Genesis 12

istory does not repeat itself, but it rhymes, said Mark Twain. We shall see the same pattern in the Bible, as the sons of Abram adopt the same strategy as Abram himself, fleeing into Egypt to escape destruction during a famine later in Genesis. After Abram, Joseph will be cast into slavery only to be exalted, and 400 years later the theme will be recapitulated, as all of Israel is in slavery to be exalted over the Egyptians defeated by YHWH in the red sea.


Sarai is also placed in a kind of slavery endangering God's plan when she is taken into Pharaoh's harem, putting her in danger of being made Pharaoh's wife and bearing his children rather than taking her place as an ancestor of the Messiah, and the Mother of the whole Jewish people. But she is saved by God afflicting the Egyptians with plagues, just as Joseph will be delivered from imprisonment by his ability to predict Seven years of famine in Egypt, and just as the nation of Israel would be delivered on account of the ten plagues.

Just as Abram receives riches at the hands of Pharaoh but loses that which is most dear to him, so Israel will for a time be favored in Egypt, and even after leaving, will desire the "meat pots" of Egypt while wandering in the desert. Yet the wealth of the Egyptians in exchange for doing the will of God is always a bad exchange. Israel must be free, and her destiny is to serve YHWH in the Promised Land.

In this beautiful woman Sarai, we may also recognize a type of Mary the Mother of Our Lord. Just as Sarai was not to be defiled by intercourse with Pharaoh, miraculously spared from the Egyptian king who would have destroyed the sanctity of her union with Abram, so the Virgin Mary is undefiled, unharmed by King Herod's attempt to destroy her and her promised child, spared likewise miraculously. In their names we may also see a similarity, for Sarai means "quarrelsome", which would later be elevated to Sarah, "princess" in Hebrew, Mary means "bitterness", but the bitterness of Mary's earthly life would be used by God to incarnate his son into the World, that his son might know the bitterness of poverty, but likewise Mary will be elevated to be the Queen of Heaven, true Mother of God.

We too are called to a fairer country than this in which we sojourn. No pleasure on Earth, no honors and no merely temporal reward should ever be able to call us away from our true reward at the end of a natural virtuous life, the Promised Land of Heaven, united with our Lord Messiah.




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