Abraham, Egypt

When Pharaoh takes Sarai into his palace, rather than being a passive victim, as in the Bible, the midrash has Sarai taking her complaint directly to God and commanding an angel regarding her protection and the punishment of her captors.

When Sarah overhears that she and Abraham will have a baby, she laughs and when confronted, denies it for fear of Abraham’s reaction. After all, Abraham has consistently put her in jeopardy, neglected her, and was content with Ishmael, Hagar’s son, as his heir.

The sister-wife story of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt reworks the sister-wife story of Isaac and Rebekah in Gerar. The passage is an intertextual bricolage, composed to have Abraham, the paradigmatic “first Israelite,” personally experience the nation's core redemptive event.

Abraham, Jacob, and the Israelites in Egypt acquire wealth from foreign peoples in morally ambiguous ways. In contrast, the Judeans’ return from exile, depicted as a second exodus, is accomplished with the blessing of the gentile king, and the wealth obtained in exile is entirely untainted.

From God’s first command to Moses, through the story of Israel’s escape, the demand for a three-day festival in the wilderness plays a prominent role in the exodus narrative. Part of this ruse was Israel’s request to “borrow” Egyptian finery for the festival. Why does God want the Israelites to use deception?

Paul, in the 1^st c., allegorizes the expulsion of Hagar to argue that his rivals should be expelled from the church, a lesson applied by later Christians to their own Jewish and Muslim rivals. Ramban, in the 13^th c., uses the same biblical story to explain why Jews of his day are persecuted. Such readings highlight an assumption ingrained in Judaism and Christianity alike: Biblical stories speak to the present-day circumstances of their audience.