you see, marriage is very much about economics, and very little about love.
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Now, here we have Abram and Sarai.  Abram is a foreigner and therefore not particularly welcome in the first place.  If he shows up with a wife who is hotter than any of the Egyptian wives they are going to like him even less.  On the other hand, if he shows up with a hot sister he will become everyone's favorite foreign invader.  But how much are they going to like him when they find out that he is a fraud?  After they have given him tons of gifts for Sarai's sake only to learn that she is not a virgin, but in fact, is married?
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The famine back home was bad enough that Abram needs to stay here for at least a year or two.  So, he will have to string these suitors along for the whole time he is here.  All the while, these men will be "treating Abram well" (showering him with gifts).  Then, when Abram finally decides to go back to the Promise Land, he and Sarai will have to quickly and quietly pull up stakes and get the heck out of Dodge before anybody knows he’s gone; otherwise he’s dead.  The only alternative would be to simply give Sarai up and actually let her marry one of them, never revealing that she was his wife.
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All of this is clear in his mind when he discusses it with Sarai.  But, what can he do?  He can't go home to the Promise Land yet, and he can't introduce Sarai as his wife without getting killed.  As unpleasant as it is, calling her his sister seems like the only solution.  The fact that he will profit from it is just a nice bonus.  Instead of Abram getting killed, a few Egyptians lose some of their possessions.  Works for me!  But it is a dangerous game that could cost them both their lives.
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As it turned out, Abram didn’t have to worry about a bunch of different men competing for Sarai.  He only had to worry about one, the Pharaoh!  Once the Pharaoh found out about Sarai he took her for himself.  This is a disaster because you can’t string the Pharaoh along.  He takes what he wants and if you are lucky he will "treat you well" in the process.  Luckily for Abram, he does treat him well - very well! 

“And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels.” (Genesis 12:15-16)

Abram is in a serious pickle!  It was going to be hard enough to pull one over on a bunch of regular Egyptian citizens.  But the Pharaoh has an army.  He will hunt Abram to the ends of the earth if he tries to take Sarai away now.  And that is assuming he could even get her out of the palace in the first place.  He probably has no choice now but to let the Pharaoh have her and never reveal that she is his wife.  God, however, cannot allow this.  He has already promised Abram that he would bless him with innumerable descendants.  That requires that Abram and Sarai have children, which they do not yet have.
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Now, the Bible doesn’t say whether or not the Pharaoh had his way with Sarai.  We could assume that God kept this from happening, but we really don’t know.  We do know that God was not pleased with the whole thing and showed his displeasure by afflicting Pharaoh’s entire house with disease.  We can assume that God communicated with the Pharaoh somehow and explained the reason for this punishment because Pharaoh confronts Abram about it in verse 18.
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“So Pharaoh summoned Abram. ‘What have you done to me?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, “She is my sister,” so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!’ Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.’  (Genesis 12:18-20)

The fact that Pharaoh doesn't kill Abram over this incident is another indicator that God explained the situation to Pharaoh, probably included a warning not to harm Abram.  The fact that Pharaoh lets Abram keep all of the gifts he had given him shows that the Pharaoh really had the fear of God put in him.  Interestingly, for all of his harsh treatment of the Pharaoh, God doesn’t so much as shake his finger at Abram for creating the deception in the first place.  Maybe God agreed with Abram that he didn’t have any choice because the men of Egypt would have killed him.   But, we must not forget that Abram has been forced to move to Egypt by a famine in the Promise Land.
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Really?  A famine in the Promise Land?  The land, flowing with milk and honey?  Hmm, seems to me like God wanted Abram to go down to Egypt.  But that doesn't make sense ether because if God wanted Abram to go down to Egypt he could have just told him, "Go," and Abram would have obeyed.  I suppose we could say that the famine was just a natural occurrence, a fluke, a bit of bad luck, but given how close Abram and God were, it seems unlikely that God had no hand in this major, life changing event.  I think we have to conclude that God was driving this whole thing.
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Indeed, it will become clear later that God definitely wanted Abram to go down into Egypt, and he definitely wanted Abram to get into a situation that would require God to bail him out of.  Why?  To provide symbolism and analogy for future generations.  You see, throughout the Bible Egypt represents "sin."  Abram's journey down into Egypt (sin), and then being delivered from it by God, is analogous to mankind falling into sin and God delivering us from it.
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Given the fact that Pharaoh’s entire house had been struck with disease by the God of Abram, it is not surprising that the Pharaoh did not ask for all those gifts to be returned.  But shouldn’t Abram have given them back anyway?  Was it really right to take them, given the false pretenses under which they were given to him?  
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Pharaoh got the short end of the stick here.  He hadn't done anything wrong by taking an unmarried woman into his palace as a concubine or a wife.  That's what Pharaohs did back then and it would only have been considered oppressive if he had knowingly taken a married woman.  In this case, Pharaoh not only believed that Sarai was single, but dealt fairly with the man he believed to be her brother, Abram; lavishing gifts upon him to the point where he was a wealthy man.  And what did the Pharaoh get for it?  A slap in the face from God almighty!
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God didn’t just wink at this deception; he set it up and even allowed Abram to profit from it.  This is a good thing if you are Abram, but it sucks to be the Pharaoh.  You may respond by saying something like, “Well, that’s just too bad.  God didn’t like any of the Pharaohs because they were all arrogant and claimed to be gods.”  Fine.  But God didn't smite the Pharaoh for that.  He smites him for wanting to marry the hottest chick he had ever seen and for not being able to read her mind; for believing her when she posed as a single woman.  Seems a bit unfair to me, especially for all of the servants and slaves who had the misfortune of working in the palace during God's moment of displeasure.
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The clear message here is that if you are someone whom God likes, then you can do whatever you want to everyone else – lie, cheat, steal, whatever.  Arabs and Jews (both descendants of Abram) seem to understand this about God, even today.  Christians, Don't exist yet, and won't for another few thousand years.  When they do arrive, they will have a radically different view of God.
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Christians think of God as being infinitely fair and high minded.  They believe that God expects each of them to also be fair and high minded.  Christians love their enemies, do good to those who spitefully use and abuse them, turn the other cheek, love their neighbors.  All of those ideas, at least as religious tenets, are foreign to Abram, and they do not appear to have occurred to God yet either.

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All of this may have given you the impression that Abram is kind of a sleazy guy, and not a very bright one at that.  The only reason that the fiasco in Egypt ended well is because God stepped in and backed him up.  In fact, this experience worked out so well for Abram that he has no reason to change his behavior in the future and repeats this exact same deception again with another king named Abimelech, as we will see shortly.  Still, there is much more to Abram’s personality than meets the eye at this point and we are about to see some of his finer qualities.
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Right or wrong, Abram has left Egypt a wealthy man and continues to prosper from that point forward.  Along the way his nephew, Lot has had the good sense to stick with him through thick and thin - and in the process, has become wealthy in his own right.  In fact, after a short time the two men have become so wealthy together that the Promise Land cannot sustain both of their estates in the same vicinity.  Abram sees that they need to go their separate ways.  The question is how to tell Lot to get lost without hurting his feelings.
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The fact is, God has already promised the entire land of Canaan to Abram.  He could have coldly taken lands he wanted and assigned Lot to what ever patch of ground was left over.  Instead, Abram is warm and magnanimous with his nephew.
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“So Abram said to Lot, ‘Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.’”  (Genesis 13:8-9)

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It is fascinating to see how differently Abram deals with the members of his own family as compared with everyone else.  Next to God’s will, Abram’s concern for his family’s happiness and well-being is consistently the most important thing to him throughout the book of Genesis; a fact that is demonstrated even more clearly in the events that are about to unfold.
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Lot looks around and picks the finest land available:

“Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom.”  (Genesis 13:10-12)

Now, I know what you are thinking.  Bad choice!  By selfishly choosing the best land for himself he has placed his entire estate smack dab in the center of God’s crosshairs; because as we all know, God winds up destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.  But even without that fate waiting for him a few years from now, Lot has still chosen badly.  You see, for the past fourteen years or so the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, along with six other cities, have been under the control of an enterprising young despot named, Kedorlaomer.  We’ll just call him “Ked,” for short.
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Each of these cities has its own “king,” but they all submit to Ked who is already the king of his own city called, Elam.  Ked is a sandbox-bully who doesn’t play nicely with others.  Basically, Ked has been putting together his own little empire and now it is time for him to deal with his first uprising.  Five of his cities have banded together and rebelled.  As it happens, Sodom (the city Lot chose to settle near) is one of them.
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Now, Ked puts together an army from the four cities that are still loyal and goes after the rebels.  The rebels have assembled an army to meet him.  Ked kicks their butts and proceeds to take the spoils of war from their conquered cities, which basically means everything.  Rebel survivors will now be slaves, and everything they once owned is now the property of the great and terrible Ked.  Among the slaves and property are Lot and his entire estate.
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You will recall that Abram went the opposite direction from Lot and that he preferred to live away from the cities.  So, Abram is untouched by the disaster that has befallen his nephew.  However, when Abram hears that his nephew has been taken prisoner, he takes immediate action.
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Interestingly enough, Abram just happens to have three hundred and eighteen “trained men” in his employ, sitting around his house waiting for just this sort of opportunity to use their fighting skills (I’m assuming that they are trained as fighting men not basket weavers or something like that).  He gathers them and rides after Ked’s army, intent on rescuing his nephew, Lot.  When they get close to the enemy camp, Abram divides his men and attacks.  He routes the enemy and recovers his nephew, along with everything else that the enemy had taken, including all of the other prisoners.
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Needless to say, Abram is a hero.  As he is returning from the battle, the King of Sodom comes out to meet him.  Apparently the King of Sodom has survived the war without being captured.  Now that Abram has recovered everything the King of Sodom is anxious to resume his role.  However, he is not ungrateful to Abram for his service.  As a token of his gratitude he tells Abram to keep all of the possessions he has recovered from the Ked-monster.  All he asks is that Abram return the people who had been captured.  He turns it down.
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Abram is already a wealthy man.  He does not need the fortune that has just been offered to him, but that is not why he turns it down.  He turns it down because he does not want the King of Sodom to be able to claim, later on, that Abram’s wealth came from him.  So Abram takes nothing for a reward and as a result, the King of Sodom remains indebted to him, not the other way around.  He simply frees his nephew, compensates his men for their service in this endeavor, and goes on about his business.  After all, his goal was to save Lot, not to obtain more wealth.
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The impression I always got from Sunday school was that Abram was just a lowly sheep herder.  But what kind of sheep herder has three hundred and eighteen trained fighting men hanging around waiting for something to do?  I'll tell you what kind.  The wealthy kind.  The kind that has a lot of assets that need to be protected from marauders.  The kind of man who knows that the world is full of people who will take everything you own unless you are prepared to kill them for trying.  So this man, who starts out seeming like a not-so-bright, somewhat cowardly, con artist, whose short sightedness places his own wife in peril, now emerges as a shrewd, valiant, loyal, compassionate, wise leader of men.  Not to mention God's favorite guy.