1. Abraham's first experience in the land of promise was of famine. He had to look on his herd melting away, his favourite cattle losing their appearance, his servants murmuring and obliged to scatter. In his dreams he must, night after night, have seen the old country, the green breadth of the land that Euphrates watered, the heavy-headed corn bending before the warm airs of his native land; but morning by morning he wakes to the same anxieties, to the sad reality of parched and burnt-up pastures, shepherds hanging about with gloomy looks, his own heart distressed and failing. He was also a stranger here who could not look for the help an old resident might have counted on. It was probably years since God had made any sign to him. Was the promised land worth having after all? Might he not be better off among his old friends in Haran? Should he not brave their ridicule and return? He will not so much as make it possible to return. He will not even for temporary relief go north towards his old country, but will go to Egypt, where he cannot stay, and from which he must return to Canaan.
2. The extraordinary country to which Abraham betook himself, and which was destined to exercise so profound an influence on his descendants, had even at this early date attained a high degree of civilization. The origin of this civilization is shrouded in obscurity, as the source of the great river to which the country owes its prosperity for many centuries kept the secret of its birth. As yet scholars are unable to tell us with certainty what Pharaoh was on the throne when Abraham went down into Egypt. The monuments have preserved the effigies of two distinct types of rulers; the one simple, kindly, sensible, stately, handsome, fearless, as of men long accustomed to the throne. These are the faces of the native Egyptian rulers. The other type of face is heavy and massive, proud and strong but full of care, with neither the handsome features nor the look of kindliness and culture which belong to the other. These are the faces of the famous Shepherd kings who held Egypt in subjection, probably at the very time when Abraham was in the land.
3. It was a strange change for the patriarch, and a strange episode is bound up with it. The story brings him from his quiet pastoral life into the midst of the vastest and most citied civilization of the world of that time, from the greatest simplicity to the greatest splendour. When he saw the mighty temples and palaces, and the sacred river rolling by pyramids and towns, vast reservoirs and multitudinous gardens, he thought of his tent on the rock of Bethel, and we can well imagine that a grave sense of awe fell upon him-not fear, but such solemn thought as enters into a great soul when, after years of lonely life, it is brought into touch with an overwhelming crowd of humanity in a vast city.
Such a shock would shake the whole of Abraham's life into a new solution. In the multitude of questions, Abraham might well lose for a time that steady faith in a Divine leader of his life on which the writer of the narrative insists. If that were so, the episode of his conduct with regard to his wife would be natural enough at this place in the story. It is the act of a man off his balance. He feared, we are told, that when the king saw how lovely Sarah was, he himself should be slain that the king might possess her. Therefore, as Sarah was his half-sister, he persuaded her to be false under the semblance of truth. “Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister.”
(1) Fear and falsehood for the sake of life are very common and very human; but we should have expected better things from Abraham. Not even the standard of the age can excuse this lie, or palliate its shame. It sinned against that very standard. It was a violation of Arab honour. And the king of Egypt, when he found it out, blamed Abraham for not having been true to his traditionary gentlehood. And indeed it was a bad business. A frank falsehood which places the liar in danger, which runs the whole risk of the lie, has an element of daring in it which modifies our blame of it; but the baseness of saying one thing as truth and meaning another which is not truth, of being true in the word and false in the thought, of lying and not taking the risk of the lie-that was the wrong of Abraham, and he knew it to be wrong.
We condemn him; but have we never coasted by his falsehood, never been wrecked on it ourselves? Have we never, through fear of ill to life or position, answered some question in words which, though true generally, were untrue to the particular point of inquiry? In business, in politics, in society, in journalism, or in money matters, how often have we told half the truth, keeping back that part which would damage ourselves, salving our conscience, as Abraham did, by weighing the half truth against the hidden lie? At every point this is a shameful thing; it is a double falsehood. There is not only the deceit that entraps the world into belief in us, but also the self-craft which, honeying over the devil himself, pretends to our own consciences that we have not told a lie. And in the end there is no kind of lie that does more harm to men than this. It is the very lie of those false directors and false companies that have all over the business-world murdered the poor.
For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear,
All for a slanderous story, that cost me many a tear.
I mean your grandfather, Annie: it cost me a world of woe,
Seventy years ago, my darling, seventy years ago.
For Jenny, my cousin, had come to the place, and I knew right well
That Jenny had tript in her time: I knew, but I would not tell.
And she to be coming and slandering me, the base little liar!
But the tongue is a fire as you know, my dear, the tongue is a fire.
And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise,
That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.1 [Note: Tennyson, The Grandmother.]
(2) Abraham did not risk his own life, but he risked his wife's honour. The story makes the Pharaoh reproach him with that shame. There is self-sacrifice in the lie told to save another's life. The friend who takes on him a guilt not his own, for the sake of his friend; the mother who accuses herself of treason to save her son-these suffer some inward penalty, for Truth exacts her sanctions; but the falsehood is so mixed with nobility that it loses its power to hurt mankind. But to involve a woman in possible dishonour, to risk a great wrong to true love-and all for the sake of one's own life-that was a marvellous baseness to introduce into so mighty and venerable a character as Abraham's; and it warns us, who are weaker than he, to watch our characters with care, lest, lured by fear of pain or death, we bring, by lying, reproach upon another. Such injury done to another is robbery. It is sometimes almost a form of murder.
On one occasion a liar with whom I lived on intimate terms made me think that my last book had been a failure. For five years I believed it, suffered under the belief, and lost my courage. On my return to Sweden I found that the book had had a great success. Five years had been struck out of my life; I was nearly losing self-respect and the courage to support existence. That is equivalent to murder. And this behaviour on the part of my only friend, for whom I had worked and made sacrifices, gave me such a shock that all my ideas were confused. It took me years to rearrange them and bring them into proper order. True and false were mingled together: lies became reality, and my whole life seemed as unsubstantial as smoke. I was not far from ruin and the loss of reason.1 [Note: A. Strindberg, Zones of the Spirit, 161.]
(3) There is yet another interest in the tale applicable to our spiritual life. No man who had perfect faith in a Divine Friend would have taken refuge in a safety of this kind. Is it not curious that Abraham (whose highest quality the story makes to be faith in God) should be made to fail, especially in that grace? It seems so, but only seems. Such a special failure is quite in accord with experience. Moses, meekest of men, is betrayed into ungovernable passion. Peter, the soldier-heart, betrays for fear his Master's love. Elijah, iron in perseverance and in fortitude, sinks into unmanly despair of life. It happens only once, it is true, but it happens terribly.
A man can rarely remain unconscious of his special excellence. At last he grows so secure of not failing on this side of his nature that he leaves it to take care of itself. And then, all of a moment, his fortress is taken. The story of the taking of the Castle of Edinburgh has a thousand analogies. The defenders thought it safe where the steep precipice made its strength. All the weak portions of the walls were watched; this was not. Then, one dark night, in storm and driving rain, a band of daring men crept slowly up the angry cliff, and the impossible became a fact. The castle was seized by the foe.1 [Note: S. A. Brooke, The Old Testament and Modern Life, 43.]
4. In going down into Egypt it does not appear that Abraham received any Divine direction. He acted simply on his own judgment. He looked at his difficulties. He became paralysed with fear. He grasped at the first means of deliverance that suggested itself, much as a drowning man will catch at a straw. And thus, without taking counsel of his heavenly Protector, he went down into Egypt. But God used the error for the perfecting of Abraham's character. For it is impossible to suppose that Abraham's conception of God was not vastly enlarged by this incident, and this especially in two particulars.
(1) Abraham must have received a new impression regarding God's truth. It would seem that as yet he had no very clear idea of God's holiness. He had the idea of God which Muhammadans entertain, and past which they seem unable to get. He conceived of God as the Supreme Ruler; he had a firm belief in the unity of God and probably a hatred of idolatry and a profound contempt for idolaters. He believed that this Supreme God could always and easily accomplish His will, and that the voice that inwardly guided him was the voice of God. His own character had not yet been deepened and dignified by prolonged intercourse with God and by close observation of His actual ways; and so as yet he knew little of what constitutes the true glory of God. For learning that truth is an essential attribute of God he could not have gone to a better school than Egypt. His own reliance on God's promise might have been expected to produce in him a high esteem for truth and a clear recognition of its essential place in the Divine Character. Apparently it had only partially had this effect. The heathen, therefore, must teach him. Had not Abraham seen the look of indignation and injury on the face of Pharaoh, he might have left the land feeling that his scheme had succeeded admirably. But as he went at the head of his vastly increased household, the envy of many who saw his long train of camels and cattle, he would have given up all could he have blotted from his mind's eye the reproachful face of Pharaoh and nipped out this entire episode from his life.
(2) But whether Abraham fully learned this lesson or not, there can be little doubt that at this time he did receive fresh and abiding impressions of God's faithfulness and sufficiency. In Abraham's first response to God's call he exhibited a remarkable independence and strength of character. His abandonment of home and kindred on account of a religious faith which he alone possessed, was the act of a man who relied much more on himself than on others, and who had the courage of his convictions. This qualification for playing a great part in human affairs he undoubtedly had. But he had also the defects of his qualities. A weaker man would have shrunk from going into Egypt, and would have preferred to see his flocks dwindle rather than take so venturesome a step. No such hesitations could trammel Abraham s movements. He felt himself equal to all occasions. That part of his character which was reproduced in his grandson Jacob-a readiness to rise to every emergency that called for management and diplomacy, an aptitude for dealing with men and using them for his purposes-came to the front now. He left Egypt in a much more healthy state of mind, practically convinced of his own inability to work his way to the happiness God had promised him, and equally convinced of God's faithfulness and power to bring him through all the embarrassments and disorders into which his own folly and sin might bring him. He returned to Canaan humbled and very little disposed to feel confident in his own powers of managing in emergencies, but quite assured that God might at all times be relied on. He was convinced that God was not depending upon him, but he upon God.
I feel that goodness and truth and righteousness are realities, eternal realities, and that they cannot be abstractions or vapours floating in a spiritual atmosphere, but that they necessarily imply a living personal will, a good, loving, righteous God, in whose hands we are perfectly safe, and who is guiding us by unfailing wisdom. I have known in my life two or three persons who, I knew, honestly and earnestly and unceasingly endeavoured to help me to be a right man; and now, in looking back on these persons, I feel what a deep confidence this purpose of theirs inspired me with, and I am conscious of having a similar confidence in God through all varieties in His treatment of me, because I have in my conscience the continual proof that He never for a moment relaxes His earnest purpose that I should be right.1 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, ii. 154.]
Since the dear hour that brought me to Thy foot,
And cut up all my follies by the root,
I never trusted in an arm but Thine,
Nor hoped, but in Thy righteousness divine;
My prayers and alms, imperfect and defiled,
Were but the feeble efforts of a child;
Howe'er performed, it was their brightest part,
That they proceeded from a grateful heart;
Cleansed in Thine own all-purifying blood,
Forgive their evil, and accept their good;
I cast them at Thy feet-my only plea
Is what it was, dependence upon Thee;
While struggling in the vale of tears below,
That never failed, nor shall it fail me now.
Angelic gratulations rend the skies,
Pride falls unpitied, never more to rise,
Humility is crowned, and Faith receives the prize.2 [Note: Cowper.]
