Chinatown, Egypt

Genesis 12:10-20

So Abram senses trouble and tells Sarai, since you're so pretty, pretend you're my sister- that'll get me out of trouble.

Lots of weird things here in this section. First Abram is right- they do realize how beautiful she is, and attempt to take her for their own. Pretty amazing that this actually comes to pass- either she must have been amazingly beautiful or the Egyptians must have taken a pretty high percentage of the beauitful women. How did he know it would happen?

Second- this is God's chosen daddy of the world- the seed's coming through him- and this action is amazingly cowardly. We hear a lot about Abraham and Isaac- and his great faith, but we seldom hear about his giving away his beautiful wife to save his own backside. Actually- even worse- he "trades" for her- well paid for his beautiful "sister", knowing (?) that as a result she is serving as wife to Pharoah. Maybe he had so many wives that her "duty" as wife wasn't what we would expect. But if he's paid handsomely for a beautiful woman, it stands to reason that Abram's traded her favors for riches.

Third- the punishment comes down...on Pharaoh. Abram lies, and the penalty comes on the ones he fools. Abram seems to get off scott free. I'm not sure what to take from this- it's better to be the fooler than the fooled?

Bottom line for me here- even men of great faith sometimes act out of fear and make choices they will regret forever. If Abram made choices this poor, surely my bad choices are met with the same mercy