Staying Alive

In Genesis 12, Abram and Sarai and their traveling band flee starvation during a famine by heading towards Egypt...a story that will repeat on a grand scale later on, eventually leading to the whole Moses phenomenon. Here in chapter 12, we run into another repeating story, the "if they know you are my wife they will kill me to get to you, so just pretend you're my sister, okay?" story. A story important enough to tell over again with other characters in a few chapters, but odd enough that most preachers don't use it as a Sunday morning text.

What to do with this subterfuge and handing over to haremdom? (Not to mention the uncomfortable detail that Sarai doesn't have to entirely lie when she says she is Abram's sister...they hadn't yet discovered the genetic woes of inbreeding.)

Perhaps it is as basic as taking the story at face value. Abram says it plainly. "I know you are beautiful woman, and when the Egyptians see you, they will kill me. Say you are my sister, that it may go better for me, and that my life will be spared on your account."

This was no trip down the interstate to Disney World. Travel was risk.

For perspective, here is an excerpt from Volume 1, Number 2 of the National Geographic Magazine, published in 1889. In this excerpt, the President of the National Geographic Society, Gardiner G. Hubbard, writes about Europeans exploring Africa.

"...travelers in ever-increasing numbers have entered Africa on every side. Some who have entered...have been lost in its wilds and two or three years after have emerged on the opposite coast; others have passed from the coast, and have never been heard from...."
"Stanley started from Zanzibar on his search for Livingstone with two white men, but returned alone. Cameron set out by the same path with two companions, but upon reaching the lake region, he was alone..."
"Probably every second man, stricken down by fever or accident, has left his bones to bleach along the road."

When God said, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you," it was no simple journey.

Lives were constantly at stake.

Sarai was very beautiful. And for her sake, Pharoah dealt well with Abram.

One less set of bones bleaching along the roadside.