ABRAHAM’S WIFE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, May 12, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 19

ABRAHAM’S WIFE.

SEVERAL communications like the following have been received:—

“Some of the members of our school are troubled, not seeing how to harmonize the notes in the Review of Mar. 31, which state that Abram married his brother Haran’s daughter Ischa or Sarai (i. e., his niece), with Gen. 20:12, where Abraham says that she was the daughter of his father, but not of his mother.”

I hope no one has understood the “notes” to teach positively that Sarai and Ischa were the same person. They do not so teach. They stated that the Jews universally believed such to have been the case, that Josephus assumes it to have been a fact, and that most modern scholars so accept it. With this explanation, let us see if the supposition that Sarah was Abraham’s niece can be reconciled with Abraham’s statement in Gen. 20:12, that she was the daughter of his father, or, in other words, his half-sister. Of course the two statements can never be reconciled, if Abraham’s language must be taken in its most common sense, that in which we would now understand it; but Abraham having stated unqualifiedly that she was his sister, when according to his own explanation she was only his half-sister, it is not difficult to believe that when he said, “She is the daughter of my father,” he meant simply that she was the descendant or granddaughter of his father. Indeed, this way of speaking is entirely in accordance with ancient usage, as, for example, in Dan. 5:2, where Nebuchadnezzar is called the father of Belshazzar. In this connection read the following from Prof. Bush’s notes upon Genesis, Vol. I., p. 343:—

“Yet indeed she is my sister,” etc. In what sense this was true is not perfectly apparent from the Scriptures. The prevailing opinion of the Jews, which seems as probable as any, is, that the term ‘sister’ here is to be understood in the same latitude as ‘brother’ in other connections; viz., to denote a niece, and that Sarah was the granddaughter of Terah, the daughter of Haran, and consequently the sister of Lot, being, in fact, no other than the Iscah mentioned in Gen. 11:29. Terah, it seems, had two wives, by one of whom he had Haran, the father of Lot and Sarah, and by the other Abraham, so that he might truly say of his wife that she was the daughter (i. e., descendant or granddaughter) of his father, but not of his mother; and it is entirely accordant with Scriptural usage to denominate such a relative a sister. ”