Abram (better known as Abraham) wandered from Mesopotamia to Palestine. His father Terah started it, getting to Harran; then he died and Abram took his family, and that of his nephew Lot gradually down to the Negev in south Palestine. His wife Sarai was 'barren'.
The first episode was that Abram and Sarai went to Egypt during a famine, and fearful for his life, Abram declared that Sarai was his sister so that she married the Pharaoh. Abram became wealthy, but was found out when disease hit the royal family, presumed to be a punishment for adultery. So both were sent away, back to the Negev. We can note several things. Abram caused his own problem by lying - the Egyptians would have been less likely to notice a woman who was clearly a married woman. He would not have benefited economically though. Sarai did as she was told, and obediently went into another man's bed. There was no thought about paternity or legitimacy, it was a world of the powerful and powerless.
Assuming that it really happened, which we should not assume. There is no corroborative evidence in history, and the story is found in a text, Genesis, a thousand years after the supposed events. So why was the story told? Abram the ancestor/hero willingly requiring his wife to commit adultery. Tricking Pharaoh is one answer - it is a trickster tale, and Egypt, from the line of cursed Ham, was an eternal enemy. But why no concern by the story teller about the solemn commandment about adultery? There is no angst, just a practical problem to solve for which adultery seemed to be a short-term solution. Illness in Pharaoh's family was said to be caused by sin, so this is a story which claims that the God Yahweh notices and punishes sin even if no one else cares. Sarai is not shown as guilty in all this, and nor really is Abram - he has offended Pharaoh but not Yahweh. He retains his wealth. Pharaoh's sin may be that he, a Hamite, had violated a Shemite, the line championed in Genesis, worse he had violated a woman in the chosen family. That he did so unknowingly is seemingly not relevant. Pharaoh feared Yahweh, not piously but with sheer fright. He makes not attempt to imprison, kill or impoverish the offending family. The Hebrew reader is clearly presumed to find the story horrifying and repugnant.
Lot and Abram part company so not to compete for grazing. Abram allows his nephew to choose, and he chooses the lush green Jordan plain and settles near Sodom. The lushness was deceptive, since everyone else was attracted to it and we read of powerful struggles between rival kings. Lot and his folk are taken captive and Abram has to head a rescuing army. Moving the story on to Genesis 18-19, Yahweh comes in person to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, Abram (now called Abraham) pleads to save any innocent people, but in the end only Lot's family can be saved. Two incidents catch our eye. There is a riot outside Lot's home when the two visitors who were with Yahweh had arrived. They demand sexual use of the men; Lot replies with the offer of his virgin daughters instead. It does not happen, because the men use supernatural powers to help the family escape. It is a fantasy story. It explains why the Dead Sea is dead, and with Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt, it explains natural geography. That leaves us with the gross disregard for the safety and virginity of the girls, behaviour which is not criticised in the story.
Lot's line was potentially at an end. With his wife's death, only his daughters remained. Living alone in hiding with their father in a cave, they were concerned to have children. By making him drunk, each had sex with him and each became pregnant. One produced the son Moab, ancestor of the Moabites; the other Ben-ammi, ancestor of the Ammonites. Thus it was declared that these two tribes were kin of kin, but definitely from the wrong side of the sheets. It is another trickster story, the story failing to condemn the girls. It is also a political anti-Moabite/Ammonite story - both tribes declared bastards of incest.
Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.
In the meantime, Abraham had no children, so his heir was his (presumably trusted) slave Eliezer of Damascus (Genesis 15.2). He is promised his own children in a vision. There is a presumption of monogamy in the stories generally - we have met each character "and his wife". Polygyny was allowed in Judaism into the medieval period, and its origin lies in this story. Sarai offers her maid Hagar as a slave-wife, intending to count the child as her own. A surrogate arrangement. A child is conceived, but this changes the dynamics between the two women. An angry Sarah persuades Abraham to cast Hagar out, and she and her son nearly die in the wilderness. Her son Ishmael became the ancestor of the Arab tribes; the miraculous gift of water (zamzam) is still celebrated at Mecca. This line carries on away from Abraham's family. Hebrews and Arabs are divided, but of common heritage. Sarah hears from the three supernatural men that she will have a child, and laughs - she is over child-bearing age. The child Isaac's name means 'laugh'.
Abraham was up to his tricks again in Genesis 20, passing of his wife Sarah as his sister with king Abimelech. This story has moved on a little from the version with Pharaoh. It says that this was his customary practice, and that Sarah really was his (half) sister. That doesn't really excuse the lie. In this story, adultery clearly means something because it is stated that sex never actually took place, that the truth was revealed in a dream (by 'God' not Yahweh) and that Abimelech acted with a clear conscience. This version was from a period sensitive to adultery and (more precisely) legitimate kinship, such as the post-exilic period when true blood was being emphasised. So by the time Isaac was born, we only really have the writers word for it that he really was Abraham's son. Sarah had potentially had a few partners following her husband's deception. Isaac was of course deemed to be true heir. Ishmael's lineage is more secure. But let no contemporary group go to town on this. The story of tribal origins is one of the securing of power and not of legitimacy. It is not history, it is a fable. Abraham's line is secured by trickery, the wrong heir, not the 'firstborn' persistently being chosen - Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over Reuben. The author is saying that the choice of the legitimate line used other criteria than accidents of birth, i.e. primogeniture.
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