ABRAHAM AND SARAH

Abraham, the father and source of the faithful, was the son of Terah. He descended from Noah by Shem, from whom he was nine generations distant.

The opinion that supposes him born in the 130th year of Terah, seems to me more likely than that which places his birth in the 70th year of the same Terah. It is very likely that he was born in the city of Ur in Chaldea, whence the Holy Scripture informs us that his father went to the land of Canaan. Abraham went out with his father, and stayed with him at Haran until his death. He afterwards followed his first design, which was the journey into Palestine. The Scripture shows the divers stations he made in the land of Canaan; his journey to Egypt, where they took his wife from him, who was also his sister by his father; his other journey to Gerar, where she was likewise taken from him, and afterwards restored again as at the first time; the victory he obtained against the four kings that had plundered Sodom; his complaisance to his wife, who was willing he should have children by their maid-servant Hagar; the covenant that God made with him, sealed with the sign of circumcision; his obedience to the order he had received from God to offer up his only son; the manner how that act was hindered; his marriage with Keturah; his death at 175 years of age; and his being buried near his first wife Sarah in the cave of Machpelah. It would be useless to enlarge on these things; the Protestants know them at their fingers’ end; they learn them at the fountainhead from their youth; and as for the Roman Catholics, they have no need of a new dictionary to instruct them; those of Mr Simon and Mr Moreri do it sufficiently. It is more proper for such a compilation as mine to mention the falsities and the uncertain traditions that concern Abraham; but their great number would be able to discourage the most indefatigable writers. For what has not been supposed concerning the motives of his conversion? What exploits have not been ascribed to him against idolatry, both in Chaldea and the city of Haran? How many sciences and how many books have been attributed to him? The Jews ascribed to him the privilege of having been born circumcised, and of possessing the same soul with Adam. They believe that David had the same soul, and that it shall be the soul of the Messiah, as Bartolocci remarks in his Bibliotheca Rabbinica. The Mohammedans have also invented several idle stories about that patriarch, as may be seen in the Koran, and in one of their chief authors called Kissœus. They make him take a journey to Mecca, and pretend that he began to build the temple there. See Mr D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, in which a thousand curious particulars are to be found. If we had the book that Hecatæus composed on Abraham, we should perhaps see many things in it that have not been heard of. The Christians would not be the only persons guiltless of stories concerning Abraham; for they made him plant trees of a very singular virtue, the wood of one of which formed the cross on which Christ suffered.

Idolatry of Abraham.

It is a common opinion, that Abraham sucked in the poison of idolatry with his milk; and that his father Terah made statues, and taught that they must be worshipped as Gods. Some Jews have asserted, that Abraham exercised Terah’s trade himself for a considerable time, that is to say, that he made idols and sold them. Others say, that the impiety which reigned in those countries being the worship of the sun and the stars, Abraham lived a long time in that idolatry, from which he converted himself by the reflections he made on the nature of the planets. He admired their motions, their beauty and order; but he observed also

imperfections in them; and from all this he concluded, that there was a Being superior to the whole frame of the world, an author and a director of the universe. It is certain that Josephus, without owning that the patriarch was for some time infected with idolatry, maintains that, by his wisdom and by the consideration of the universe, he ascertained the unity and the providence of God; and that he was the first that durst oppose the popular error concerning it. He found an opposition strong enough to make him resolve to forsake his country; which was perhaps the first time that any body exposed himself to banishment from religious zeal. If so, Abraham would be, in relation to that kind of punishment, under the law of nature, what St Stephen was, in regard of capital punishment, under the law of grace. He would be the Patriarch of the Refugees, as well as the Father of the Faithful. I do not see how it can be denied that his father was an idolater, seeing that the Holy Scripture assures us of it, calling him by his name; but all that can thence be inferred is, that Abraham before the age of discretion was of his father’s religion.

His Timidity and Dissimulation.

We ought not to forget that Sarah his wife was very beautiful, and that the complaisance she had for her husband, not to call herself his wife but his sister, exposed her to two rapes which resemble one another like two drops of water. In both of them Abraham concealed his being Sarah’s husband, and bid her say he was her brother; and he did it because he was afraid they would kill him, if they knew he was her husband, and to the end that they might be kind to him for her sake, if they believed that she was not his wife. In both of them the ravishers were punished from above, before they could

satisfy their lust: they restored Sarah, giving large presents to her husband, and reproaching him with his lies. The first rape happened in Egypt by king Pharaoh; the second in Gerar by Abimelech, king of the Philistines. Sarah was at least sixty-five years old when Pharaoh took her away, and ninety when she was taken by Abimelech; for she was ten years younger than her husband; and their voyage into Egypt was after their going out of Haran, that is to say, after the seventy-fifth year of Abraham. As for the journey to Gerar, it was after the foretelling of the birth of Isaac, that is to say, when Abraham was 100 years old. Say what you will, this history is [a proof that Abraham feared death more than any conjugal dishonour, and that he was far from being a jealous husband. He leaves to the paternal care of Providence the honour and chastity of Sarah, but he is beforehand for the preservation of his life, and neglects no human means. Not to acknowledge therein the infirmity of corrupt nature, is to be voluntarily blind. That patriarch might have said on this occasion, “ Homo sum, humani nihil à me alienum puto: --- I am a man, and therefore think myself liable to any thing which may happen to men.” Those who believe that the fear of danger made him reason ill, are mistaken; “ There is no fear of God in this country,” said he; “ and they will kill me because of my wife.” He believed therefore, that those who would make no scruple to kill a man, would make some to take away a married woman. Yes—he believed it, and not without reason. The good of society, without doubt, more than the love of virtue, caused the rape of a married woman to be regarded as an enormous injustice, the ill-consequences of which sovereigns themselves dreaded; but it was not deemed extraordinary, if a great lord took away a woman that was not married, in order to increase the number of his concubines. Therefore Abraham, reasoning solidly, inferred that the laws of society would hinder the Egyptians and the Philistines from taking away his wife, and at the same time suffering him to live, because he would be a perpetual witness of the violence done to a married woman. The reasonable conclusion of this was, to be afraid lest they should privately dispatch him, that they might keep Sarah, and yet not be reproached with taking away a married woman: for the public would have had no knowledge of the husband, if he had been quickly dispatched. This fear is not the worst passage of this history. Who does not know the underhand dealings of David, in order to destroy the husband of his mistress?

The desire of being well treated, as being the brother of the beautiful Sarah, is more blamable than the fear of being killed. However, we ought to abhor the brutality of Faustus the Manichæan, and content ourselves with what St Jerome says of the matter. St Chrysostom and St Ambrose have found here matter for a panegyric on the charity of Sarah, who was willing, in favour of her husband, to expose her chastity to the greatest dangers. Origen was of another opinion; he found such a scandal in the literal sense, that he had recourse to types and allegories.“Otherwise what edification shall we have in reading that so great a patriarch as Abraham not only told a lie to the king, but also betrayed the chastity of his wife? Or how shall the wife of so great a patriarch edify us, if we suppose that she was prostituted by the connivance of her husband? Let the Jews imagine these things, and such who are friends to the letter and not to the spirit.” Others have recourse to inspiration, and pretend that Abraham was directed by a prophetical spirit ! a mode of argument which would be endless. This remedy ought to be better

managed, and never to be used but like extreme unction. Some apply it to Sarah, and her desire that her husband should lie with her servant maid. As for those who, to excuse Abraham, say that his life was so necessary for the accomplishment of the divine promises, that he was obliged to preserve it at any rate, even at the expense of his wife’s honour, they confute themselves. They allege for his justification, what is against him; for if his life was necessary for the fulfilling of the divine decrees, he might have been assured that nobody could kill him. The loose casuists and protectors of equivocations take advantage of this conduct of the patriarch; nor is it easy to clear the conduct of Abraham and Sarah in this matter, any more than in the affair of Hagar.

Defence of the above conduct of Abraham and Sarah by St Chrysostom.

St Chrysostom, in adverting to the virtues of Abraham, observed to his auditors, that nothing vexes a husband more than to see his wife suspected to have been in the power of another; and yet this just person here made use of all his efforts to cause the act of adultery to be accomplished. It might be expected after this, that the preacher would censure the patriarch; but on the contrary he praises his courage and his prudence very much; his courage, which conquered the motions of jealousy so far as to permit him to advise such things; and his prudence, which dictated such a sure expedient to draw him out of the troubles and dangers that surrounded him. St Chrysostom did not forget to ’ give a lively representation of the terrible force of jealousy, to make his hearers apprehend the great courage which had surmounted that passion; but on the other side he heightens Abraham’s prudence by saying, that seeing Sarah was too

fair to be able to escape the incontinency of the Egyptians, by saying either that she was his wife or his sister, he would have her to say that she was his sister, because he hoped to save his life by that means.“Behold,”cried St Chrysostom, “with what prudence that just person imagined a good mean to frustrate all the ambuscades of the Egyptians.” Afterwards he excused him for haring consented to his wife’s adultery, because death, which had not yet been stripped of its tyranny, inspired much fear in those times. After this eulogy of the husband, he passes to the praises of the wife, and says that she gladly accepted the proposition, and that she did all she ought to act that comedy well. Whereupon be exhorts wives to imitate her, saying, “ Who would not admire that great easiness to obey? Who can ever praise Sarah sufficiently, for being willing, after such a continency, and at her age, to expose herself to adultery, and give her body to barbarians to save her husband’s life?” I do not think that a preacher durst manage so nice a matter in Chrysostom’s manner in the present day: he would give profane persons too much ground to jest; and I question much if the inhabitants of Antioch, who were naturally slanderers, could have heard such a sermon without taking the liberty to fall into malicious reflections. St Ambrose gave no less eulogies to Sarah’s charity; and St Augustin was almost in a like illusion. It is a strange thing that these great lights of the church, with all their virtue and all their zeal, were ignorant that we are not permitted to save our own lives, nor those of others, by crime.