Genesis 18–23
Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother Genesis 20:5
Introduction
Unfortunately, I have heard well-meaning members disparage some actions of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I’m very careful to sit in judgment of these remarkable prophets. President Oaks said humility is a “master virtue” to help people learn other virtues. “Humility is one of the powerful commandments we have been given to guide us in our mortal journeys,” (BYU Devotional, 11 Feb 2026).
My personal view of the patriarchs is forged by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants. “Abraham . . . Isaac also and Jacob did none other things than that which they were commanded; and because they did none other things than that which they were commanded, they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:37). I know that this part of the text is explaining plural marriage, but the last part of the verse intrigues me – “they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods”.
In sacred ordinances, these patriarchs’ names are invoked during as we are promised blessings of the new and everlasting covenant. Therefore, these three individuals must be remarkable. I believe we need to extend them grace in our limited understanding of their trials.
I do not know how many people in the Church have caught the vision of what is involved in Genesis; almost the whole message of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament is family. It is family, family, family; and not only family, it is celestial marriage and the continuation of the family unit in eternity. You have to understand the gospel to catch that vision.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie
Culture and the Old Testament
So how do we account for what appears to be deception?
To truly grasp the Old Testament’s richness, it’s helpful to recognize it as ancient Hebrew literature, authored by people from a different culture, but with the same eternal gospel. Culture is not merely a background detail; it is a foundational framework of their life, a medium in which they were totally immersed like water is for fish.
Culture has a function that goes beyond just being a setting. A worldview’s “iceberg” has a large, invisible base beneath the text, typically comprising its most influential, unspoken cultural values. Modern readers often interpret ancient narrative gaps through the lens of their own cultural assumptions. Because of this process, major “blind spots” could appear, encouraging readers to interpret past actions with modern reasoning and risking harmful misreadings.
Brother Don Parry wrote: “Cultural conditioning may make us wonder why in biblical society it was customary for the elder sister to marry before the younger sister (see Genesis 29:25–26), for women to carry water and other burdens on their shoulders (see Genesis 21:14; 24:15), for people to get off their camels or donkeys as a sign of respect when they greeted other people (see Genesis 24:64; 1 Samuel 25:23; 2 Kings 5:21), for individuals to bow before others (see Genesis 18:2–3; 19:1; 23:7, 12; 42:6), for parents to choose their son’s bride for him (see Genesis 21:21; 24:4; 38:6), or for guests to wash their feet upon arrival at the home of their hosts (see Genesis 18:4; 19:2; 43:24)” (Ensign, Feb 2010).
Nuzi Tablets and the Patriarchs
We could benefit by investigating the social and legal institutions of the ancient Near East, such as those revealed in the Nuzi and Ebla tablets. If we do this, then the logic behind “strange” biblical episodes becomes clear.
Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees and later migrated to Haran before moving to Canaan. Haran was a major administrative and cultural center for the Hurrian people and served as a “home base” for the patriarchal clan.
In northern Iraq, close to the Hurrian capital, lay Nuzi, a Hurrian administrative center. The Hurrians are synonymous with the Horites of the Old Testament, who were also identified as Hivites and Jebusites. American teams excavated at Nuzi between 1925 and 1933. The main discovery included over 5,000 family and administrative records from six generations from 1450 to 1350 BC. These cover the social, economic, religious, and legal systems of the Hurrians.
The tablets mention customs akin to those in Genesis, like adoption for couples without children (Genesis 15:2–3) and surrogate offspring (Genesis 16). Deathbed blessings (Gen 27) are also important.
Genesis’s cultural practices are authentic by Nuzi records. Contrary to the claims of some critics, the accounts are not fictional tales from a later period, as such customs were unknown later.
By closing our cultural divide, we have a chance at comprehending the patriarchs’ motivations for their actions, overcoming superficial discrepancies to recognize Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s consistent logic and trustworthiness. An in-depth study of biblical culture is beneficial for peeling back the layers of time.
She is My Wife
There are three episodes which have the common theme of a patriarch passing off his wife as his sister.
In the first episode (Gen. During a famine in Canaan, Abraham (then Abram) resides in Egypt (Gen. 12:10-20). Fearing for his life because of his stunning wife, Abraham is concerned the Egyptians might kill him. He commands her to state she is his sister, instead of his wife. Sarah (then called Sarai) is genuinely celebrated for her attractiveness. Abraham’s extensive possessions are managed well, thanks to Sarah.
In the second episode, Abraham, as recorded in Genesis 20:1–18, tells Abimelech, the king of Gerar, that his wife is his sister. However, this time, the Lord appears to the king in a dream before he can take her, warning him of death if he does. Abimelech confronts Abraham with his deception and states his surprise at Abraham’s God being feared in that location. Abraham maintains that he was truthful, given that Sarah is undeniably his father’s child, albeit not his mother’s (a point for which there is no corroborating evidence in the text).
According to the third episode (Gen. 26:6–11), Isaac, like his father, introduces his wife Rebekah to the king of Gerar as his sister. Again, the king does not sleep with her but discovers that Rebekah is Isaac’s wife when he sees Isaac “sporting” with her.
Also, is there anything in Abraham and Isaac’s culture that could shed light on the term “sister”? A scholarly article by E. A. Speiser of the University of Pennsylvania, a leading expert in ancient Near Eastern texts, shed significant new light on the subject in 1963. Speiser’s popular and bestselling commentary on Genesis for the Anchor Bible series, widely considered the series’ most brilliant and a masterpiece on Genesis, heavily featured this new viewpoint.
Key Concepts from Speiser’s Work
- Ishshah (אִשָּׁה): Speiser notes that in Genesis 2:23, the term is used as a “folk etymology” to connect it with ish(man), though they are linguistically unrelated. He highlights that ishshah primarily denotes the functional role of “woman” or “wife” in the marital bond.
- Achowth (אָחוֹת): Beyond the biological “sister,” Speiser uses Nuzi tablets to argue that achowth could represent a legal status of “sistership”. Speiser suggests that the patriarchal wives were also called sisters because they therefore “enjoyed a privileged status by the standards of their own society. It was the kind of distinction that may well have been worthy of emphasis in the presence of their royal hosts.”
- Speiser famously proposed that Abraham and Isaac were not being deceptive when they called their wives “sisters.” Instead, they were invoking a Hurrian custom where a wife could be legally adopted as a “sister” to grant her higher social status and protection. He emphasizes that while ishshah focuses on the physical and relational creation (taken from man), achowth in these specific cultural contexts refers to a contractual safeguarding of the woman within the patriarchal family.
- Some Nuzi tablets were discovered that were called “tablets of sistership”. In the society of the Hurrians, a wife enjoyed both greater protection and a superior position when she also had the legal status of a sister. In such a case, two separate documents were drawn up, one for marriage and the other for sistership. This may explain why both Abraham (Gen 12:10–13; 20:1–2) and Isaac (Gen 26:7) said their wives were their sisters. It is possible that they had previously adopted them to give them higher status, in accordance with the custom of the day.
While other scholars have challenged Speiser’s interpretation, his insights have opened an interesting possibility for Latter-day Saints. Were there marriage types in the Old Testament? Could it be that Abraham and Isaac, while understanding the Hurrian marriage customs, relied on gospel principles of eternal marriage and used the term achowth? Could the achowth be one who had entered the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, giving her more status that an ishshah?
Regardless, the Book of Abraham and the Genesis Apocryphon provide an additional theological layer: Abraham acted in direct obedience to a divine command. These texts state that the Lord instructed Abraham to have Sarah pass as his sister to ensure Abraham’s safety upon entering Egypt.
Conclusion
I want to be kind in my opinion of the early patriarchs. I believe we should give them the benefit of the doubt. They “sit upon their thrones”. Perhaps these wife-sister episodes, when understood in their ancient settings, were designed for those who have eyes to see.
Robert Millet observed; “Moses-the Lord’s lawgiver, the author of the Pentateuch-constructed his scriptural narrative in such a way as to lead the reader quickly through the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the scattering of the nations through the confounding of tongues. By the time we have covered 10 chapters in Genesis-15 pages in the LDS edition of the King James Version-we discover that more than 2,000 years have elapsed since the Fall. It is as though Moses were eager to move the reader, without delay, to a certain point in history. That point in time is the life of the patriarchs- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph” (Ensign, Mar. 1998, 36).
The message of these early patriarchal chapters points us to eternal marriage. “Joseph Smith says that in the temple of God there is an order of the priesthood that is patriarchal. Go to the temple,’ he says, and find out about this order.’ So I went to the temple, and I took my wife with me, and we kneeled at the altar. There on that occasion we entered, the two of us, into an order of the priesthood.’ When we did it, we had sealed upon us, on a conditional basis, every blessing that God promised Father Abraham-the blessings of exaltation and eternal increase. The name of that order of the priesthood, which is patriarchal in nature, because Abraham was a natural patriarch to his posterity, is the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage.” (Bruce R. McConkie, “Eternal Family Concept,” Address given at Priesthood of the Restoration).
Note President Kimball’s insights about Abraham: “Do you think it was any easier for Abraham to be righteous than it is for you? Do you inwardly suspect that Abraham was given a little extra help by the Lord so that he could become a great and righteous man, or do you feel that we can all become as Abraham if we will learn to put God first in our lives? I testify to you that we can become as Abraham, who now, as a result of his valiance, hath entered into his exaltation and sitteth upon his throne’ (D&C 132:29). Is such exaltation a blessing reserved only for General Authorities, or Stake Presidents, or quorum presidents, or Bishops? It is not. It is a blessing reserved for all who will prepare themselves by forsaking their sins, by truly receiving the Holy Ghost into their lives, and by following the example Abraham has set. If members of the Church could only have such integrity, such obedience, such revelation, such faith, such service as Abraham had! If parents would seek the blessings Abraham sought, they could also receive such revelation, covenants, promises, and eternal rewards as Abraham received.” (Ensign, June 1975).
