Genesis: Chapter Twelve (The Call of Abram, Abram in Egypt)

In which God selects Abram at random to be falsely rewarded for doing nothing, and in which Sarai is kidnapped into sexual slavery by the Egyptian Pharoah.

God begins commanding again right off the bat in Chapter Twelve. "Leave your country, your people and your father's household," he says to Abram, "and go to the land I will show you." God promises Abram that he will start a "great nation" and that God will "make [Abram's] name great." God "will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse" (12:1-3). God really is down with this whole vengeance thing. Aside from choosing people who marry their infertile cousins at random and granting them a legacy, he sure does like to tell these people that anybody who isn't nice to them will feel the terrible wrath of the lord.

So Abram takes off with his nephew Lot and his wife Sarai. They take all their things and all of their slaves (God doesn't seem to have a problem with slavery) and leave town when Abram is seventy-five years old. Or like, six and a half if you're counting in real time (12:4-5).

They pass into the land of the Canaanites until they finally stop at the "great tree of Moreh at Shechem." God offers the land to Abram, saying, "To your offspring I will give this land." (12:7)

Wait... What? *rifles through pages, finds passage* AHA! Genesis 11:30 says, "Now Sarai was barren; she had no children."

I'm having trouble reconciling what it means when God says one thing knowing that it means nothing. This is an empty promise. Abram will have no offspring because his wife is barren. She is infertile. She is not a baby-making machine. So when God says that the offspring of Abram and Sarai will inherit the land, he is telling Abram comforting nothings, probably to convince Abram to do something. Does Abram realize he's been taken? Did he just want a change of scenery and take the opportunity when God handed it to him? Who knows? One thing's for sure. Whether Abram knows it or not, God is lying to Abram.

Abram must not be aware of this because in 12:8 Abram "built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord." Then in 12:9 he moves on to a place called Negev.

When famine encompasses Egypt, Abram decides to spend some time on the African continent (12:10). I'm left to assume that he does so to bring some kind of aid to the Egyptians because the Bible does not provide a reason for Abram's actions. But he does have a fear of the Egyptians. He thinks that when they see Sarai's beauty, they will kill Abram to take Sarai for their own. He proposes in 12:13 that she pose as his sister (which is not too far off from the truth) so that this will not happen.

Sure enough, when Abram and Sarai show up, the Pharoah's officials think Sarai is worthy of presentation to their king. They take Sarai to the palace. The Pharoah approves of Sarai and thinks her "brother" is so awesome that "Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels." (12:14-16)

God takes pity on Sarai because of how unfairly she is treated by the Pharoah. The book doesn't say what kind of horrible atrocities are done to her, but one might assume sexual slavery. In 12:17, God "inflicted serious diseases on Pharoah and his household" because of it, fulfilling half of his promise from before.

The Pharoah, through his punishment, becomes aware of Abram and Sarai's ruse. He confronts Abram, reiterates Abram's plan back, returns Sarai to her husband, and tells them to get out of the country. Abram gets to take all of the cool stuff the Pharoah gave him. (12:18-20)

What's left unexplained at the end of this chapter is why Abram went to Egypt in the first place, and what he did while he was there aside from wind up in some wacky hijinks with the king. I understand there was a famine, but generally speaking, people don't move toward a place of dispair unless they are there to provide aid in some way. In a monarchy such as Egypt was, the people are going to get what the king gives them, and external help will be no help at all. Abram perhaps didn't understand this and went anyway. But while he was down there, he didn't do anything to that end. His wife got kidnapped, which obviously causes problems with the rest of the itenerary, and he spent the rest of his trip watching the Pharoah undergo various illnesses.

Personally, I think this chapter is nothing more than an illustration of God following through on something that didn't involve killing people. God did make a guy sick, however, and he did make a rather large empty promise to Abram. In the end, I'm still left making wild conjectures at why God selected Abram, what he selected Abram for, and why Abram went to Egypt. In literary jargon, God's selection of Abram and subsequent commandment for him to move about the countryside could be seen as a McGuffin, an event that takes place solely for the purpose of catalyzing an unrelated plot.