(BA) Genesis 20

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Abraham journeys to Gerar, where he pretends his wife is his sister, and gets caught.

This chapter is from E, according to Driver, and according to Friedman (Who Wrote the Bible?, appendix). J has two versions of the same essential story: a patriarch (twice Abraham, once Isaac) goes to a foreign land (twice Gerar, once Egypt), loses his wife to the local ruler due to a dumb plan involving pretending his wife is his sister, and gets scolded.

(20:2) Here the Septuagint adds, ""for he feared to say, She is my sister, lest at any time the men of the city should kill him for her sake."

(20:4) "Lord". According to Kittel fourteen Hebrew manuscripts read "Yahweh".

(20:4) "even a righteous nation". The Hebrew is odd: hagoy gam ṣaddiq, and Kittel says we should read instead hagam ṣaddiq, "even a righteous person".

(20:5) "She is my sister. And she, she herself also said". The Hebrew, due to differences in word order, sounds even more oddly repetitive than the English: ʾaḥoti hi we-hi gam hi ʔamra, literally something like, "My sister is she. And she, also she, said."

Kittel says two Masoretic manuscripts, as well as the Samaritan Pentateuch, omit the last hi, thus reading, ʔaḥoti hi we-hi gam hi ʔamra, "She is my sister. And she also said" -- less repetitive. The Septuagint, Peshitta, and Vulgate are also less repetitive, but via a different route.

(20:5) "cleanness". A Hebrew expression used "only here in the Hexateuch" (Skinner), though it appears elsewhere in both moral and physical senses. Skinner says, "E is addicted to rare expressions".

(20:8) "the men". The Samaritan Pentateuch reads "all the men", and is supported by the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Skinner.

(20:9) "What have you done to us?" Kittel says we should follow the Peshitta in reading, "What have I done to you?"

(20:10) "What did you see?" Hebrew, mh rʔyt. Kittel thinks perhaps we should instead read, mh yrʔt, "What did you fear?"

Skinner takes "What did you see" as an idiom meaning, "What possessed you to ...", citing for support Bacher, who made the argument for this interpretation on the basis of a large mass of post-biblical examples.

(20:11) "Surely". Hebrew, rq. But Skinner does not think that rq can carry the meaning of "surely", and so Skinner reads it as "only", introducing a contrast to an implied other course of action: "'[I should act otherwise] only,' etc."

(20:11) "the fear of God". According to Skinner, "Religion was the only sanction of international morality, the gêr having no civil rights."

(20:12) Such a marriage, according to Skinner, "was allowed in ancient Israel (2 Samuel 13:13), though prohibited by later legislation (Deuteronomy 27:22, Leviticus 18:9, 11, 20:17)."

The reference to 2 Samuel 13:13 raises two interpretive questions, and I don't claim to have solid answers to either one. First, does Samuel accurately reflect the historical circumstances of the period it claims to narrate? Second, are the words of a desperate woman spoken to her rapist to be taken as an accurate reflection of legal norms?

(20:13) "the gods caused me". The verb in Hebrew is plural, though many translations read "when God caused me". However, the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Peshitta, and Vulgate have the verb in the singular.

Driver raises the possibility that Abraham, speaking to a (presumed?) polytheist like Abimelech, might just be adopting his polytheistic way of speaking. But Driver also points out that there are places like Joshua 24:19 where a singular God is referred to in oddly plural ways.

Skinner thinks the plural most likely points to an earlier "polytheistic form of the legend".

(20:13) Here the Samaritan Pentateuch adds, "and from my native land".

(20:14) Before "sheep", the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint read, "a thousand [shekels] of silver, and".

(20:16) "it". ASV note: "Or, he."

(20:16) When a quantity of silver is given in the Bible without the unit specified, the default presumption should be that it is a measurement in shekels.

(20:16) "it". ASV marginal note: "Or, he".

(20:16) "covering of the eyes". Compare Job 9:24 (Skinner).

(20:16) "to all". The Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint read, "and to all".

(20:16) "to all who are with you". Hebrew we-et kol we-nokahat. I do not pretend to know the meaning of this Hebrew phrase, and Skinner thought there must have been some error here, and called the text here "untranslatable", as it also appears to me.

(20:16) "concerning everything". ASV note: "Or, before all men".

(20:17) "healed Abimelech". But in what way is Abimelech ill? 18 says that God had "closed up all the wombs" of Abimelech's women. So to heal them was to restore their reproductive capacity. But 18 does not explicitly speak of Abimelech's condition. In verse 6, we read that God "did not allow" Abimelech "to touch" Sarah, so by analogy it would seem reasonable to think that Abimelech was struck with impotence.

Stranger still -- why does Sarah give birth only after she is captured by another man? After Sarah is returned to Abraham, literally the first event narrated is that she gives birth.

(20:18) "Yahweh". The Samaritan Pentateuch reads, "God".

(20:18) This verse, according to Skinner (writing over a century ago), is "universally recognized as a gloss", because it is "a superfluous and inadequate explanation of 17." Verse 18 does not explain why Abimelech would need to be healed. And to the extent that it explains the malady of the female servants, it provides no new information not already found in 17.

ASV. The American Standard Version of the Bible, as printed in 1901 by Thomas Nelson and Sons.

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