Culture and Status
The purpose of this paper is to consider the texts of Genesis that present the stories of Abraham and his three wives, Sarah, Hagar and Keturah, and to reflect on his relationships with them in sev-eral ways. I intend to consider linguistic, literary and theological questions posed by the texts. I will argue both on the basis of the final form of the text and with regard to the view that distinctive traditions underlie specific sections of the material. My aim is to reveal the roles that the women play in these stories alongside Abraham, and to consider whether the perspective of the texts is quite as patriarchal as is generally presumed.
Taking Genesis 11:26–25:11, the section focusing on Abra-ham’s life, as a continuous narrative, we encounter a story about what is known as the ‘patriarchal’ period. It portrays a family group living a semi-nomadic, unsettled lifestyle, moving by stages from Ur of the Chaldeans, through Haran, the land of Canaan, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula. It tells of their encounters with other peoples living in those regions and implies certain things about cultural norms pertaining in a particular area or at a par-ticular time, for example beliefs about marriage and adultery;
but we need to beware against assuming that these texts provide insights into the actual society of those days.1 Whatever the ori-gins of each section of this narrative, the continuous story comes to us from the perspective of a community whose people had lived through the process of establishing themselves as a nation, through monarchy, through the experience of exile and probably of living as a small province in a large foreign empire. With the benefit of hindsight the narrative has been shaped so that it re-flects the beliefs and hopes of a much later period than that to which it refers; and no matter whether or not the writer(s) in-tended to record the ancient period faithfully (and we can never know the answer to this), at best the canonical narrative offers a post-exilic interpretation of the patriarchal period. Similarly, I
1Contra C. Meyers, ‘Women and the Domestic Economy of Early Israel’, in: A. Bach (ed.), Women in the Hebrew Bible: a Reader, London 1999, 33-43.
would suggest that none of the underlying traditions responsible for specific sections of the text comes directly from the patriarchal period. Rather, they are the product of a process of reflection on remembered (or created) history and experience, telling their stories for the communities of their own time and thus coloured by the norms and beliefs of the time of each stage of writing.2
A literal reading of the narrative reveals Abram as a son of Terah, who was born in Ur of the Chaldeans, and who married Sarai, about whose ancestry the text is silent. They are childless at this point, she is described as barren,3 and there is no mention of there being any servants in the family household. Terah’s fam-ily moves to Haran and settles there for a time until Terah dies (11:26-32). When Abram is seventy-five years old, with Sarai, his nephew Lot, and ‘the persons whom they had acquired in Haran’
(12:5) – the text says nothing about their identity or status – he sets off for Canaan, where he, Abram, receives a divine promise to the effect that he, Abram, will have descendants who will one day inherit that land (12:7). The promise is specifically related to Abram as an individual and makes no mention of a wife.
When famine strikes Canaan the family moves on to Egypt, and at the border4 Abram instructs Sarai, whom he describes as beautiful and sexually attractive to men, to say that she is Ab-ram’s sister, not his wife, in order that his, AbAb-ram’s, life may be spared. The implication is clear: Abram fears that the Egyptians will want Sarai as a sexual partner, that they will be unwilling to commit adultery with her if they realise that Abram is her husband, and that they will therefore kill him in order to obtain her as a widow. As a sister she can be taken by the Egyptians without any harm being done to Abram. Either way Sarai, a legal wife, will be violated by the Egyptians, but Abram’s concern is
2Within the scope of this paper there is no room to discuss the complex history of the text’s development. Suffice it to say that whilst the underlying stories may have early folk origins, I believe that the literary traditions all reflect the experience of exile and that it is not possible to get back to previous layers of text with any certainty.
3The word used (hr:q:[}) does not imply an inability to bear a child, or sterility; only that the woman has not yet done so. In both Exod. 23:26 and Deut. 7:14 it occurs in contexts that imply that barrenness equates to the absence of God’s blessing.
4I recognise that this is an anachronistic term to describe the point of transition into territory ruled by the Pharaoh.
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about the preservation of his own life. Of course, it is essential that Abram lives if the divine promise is to be fulfilled. However, it appears that Sarai is regarded, not primarily as the potential mother of Abram’s children, but, rather, as someone who can be used to satisfy the desires and well-being of others – in this case others who are all men (12:11-13).5 Sarai’s silence suggests submission, and the text reveals that events unfold as Abram expects. However, not only is Abram’s life spared, the Egyptian Pharaoh bestows animals and slaves on Abram, which may be interpreted as the payment of a ‘bride price’ to him as Sarai’s brother, in the absence of a father to whom it would presumably be due; or in Westermann’s view, ‘the gifts are to compensate the brother for the loss of his sister’.6 The text implies in 12:19 that the Pharaoh does have intercourse with Sarai, and the nar-rator states that the Lord afflicts the Egyptians with plagues
‘because of’ (that is, because of the wrong being done to) ‘Sarai, Abram’s wife’, (12:17).7 Somehow the plague causes Pharaoh to realise the deception that has been practised upon him. He sum-mons Abram, accuses him of having caused him to act wrongly, asks ‘Why?’. He receives no answer, gives Abram’s wife back and ejects them from the land, letting Abram retain all his posses-sions, including apparently the ‘bride price’. The family group return to the Negeb region in the south of Canaan (Gen. 12:18-13:1).
The story shows the Egyptians in a good light. They did not use hostility against Abram even when he was proved guilty of trickery and self-interest. The end of the story implies that Sarai would have been respected as a married woman if the truth had been told at the outset. The only one who was abused and op-pressed in this story is Sarai, whose worth as a human being is denied by all concerned, even by Sarai herself, since she ac-cepts her rejection as a wife – effectively twice, by Abram and the Pharaoh – without demur. Abram is shamed and humiliated in the story, but comes out of it still with his wife and
materi-5S. Niditch, ‘Genesis’, in: C. A. Newsom, S. H Ringe (eds.), Women’s Bible Commentary: Expanded Edition, Louisville 1998, 13-29, argues force-fully concerning the ‘crass, male-centered way’ (22) in which this narrative is presented.
6C. Westermann, Genesis, Edinburgh 1988, 103.
7Contra Westermann, op. cit., 149, who argues that the plague is sent to prevent adultery taking place.
ally enriched. Theologically this story prefigures the enslavement of the Hebrew people in Egypt and their rescue by the Lord by means of a plague (Exod. 1–12). Here Sarai represents the oppressed people, and Abram, who is revealed as the promised father of the nation trying to safeguard his own life, and who rep-resents authority, leadership, and perhaps kingship, is portrayed as the cause of the oppression. From the perspective of exile, or any time of national downfall, the story suggests that Israel’s op-pression is largely the fault of her own (male) leaders who put self-interest and self-reliance before trust in God; but nonetheless there is assurance that the Lord will always come to the rescue of the chosen people.
The narrative in Genesis ignores Sarai for a time while relat-ing several incidents involvrelat-ing Abram. In 15:2-5 Abram raises the question of his childlessness, and the Lord assures him that he will father his own heir and have many descendants; but there is no mention of who will be mother. In 16:1 the narrator reminds us that Sarai, Abram’s wife, has borne him no children. The em-phasis is solely on the absence of a descendant for Abram, the patriarch. We are then told that Sarai has an Egyptian slave girl called Hagar. The Hebrew word for ‘slave girl’ here ishj;p]vi, and many have argued over the precise meaning of this word. West-ermann suggests that it implies ‘a servant of a married woman to whom alone she is responsible’,8 but it should be noted that the same word was used in 12:16 for the female slaves given to Ab-ram as part of the ‘bride price’ for Sarai, which undermines this argument. Meyers argues that it always means a servile, menial female slave, in contrast to hm;a; ‘maidservant’, which denotes a more honourable female servant.9 This distinction is supported by BDB,10 whereas Skinner11 implies, on the contrary, that this hm;a;means a very lowly, menial household slave girl. I suggest that usage of both these words in the Hebrew Bible does not permit us to determine precisely Hagar’s status (cf. Gen. 30:3 wherehm;a;is
8Westermann, op. cit., 124.
9C. Meyers, ‘Female (and Male) Slaves’, in: C. Meyers et al. (eds), Women in Scripture, New York 2000, 178-9. Although both terms are used by women to indicate the speaker’s humility, she notes that only the latter term is used to denote personal humility before God, for example Hannah (1 Sam. 1:11).
10F. Brown et al., A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford 1906, 51, 1046.
11J. Skinner, Genesis (ICC), Edinburgh 1910, 1963, 322.
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used of Rachel’s maid Bilhah and 30:9, 12 where hj;p]viis used of Leah’s maid Zilpah).12What is more interesting is that Hagar is Egyptian, a fact which makes it improbable that she was Sarai’s servant from the time of her marriage. It is more likely that the events of ch. 12 reveal the origins of Hagar.13 Dennis notes that some rabbis suggested that Hagar had in fact been the daugh-ter of Pharaoh – a lidaugh-teral princess, given to Sarai, whose name may mean ‘princess’.14 Whatever her birth and technical status, the text indicates that Hagar is under Sarai’s control, for she instructs Abram, ‘Go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her’, after declaring that ‘the Lord has pre-vented me from bearing children’ (Gen. 16:2). Here the emphasis is solely on a child/descendant for Sarai. It is interesting to note that neither Sarai nor Abram ever refers to Hagar by name, but only as a ‘slave-girl’. We still are told nothing about Sarai’s age but 16:3 indicates that Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, making him at least eighty-five years old, (cf.12:4). Pre-sumably this extended period of barrenness confirmed in Sarai’s mind that she would never bear a child herself. The idea of this ancient form of surrogate motherhood seems to be attested in the Code of Hammurabi§ 146,15although there it applies to the marriage of a nad¯ıtu, a woman who was attached to a temple and not permitted to bear children. Such a woman’s husband could take a second wife to be the mother of his children, but this situ-ation could be forestalled if she gave him a slave who would be regarded as an ‘incubator’ in place of the real wife. Any children would be deemed to belong to the wife.16The idea that the
Gen-12For a recent survey of the discussion see H.J. Marsman, Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East (OTS, 49), Leiden 2003, 437-54, who concludes that the terms are synonyms (448).
13S. P. Jeansonne, The Women of Genesis: From Sarah to Potiphar’s Wife, Minneapolis 1990, 18.
14T. Dennis, Sarah Laughed: Women’s Voices in the Old Testament, Lon-don 1994, 62. On p.182 (n. 13) he acknowledges the alternative translation
‘my princess’ suggested by M.P. Korsak, At the Start . . . : Genesis Made New, Louvain 1992, 54.
15Westermann, op. cit., 124; G. von Rad, Genesis (OTL), London 1961,
21981, 192.
16T. Frymer-Kensky, ‘Hagar’, in: Meyers et al. (eds), Women in Scripture, 86-7. She also refers to a cuneiform marriage contract from the Old Assyrian colony in Anatolia around 1900 bce which states that if a wife does not give
esis account is linked to the Hammurabi material is supported by Sarai’s treatment of Hagar as an ordinary slave, which accords with the expectations of law CH§ 146.17 The occurrence of this form of surrogacy in ancient Israel is also attested in Gen. 30:1-12 in relation to Rachel and Leah, and Bilhah and Zilpah, where the children of the latter pair are regarded as belonging to the ‘real’
wives of Jacob.
Abram submits to Sarai’s suggestion without question and Hagar conceives; but then the narrator indicates in 16:4 that Hagar displays superiority towards Sarai.18According to the text Sarai regards authority over Hagar to have passed to Abram when the slave girl herself was handed over to him; and Sarai turns to Abram to judge who is in the right in the situation.19 Abram’s answer is simply to pass authority over Hagar back to Sarai. Den-nis states, ‘Abram remains detached, aloof from both her (Sarai) and his new wife. His detachment is most cruel, and results, not surprisingly, in more cruelty.’20The text reports that Sarai acted with violence sm;j;, a word which could imply physical violence or the use of injurious harsh words, causing Hagar to flee (16:6).
In 16:7-14 the narrator relates an encounter between Hagar and the Lord who addresses her by name. The Lord also refers to her as Sarai’s slave girl, whereby her individual humanity, status and relationship to the other characters are all being expressed.
This passage includes a promise about the son whom she is soon to bear, which has much in common with the promise to Abram about his son (cf. 15:5) and foretells the destiny of Ishmael in a way that clearly indicates alienation from all his kin. Most com-mentators agree that verse 9, which instructs Hagar to return and submit to Sarai, is a later addition to the text to harmonise with the events of ch. 21. However, her return is also necessary for the next stage of this story, because it continues by reporting (twice)
her husband a child in two years then she can purchase a slave woman for her husband.
17Von Rad, op. cit., 192.
18Cf. Prov. 30:23. Westermann, op. cit., 124, refers to this as ‘maternal pride’ rather than ‘contempt’ as in NRSV. We note here Davidson’s sugges-tion that in fact the name Sarai means ‘mockery’, rather than ‘princess’. R.
Davidson, Genesis 12–50 (CBC), Cambridge 1979, 59-60.
19Westermann, op. cit., 124, suggests that ‘women quarrel over social po-sition whereas men quarrel over food’ (cf. Abram and Lot in Gen. 13).
20Dennis, op. cit., 45.
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in 16:15 that Hagar bore Abram a son, whom he named Ishmael.
What is interesting to note here is that nothing is said about the status of the child. Gen. 16:2 implies that both Sarai and Abram would regard any child borne by Hagar as Sarai’s, but that un-derstanding is not adopted here and it receives no more comment from anyone in the narrative. The Lord’s word to Hagar rejects the concept that the child will be regarded as Abram’s heir. As noted above, this represents a different understanding of Hagar’s child from those born to Bilhah and Zilpah who become founding fathers of Israel’s tribes alongside the ‘legitimate’ sons of Jacob (Gen. 49). Sarai makes no claim on the child as ‘hers’, and Abram says nothing. Theologically this passage emphasises the futility of human attempts to bring about God’s promises by ingenious means; indeed, it suggests that God frustrates any such schemes.
As a story, during the monarchy it would challenge the making of political alliances with the intention of thereby ensuring the nation’s security; and in exile it warns God’s people of the need for patience. Continued trust in God and obedience to God’s will are the required response whenever a situation seems impossible from the human perspective.
Genesis 17 leaps forward another thirteen years to when Ab-ram is ninety-nine years old and records the making of the cov-enant between the Lord and Abraham. His re-naming reflects the substance of the covenant promise, and the practice of male circumcision is inaugurated (17:1-14). In its literary context the narrative appears at first to offer Abraham the hope that the promises will be fulfilled through his son Ishmael, since he does not know what the Lord had said to Hagar. Then in 17:15 Sarah, his wife, is renamed by God in her absence.21 Abraham is told that God will give him a son through her and that this son will be the one through whom nations and kings will come into being.
His response is laughter of disbelief on the basis of his own age and that of Sarah, who would be ninety by the time she had con-ceived and given birth. Abraham wishes God to bless Ishmael, but no, Sarah will bear a son to be named Isaac, meaning ‘he laughs’, and the covenant blessings will in turn be his. Ishmael will also be blessed and will father a great nation, but a different
21No explanation for the renaming of Sarai is offered; but Davidson’s sug-gestion that it marks a transition from ‘mockery’ to ‘princess’ is credible; see n. 18 above.