BEMA 8: Buried in a Genealogy (2025)

Transcription Status

22 Sep 25 — Correction by Dan Flack approved

24 Feb 25 — Initial public release

23 Feb 25 — Transcript approved for release

Transcription Volunteer: Sergey Bazylko

Buried in a Genealogy

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. We’re joined today by Elle Grover Fricks to ask the question the rabbis have asked over the centuries, “Why did God choose Abraham?”

And we do have a presentation today, which is going to be very helpful. But before we get into that, we’ve got a lot of names in this story. A lot of names that we’re not necessarily super used to. Some of them more than others. But the pronunciation of names is a tricky thing. Because in some senses it’s like, well, you kind of want to say it how they said it. But do we really know how they said it? But also if we say it just completely anglicized, then it’s also kind of weird because we’re talking about these ancient figures. So, uh, it’s tough.

Marty Solomon: Yeah, I love to bring some element of like taking that anglicized nature of the name away, because it helps remind me of the story as an ours. It’s not mine. It reminds me of somebody else’s story from another time and another place. It can get confusing because sometimes when you say the name in Hebrew, you wouldn’t even recognize it. When it’s Avram, Avraham, it’s easy to catch. When it’s L[oh]t, not L[ah]t, it’s easy to catch. When it’s Yeshayahu, that’s different. You don’t catch that. You don’t even know what name that is.

Brent: [laughing] What is that, Marty?

Marty: It’s Isaiah.

Brent: Isaiah! [still laughing]

Marty: And we just, we do, we just try to strike a middle ground of like trying to honor some of that stuff. And we do our best. We’ll go in and out. Elle’s going to be awesome because she’s always gonna, I mean she’s the Hebrew teacher, so she’s got the Hebrew at hand all the time. Brent and I are kind of half in, half faking it. So that’s often what you’ll hear us do, is just doing our best to kind of preserve the story for what it is.

So Brent threw me when he did the intro and he was like, “Why did they choose Abraham?” And we never say that around here. We always say Avraham.

Elle Grover Fricks: Abe.

Marty: It felt funny coming out of... so yeah, anyway.

Brent: [laughs] I know. Just to make it completely clear who we’re talking about.

Marty: Absolutely. And it always gives Elle something to giggle at when she hears us say some of the names, so we get some of them right.

Elle: Everyone is always doing their best, and that’s fine. I don’t think that Avraham’s up there in heaven yelling, “Avraham!” Every time we say, “Abraham.”

Marty: [laughter]

Elle: So you can bring that generosity of spirit along with us for the journey. We’ll be happier.

Brent: He’s probably just shaking his head—I can’t believe they’re still talking about me.

Marty: That’s right.

Elle: Most likely.

Marty: All right, so we’re going to wrestle with this question. Why would God choose Avram? And it’s a good question. I think Christians are like, “Hey, we meet Avram in Genesis 12, and God just chooses who He wants to choose.” And we’re not told—like, “I’m sure there’s a reason, but too bad, Marty.” I mean, we start in Genesis 12 and God chose Abraham and calls out to him. So that’s just the way that it is.

I was reading a book this morning, an academic book by a theologian, Christian theologian, from a more Calvinist persuasion, and you better believe that it was, “Hey, God just chose Abraham because of his sovereign will. It’s just how it works.” And that’s just often what we would assume. But the Jews have seen it differently because the Jews point out, “Aha! We don’t meet Avram in Genesis 12. We meet Avram in Genesis 11, in the middle of a genealogy.”

We’re like, well, what are you gonna find in it? You’re not gonna find anything in a genealogy. And the Jews say, oh no, let’s look again. So Brent, you’ve been wanting to get into genealogies, yeah?

Brent: I mean, I, yes, I do enjoy it these days.

Marty: He’s been waiting for us to get in. We keep skipping all these genealogies and Brent’s like, it’s time.

Elle: If 2 Timothy is right, which we do tend to proclaim, then all scripture is, etc., etc., etc., including, maybe even especially, genealogies.

Brent: Aha.

Marty: God breathed, absolutely.

Brent: Yes. And this is not the last genealogy we’ll dig into.

Marty: No, it’s not.

Brent: And I promise, when we get done, you’re going to appreciate it.

Marty: All right, well, Brent, you should get us started. Go ahead and read us Genesis 11:27–32.

Brent: This is the account of Terah’s family line. Terah became the father of Avram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth.

Avram and Nahor both married. The name of Avram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

Terah took his son Avram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, wife of his son Avram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran. 

Now if you’re not looking at this, the location Haran, as the NIV translates it anyway, has two R’s and the name from earlier only has one. Is there something in the Hebrew to that, Elle? Is that a different spelling?

Marty: I’ve noticed that before. It’s a great question. Because it makes a difference to me on some level.

Elle: In verse 31, it is “Charan,” and in verse 27, it is “Haran.” So the difference is, when we Anglicize, there is some doubt from translators that English speakers would feel comfortable with the “ch” sound like Johann Sebastian Bach. And so there are two different words, “Haran” versus “Charan.” Why they would choose to show that difference by putting a second R in, It’s a little bit more creative license than putting it K-H-A-R-A-N, but to each their own.

Marty: [laughter]

Brent: Some translations make it the same exact spelling in English, but they are distinct in Hebrew.

Elle: Right. They are. There is still some possibility, of course, that the narrator is doing something with the homophonic nature of Haran and Kharan. It’s not that those two would have no link, [as if] we’re not supposed to think of the other at all, but they are different words.

Brent: Okay, sure, good to know.

Marty: All right, Elle, so how about we just—it’s a short little genealogy. It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot in there. It’s pretty straightforward, right? Let’s just walk through it piece by piece. Tell me what you see as we just kind of walk through this.

And there’s a presentation, so you can follow this on the presentation. We’re going to try to put this in front of us because the visual nature of this can be super, super helpful. So Elle, just give me piece by piece. Tell me what you see.

Elle: So we’ve got Terach up at the top, and he’s got three boys. He’s got Avram or Abram, Na’or or Nahor, and Haran or Haran. That one checks out.

Marty: Yep, so he’s got these three sons. Typically the assumption might be that when you list these three sons, you would expect them to be in a particular order. We’ve already seen that we don’t want to assume too much.

We’ve seen that in the Noah story. It tosses us around like it’s one order of the sons coming out of the ark. It’s another order in the table of nations, like the orders change. So we don’t want to, the assumption might be there, but we want to make sure we kind of hold that pretty loosely. But he at least has three sons, Avram, Nahor, and Haran.

Elle: Next, we have the note that Haran is the father of L[oh]t or L[ah]t.

Marty: All right, go ahead. Tell me what you see next. So Haran has a son, which this would make us really start to question the birth order because it would be weird if Avram and Nahor, if Haran’s the last born, it would be weird that he is the one who’s married with children.

We’re not told he’s married, but he’s got children and descendants. That would be weird. You would assume the first born. So that seems to be odd, but he’s got, he’s got a son named Lot. All right. What else do you see next?

Elle: We see that while Terakh is still alive, Haran dies.

Marty: All right, so Haran dies. So now Lot is, his immediate father has passed. He’s on some level orphaned, maybe not in a patriarchal sense, but his father is now no longer in the picture. What do we see next?

Brent: Well, and what we have so far is now represented on the second slide. So if you haven’t moved on yet, the second slide is going to show you what we have so far.

Elle: Verse 29 is going to tell us that Avram and Naor get married to women named Sarai and Milcah.

Marty: All right. And now we’re going to start moving into that next slide. So now we’re told that these other two sons Avram and Nahor, they take wives. Avram marries a woman named Sarai. Nahor marries a woman named Milcah. All right, we got that. Go ahead, El. What do you see next?

Elle: Then it says that Milcah is the daughter of Haran, and Haran has another daughter named Iscah.

Marty: Okay, so now we know that Nahor’s wife Milcah is actually Haran’s daughter, making Milcah Nahor’s niece. We’re also told that Haran has another daughter named Iscah. And then what else do you see just in the passage there?

Elle: Verse 30 says that Sarai is barren, has no babies.

Marty: All right. So we’re told that Sarai is barren. Okay. All right. That’s, that’s gotten us through the section of the genealogy we want to look at here.

What kind of problems we—I’m sure we’ve picked up some problems along the way. What kind of problems do we automatically have? I’ve got—there’s one obvious problem I think we ought to deal with and not just like gloss over. What would that be?

Brent: I mean, they’re talking about women. That’s weird.

Marty: Okay. I mean, it’s not the glaring one that shows up to me first, but yeah, yes, they are. And it’s actually well-spoken. Brent makes a great point.

Women being present in genealogies is not unheard of, it’s just not your typical norm. It’s patriarchal genealogies. You’re going to follow patriarchal lines. So when women show up in a genealogy, it is supposed to get your attention. So yes, we have women here.

The thing that gets me right off the bat is if they don’t talk about Nahor marrying his niece. I’m gonna have some questions about the BEMA podcast. So, Elle, tell us, is there something, I mean, that seems very weird to us. Is that weird in the ancient world? What is that like?

Elle: Totally. So it’s not common, but it also wasn’t taboo. It especially would pop up if you’re looking at these families, whether it’s in Egypt or Greece or other places where you have genealogies recorded. It’s especially going to happen in higher families of wealth, of nobility, because they are keeping their inheritance and their family legacy in the same clan.

That’s the concern is we want the name of the patriarch, right? When we say patriarch, it’s specific, it’s a specific role. It’s different than, maybe, the modern use of that word. It’s patrilineal. We’re really concerned about upholding the family name.

Lower classes don’t really have as much stake in that game, and so you see it less there, but we certainly see it around the Mediterranean during this time, and going on for centuries.

Brent: And not the last time we’re going to see it in the Text.

Elle: Right.

Marty: No, no—spoiler alert. Absolutely. So yes, we have that, that’s so what’s going on here. What is Nahor doing? We’re told that Milcah’s father just passed away like he just died and in this ancient world if your patriarchal father passes and you’re an unmarried daughter and this like newly orphaned state that’s going to be a pretty negative state to be in.

In this more ancient world that just operates on different principles. It’s not easy to just go get a job as a barista at Starbucks or find some way to take care of yourself. Like that is not going to be something that’s super easy for them to do. So what Nahor is attempting to do, you would assume, is he’s attempting to take care of this family member that’s just lost their father.

And he’s trying to take care of this larger extended family, similar to what kind of Elle just explained there. If your father died, talk about that context for a moment, Elle, if you would. What is it like if your father dies in this ancient world and you’re unmarried? What’s happening in your what’s called beit av, the house of my father? What is that like?

Elle: Right. Well, it’s not all doom and gloom immediately. It’s not like you get cast out into some sad alleyway and you have to turn to begging or worse in order to survive.

They did have some things set up, some protections. Legally, the Code of Hammurabi, for instance, says that you get to keep your dowry even if your father dies, so that doesn’t get redisbursed amongst the household.

But common options, you might be sent into a religious order. We see this especially in Greece. You can get passed off as a priestess and their job then will be to take care of you.

But another common thing to happen is to be taken in as a ward by a guardian in the family. This would be the next patriarch in the line. So maybe that’s your cousin or even brother, some other family member, and it’s their job to arrange your marriage. Because again, that’s a huge part, arranged marriage at this time, and it’s the dad’s job to figure out what are the best alliances, what’s the best match that we can make for each person in the family.

And so now you’re ward of the guardian, and there’s a whole system for this in Rome, tutella, that goes back centuries and centuries and centuries, same in the Greek system. And, of course, it is still on the table. Potentially, it does happen sometimes for whatever reason, maybe everyone’s not operating uprightly with integrity, but that a woman can easily find herself on the margins of society in some real danger if these kinds of provisions aren’t made or followed.

Marty: So, if I’m hearing you like Nahor is trying to basically take care of his extended family members, trying to offer protection provision to Milcah, is this, is he trying to take advantage of something? Is he, is he going above and beyond? What is he doing in this moment in his context?

Elle: Yeah, I would definitely say he’s going above and beyond. If the norm is, you know, either sending her away or guardianship, he’s taking guardianship, which is, you know, more upright, perhaps depending on the religious order you’re sending your female family member to.

But marrying is not like the, I don’t know, I can get the sense of like mustache twirling, right? If I think about it from my culture, like, “Oh, ha ha, I’ll take you in.” You’re gonna feel creepy and obtuse.

However in guardianship, if you’re going to marry somebody else off, you’re still sending them away from the family, right? You’re still using that marriage to add reputation, to add prestige to the family. You’re making an alliance of a sort through that marriage.

And so choosing instead to marry her within the family is more of a taking her under the wings of the household, right? the picture that’s talked about in the Hebrew of you’re keeping her in a place where you really know she’s going to be taken care of.

You are taking on all of her gifts and all of the costs of providing for her. You’re making sure that she stays within the legacy of the beit av that she’s currently in. So really, he is going above and beyond to take care of her rather than taking advantage of her.

Marty: Yeah, he could be leveraging the situation and instead he sees her humanity and seeks to take care of her.

Elle: Right, right. Perfect.

Marty: Yeah, sure, absolutely.

Brent: A decision notably made before God even comes into the picture for Avram.

Marty: Right, right, no Torah, no Mosaic law, no commands of, like, this is them, they’ve set out, they’re kind of making their own way at this point in the story. So they could easily justify anything they wanted to, and yet we’re seeing the heart of a family on some level.

We’ve already talked about the firstborn issue, that things kind of seem to be somewhat out of order. We’ve talked about that problem. Elle, talk about—Brent already brought up, like, women’s places and genealogies. Talk a little bit about like seeing women in a genealogy, what that might mean for us.

Brent: And just to be clear, you said what problems do you see? That’s maybe not the best time for me to be...

Elle: Women, the biggest problem any society has—the women.

Brent: Not so much a problem as just like, it is notable and unusual in this particular time frame to see that.

Marty: Yes.

Elle: Yes, absolutely.

Brent: So not so much a problem. Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s a problem.

Elle: I fully understand you, Brent.

Brent: Thank you.

Elle: I got you. I got your back. Yeah. Women don’t usually show up in genealogies, right? If we jump way out in the story, we talk about Jesus’s genealogy, right? We make a big deal—folks have made a big deal—about how there are women in his line. And that stands out. You’re supposed to notice them. This is not because chroniclers hate women and they’re not important and they should just be cast to the side and forgotten.

It’s because the world of the Bible is a patrilocal, beit av system. Patri, father. Local meaning central locus, and also geographical location. So when you marry into a family, you move into their household and you count the lineage, both in the Bible and in the surrounding cultures by father and then the son and then the father and then the son.

It’s just the way that they tell the story about their families. We do see exceptions to this. If we look around historically, we get genealogies usually with royalty. And so if you have a queen regent, there’s some pretty cool ones out there. You’ll see them highlighted in the genealogy, but again, you’re supposed to notice them. That’s the point.

It’s not like, “Ugh, there’s no women. They’re so shoved to the side.” Except for this one snuck through. This is a special spotlight that these women are really important to the story in some way.

Marty: Another great source for that, if you want to read more about what, and we’ve talked about things like Souser and Vassal Covenants before, like one great book that touches, not goes in depth, but touches on a lot of this stuff for somebody in the introductory stages of these conversations would be Epic of Eden by Sandra Richter.

So Sandra Richter, Epic of Eden, and it’s a great book to read. Just kind of touches in like suzerain-vassal covenants, the concept of a beit av, all those kinds of things. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more in the next episode as well. Like a lot of those things will be in there. So a great read there.

Now, if I’m listening to that, Elle, and I’m looking back now, it’s time to somewhat sense, I’m somewhat okay, except for this mention of Iscah. Like you didn’t like, we didn’t have to mention her. She’s in the genealogy for a reason. You would assume there’s relevance.

Like Iscah has no business being mentioned, like Sarai and Milcah, that’s relevant. They get married. It’s telling us what’s going on in the family. Iscah is not going to come back up in the story as a direct reference. That seems to be somewhat of a literary problem.

And I love Brent’s point. I’m not saying that they’re a problem. I’m saying the questions that we like to ask at BEMA. What are the problems in this piece of literature? What are the problems in this story?

Iscah’s mention is a problem. Like why, why is she mentioned? She’s not a problem. The mention, literary mention, seems to be a problem. How about the fact that the author seems to get lost? Like at the end of that section that we looked at, it mentioned Sarai’s barrenness. Where would you have expected the author to mention Sarai’s barrenness?

Elle: In an appositive phrase, when she’s first mentioned.

Marty: Absolutely. Yeah. Like here, he gets mentioned that Sarai, Sarai’s barren. That would be the place you’d expect. Instead, I have all this other talk. And then at the end, I get told about Sarai’s barrenness. That seems to be odd.

The Midrash comes along. And if you’ve already skipped ahead to that next slide, the Midrash comes along and says Avram marries Iscah. And you’re like, wait, how could that be? The Text, the Bible tells me Avram marries Sarai and you unpack this reference.

And we’re going to put a great link, by the way, if you want to read about this or see some of the references and the links, you can head over to the Jewish Women’s Archive. It’s one of my favorite sources for women characters in the Bible, learning about the Midrash and what it teaches about them. Other people in Jewish history, it’s a great resource, but we’re going to put a link to that.

But the Midrash says that Avram marries Iscah. There’s different ways that the Midrash comes together. Ibn Ezra mentions that the word Iscah in the Aramaic, and it’s not that Ibn Ezra, I don’t believe, this is not how I engage with Midrash. I don’t think Ibn Ezra believes this is literally true. I think Ibn Ezra is making wink, wink, nudge, nudge commentary on things. The name Iscah, if we look at it in the Aramaic, actually comes from the word that would mean princess.

And so when you look at Serai in the Hebrew, the word, the name in the Hebrew means princess, not of the Disney variety, but ruler commander variety. So Elle, tell us about the name Sarai.

Elle: Yeah, the root there, the first half of her name, I would argue is the word “commander.” And why is that? Of course, I’m not alone in that thesis over and over, even just in the book of Genesis, not even looking outside at the rest of the whole Hebrew scriptures.

In context, it has “commander of the army” three times, “commander of the bodyguards” seven times. Commander of the prison, five times. So obviously it doesn’t make sense to be like the princess of the army, the princess of the bodyguards. It’s somebody who’s in charge of something.

And then what’s the second half of her name there with this “yud” at the end, this “e” sound? It’s possessive. So her name means my commander.

Marty: Absolutely. And so the Jewish tradition is that these are the same people because, according to Ibn Ezra, the similarities of the name, whether that’s etymologically true or not. Jewish Midrash ties these two characters together.

The beauty is, is that it makes these names, it makes the passage come together. If Iscah and Sarai end up being the same person, now all of a sudden all the problems we just mentioned, they fade away. Iscah’s mentioned because she’s actually Sarai. Sarai’s barrenness shows up when it does because it’s actually a whole part of this whole story.

And this is the way that Midrash works. We’re still getting used to Midrash in our early Bema journey. Midrash is trying to open our eyes to things that we wouldn’t see on a cursory reading. But as the rabbis have wrestled with the Text, as the sages have looked at the Text, as the Jewish people have looked at the Text over centuries and centuries and centuries, they’ve found these treasures.

Elle: And people take it different directions with that same propulsive direction. There’s another teaching from Talmud that Iscah is Sarai, so the same idea there, but they take a different word from Aramaic to say that Iscah means “to see.” And so Iscah is the alter ego, almost of Sarai, that she’s a prophetess or a seer.

And that’s why later when God tells Abraham that he must do everything that Sarai tells him to do, that’s because she’s a prophetess, and that Iscah is her name revolving around that. But so different traditions within the Jewish conversation, right? It’s never a monolith, and yet they’re still working toward the solving the same issue in the Text. Why is this here? So yeah, really fun, fun stuff to get into.

Marty: And I love that example because it really shows how the Midrash can function, trying to lead us into different pockets of wisdom. I remember the first time I taught this years ago, everybody came away from the episode like, “Oh, that was Marty’s take. It’s not my take. I’m trying to share with you what Jewish tradition has seen for centuries and centuries, and trying to share that Jewish wisdom because there’s something in there.”

And people say, “Why would the Jews do this? Why would they, why not just tell us that in the biblical text?” And it’s because the Eastern mind believes that truth is more powerful when we can discover it rather than just be told it. And so these stories are being told in a way that we’re being led to and discover wisdom and meaning in the story.

Because when I discover it, see in the Western world, we would just tell people what they didn’t know. This is the answer. Oh, this is the answer. But in the Hebrew world, you’re trying to lead people to the answer because if they can discover it on their own, they’ll have such a more intimate transformative experience with the lesson.

And so this is what Midrash is designed to do. Not just tell us what to think, but tell these crazy stories because some of these stories Like some of this Jewish tradition and folklore is flat out nuts. And yet this is how Midrash functions, because it’s trying to get us to see something that’s in our inspired Bibles that we might be missing unless we look and then look again.

So that’s what the Midrash teaches is that Sarai and Iscah—like, why would this be? Well there was a phrase that we’ve seen before and it was Avram. Can you find that verse Brent, read again, Avraham and Nahor took wives. What was that there? I’m going to ask Elle if we’ve got our Hebrew correct here.

Brent: Yes, and if you haven’t gone to your next slide yet, the next slide will show you where we are now at with all of the midrashic understanding of this genealogy. We’ve got a few lines, we’ve got a few circles, we’ve got some stuff that’s a little mixed up but that will give you the picture.

We are in verse 29 though for what you’re looking for Marty. It’s: Avram and Nahor both married. The name of Avram’s wife was Sarai and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Ishka.

Marty: All right, so we were told that Avram and Nahor both married, and yet I’ve been told that this isn’t how the Hebrew grammar works grammatically. I’ve been told that it’s Avram and Nahor, he took wives. There’s like this singular expression to it rather than they both got married, but Avram and Nahor, he took wives. That seems interesting. Is that really what’s going on in the Hebrew there, Elle?

Elle: Yeah, absolutely. Normally in syntax, we would see a plural verb and then both subjects. So both people who did the thing that’s being described. But instead, it’s odd here. We have a singular verb, and then we have Avram’s name, and then tacked onto it, “and Nahor.”

Marty: And when it’s tacked on like that, does Avram get like, what does that mean?

Elle: Yes, so he is the main actor here. So it is a bit more like “Avram married (and Nahor)”—almost in parentheses.

Marty: Sure. Okay. Beautiful. I love that. And we’ve seen this expression before. Brent, if we went back to the story of Noah and the vineyard, if you remember Ham going in and seeing his father’s nakedness, and then we were told,

Brent: Oh yeah.

Marty: Were told that Shem and Japheth, he took a blanket. I’ve been told that when I heard this from Rabbi Foreman years ago, and he said, when you see this phrase described this way, the reason that it’s using the singular verb there as they understand it, is that they’re of one mind. So it’s two people, but they’re of one mind. They’re acting together. So it’s Avram and Nahor, he took wife Shem and Yepheth, they took a blanket.

Elle: Yeah.

Marty: And it’s that preceding mention, the principal actor, as you said, Elle, that gets the credit, but then the other person comes along and they’re of one mind together. So when Shem and Japheth took the blanket, it was Shem’s idea, like he gets the credit for doing it, but they were of one mind together. They chose to do this together and they were of one mind to do a benevolent act.

Elle: A really easy example to see this principle in is when it's talking about Aharon and his sons went up the mountain, or I’ll say Moshe went up the mountain and Joshua and Caleb, right? It’s like, they’re not the protagonist here.

We’re totally focused in on Moshe. What’s he doing? What’s his conflict with God? And also these other folks are involved. So here, the big circle is around Avram’s name.

Marty: I love that. So here’s in the Noah story, Shem and Japheth doing a benevolent act, and we’re focused in on Shem. He’s that principal actor. And now we see the same principle.

All of a sudden Avram and Nahor are doing benevolent acts. So when we originally read the story, we thought, oh, Nahor is doing something, and he is, he’s doing something very, he’s going above and beyond, El told us, like he’s doing something very good. Now we’re seeing, and we’re reading, that the Hebrew text insinuates that Avram and Nahor are actually together, and it’s Avram’s idea.

What’s so striking is that Avram, he’s going to get the credit for this move, both of them are taking care of these newly orphaned nieces, right? So Haran has died. both going to take care of these two daughters of Haran. But what’s odd to you, Brent, as you read that about Avram’s? I would assume it’s his choice. He’s I don’t know if he’s older or not, but he’s the one that it was his idea. And yet he chooses what Brent?

Brent: He chooses the barren woman.

Marty: Chooses the barren woman. A lot of people will comment, well, how do they know she’s barren? They’re not going to know she’s barren. I think the story assumes that they understand their barrenness. That will be a part of the narrative, a part of the story that is being told is that the barrenness is something that they are aware of, even as he chooses them. And I’m not sure I’ve had people suggest things. I’m no doctor and I’m no woman. So I’m going to ask Elle. Elle, what kind of thoughts do you have? Any insights here that you might see either as a historian or a woman or anything else?

Elle: Yeah, so two possibilities popped to mind for me. One is less likely than the other, but put that one first. It’s possible that she was married previously and had a husband in some other household previously, and then that she was sent back because of infertility.

At this time, they did not have a conception—ha ha, puns—of the fact that both parties can be involved in infertility and instead it was put upon the woman. So it’s possible that she was married before, she is sent back to her father’s house, and she’s kind of stuck in limbo, which I can only imagine adds to the intense pain of infertility.

The other possibility, which is also painful, a way that they would know that she has experienced infertility is that she might be amenorrheic. She might not have a cycle, which in our culture, it’s totally bizarre to know. In mainstream American society anyway, which is society a little bit different, but that’s very private information, right?

But in their culture, there’s all these customs and things that you do that’s very community oriented for women as they experience their cycle. So if she doesn’t have one, the whole community would know. It’s possible if Nahor has any resources that he’s taken her to see somebody. We know that this was a problem back then.

Amenorrhea was a problem because we have medical diagnostic manuals from the era, which is wild and fun. You can find those online. But so she might’ve already been seen by an āšipu—a priest, healer, exorcist, wizard from their culture who would have used divination, omens, moral judgment, all sorts of stuff to say why she was having this problem.

And there is often a lot of victim blaming or saying that the gods are against you. It’s not just a medical phenomenon. The diagnostic manuals would sound like, “There’s this man and he has pain in the night. This is because he has committed adultery. Therefore, the hand of Urush is upon him. Also, while the doctor was walking to his house, he saw a pig. And so we know that this man will surely die.

Marty: Ha! Science!

Elle: Yeah, absolutely. So this is probably one of those two phenomena, both very painful, has been Sarai’s experience. And I feel like that gives more nuance to her character when we encounter her later and she’s struggling with resentment and bitterness and all of these things. She’s had a tumultuous life ever since early puberty. So those are the ways or the reasons or the context that folks would know, that her parents would know potentially, that at least Avram knows about her infertility.

Marty: I love it. Or I don’t love it. Like those are some hard truths and some hard realities that they have to deal with.

Elle: Right.

Marty: Let me ask you one more question as we start to work towards a close here. I want to bug you for one more. Like what, as you see this from your perspective, again, just from your, as you listen to the story as a woman with your knowledge of history and those kinds of things.

What are your thoughts about Avram and Nahor? But what are we seeing? Like, why is the story pointing us towards Avram as this character that God sees and immediately shows up and wants to partner? Like, what are we seeing about Avram in this act?

Elle: We’ve already established we have a cultural norm of guardianship and how this family has gone above and beyond in terms of hospitality and generosity. But there is a big extra step here that Avram is taking on.

If he is willingly marrying a woman who at least at this time is experiencing infertility, He is willing to sacrifice being the patriarch of his family. He cannot have his own beit av if he does not have kids, right? Beit av, house of father. He’s not a father. He can’t take on the cultural role that he’s expected to, one of lots of honor and prestige. He’s laying down his own potential to have a legacy for the sake of this woman who could be, she has the capacity to be just to hang her on. Not because that’s what her real base identity is, but because that’s how she could be treated.

She could just be an outsider in this family household without a role. She’s maybe just had a priest shrug at her and say, I don’t know, it’s her fault. You know, pray about it, I guess, you know, but Avram chooses this woman to be a matriarch. So if she is Iscah, and the Talmudic tradition, rabbinic tradition is onto something, it’s because potentially he sees her spiritual significance outside of the cultural norms of significance for women, right?

Women in this culture, their main function is their fertility. And Avram sees that narrative and says, “No, I am willing to self-sacrifice because I see the value of this woman aside from what she can produce.” and the prestige and honor that she can garner for me and my behalf. Maybe that’s why she’s called Sarai, right?

Maybe that’s a little insight there, but whatever the case, God chooses someone who is willing to lay aside his own significance and his own future and the building up of his own name and that of his family for Sarai. It’s beautiful.

Brent: Yeah, it seems like the whole idea of guardianship here, keeping her in the family, like this seems like it would be the perfect time for him to go outside of the family, make some sort of alliance, maybe he marries her into another family, ensuring her safety, and he gets a different wife from that family and they have this connection because he has, you know, a bunch of money or whatever, I don’t know, whatever that he might be able to part with. Like it seems like the perfect opportunity for him to do that, and yet he does the opposite.

Marty: And I love Elle’s description of that. Because when I think about the characters we’ve met in the story up to this point, what a contrast. Like when I think about Adam and Eve and their struggles, we’re not throwing these characters under the bus, it describes the human experience. But when I think about Cain and Abel, when I think about the story of Noah and the vineyard and cursing his progeny. When I think about Tower of Babel, like all of a sudden I meet somebody.

God has found a character that’s willing to trust the story and not work out of fear and insecurity. Somebody who’s more worried about somebody else’s name, somebody else’s story, somebody else’s dignity, not just his own. Like he’s willing to lay down some of that own self-interest and self-preservation.

This is a person committed to righteousness and justice, love and compassion, service and hospitality. This is somebody who does know when it’s time to say enough, put self aside and give to others. This is somebody that knows how to trust the story.

And what I love about this is the story tells us that we can in fact do this. You and I as followers of God, we can do this. It isn’t hopeless. It’s not just this doomed story of depravity and all like we’re just doomed to failure. We can do these things. We’re not gonna be perfect. We’re sinners. I get that. But we are able to trust the story. We are able to make decisions that help us in the New Testament language, walk in the spirit. That is going to be a real possibility.

So that’s a good discussion for today. It’s a little side note, Brent, we often get emails after this discussion. used to the first time around, people go to Genesis 20 and they say, “Ah, the Jews can’t be right because Genesis 20, here he is. What does he say in Genesis 20? Brent, do you have the verse?

Brent: Yeah, in verse 12, he’s talking to Avimelech and you know, his deception has come to light And he argues and says, Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father, though not of my mother, and she became my wife.

Marty: All right. So people read that, and if they want to take their Bible really literally, I don’t think anybody typically went around teaching that, but now that we’re considering her family connections, they go, “Aha, she’s a half-sister, daughter of my father, but not of my mother.”

It’s deceptive in the English because in the Hebrew, I’ll corroborate this in a moment, you have references of kin that are vertical and references of kin that are horizontal. So to be a father is your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great-great-grandfather. These are all fathers. It’s a vertical relationship. So they’re all fathers in the Hebrew. It’s not, it can be specific, but it can also be used in very non-specific ways.

In the same way, the term sister or brother is a horizontal term in the beit av. So it can reference your sister and brother. It could reference your niece or your nephew. It could reference anybody that’s a horizontal relationship in that family, that mishpahah, that beit av. And is that correct, Elle? Did I say that well?

Elle: Mm-hmm.

Marty: So what that means is that in the Hebrew, Avram, Avram is really using his semitic language the best way he can to explain the technical truth to Avimelech. She is the daughter of my father. She’s a descendant of my family, but she’s not my immediate family. She’s not the daughter of my mother, daughter of my father, not the daughter of my mother.

So he’s trying to explain in the Hebrew. When we read in the English and we get really specific, we think she’s a half sister. And we realize that he’s speaking in this Semitic language, not quite what’s taking place. So that speaks to that email question we’ve got often. So anything else you would add to that before we get out of here?

Brent: No, Marty, I think that does it. We’ve expanded this episode quite a bit from its original runtime, but we’ve received no more feedback on any other episode than this one, so it was a worthwhile use of time.

Elle: I mean, it’s juicy stuff.

Brent: Oh, yeah.

Elle: We’ve got important things. We’ve got suffering of women and redemption and beautiful, beautiful stuff. So worthy time spent, in my opinion.

Brent: Indeed.

Marty: There was a stretch where we would get two emails at least a week about this episode. So if we can somehow curb the confusion, it will be an investment well made.

Brent: Okay, Marty, that does it for this episode. We’re going to get out of here. People can find more details at www.bemadiscipleship.com. Be sure to check out the presentation if you want to see a visual representation of this genealogy, even though it’s not that many people.

It is like the way it’s written in the Text. It’s like, “Oh, what’s going on? This seems a little odd or seems a little crazy.” Check out the presentation. We’ve got a few other books and articles and things to reference, but that’ll be on the website or in your podcast app.

And you can get a hold of us. You can find a group. Everything is there on the website. So thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Evan Olson: Hi, I'm Evan Olson, a BEMA listener in Spokane, Washington, and here's the prayer from Episode 8’s Companion.

God, thank you for never giving up on humankind—on me. For showing me what it looks like to trust the Story.

Thank you for the ability to choose. Help me to choose like you, like Abraham. To choose love over legacy. Goodness over comfort. Trust over security. Faith over doubt.

As the sun rises and as the sun sets, I choose righteousness, justice, compassion, and hospitality. I choose you. Amen.