gengwall

I sense Cheryl’s desire to move on, so I will say no more on this point other than, “I agree with Cheryl”.

Back to Sarah’s respecting of Abraham. Here is how I see it. The general context is women showing respect when their husbands are behaving badly. The broad context is people showing respect when anyone is behaving badly – governments, masters, etc. So, it makes little sense to me to hold Sarah up as an example if the context in Sarah’s life is when Abraham is behaving as a loving, believing husband. Therefore, I have to conclude that Sarah is being put up as an example for those times when Abraham behaved badly, especially and aprticularly toward her. Those times when he passed her off as his sister meet all the criteria – not only was that completely unloving of him toward her (and certainly disrespectful too), but he was being disobedient to the word (or, in the OT case, the law) by bearing false witness. This is also a time when Sarah obeyed him (harkened to his word) in apparent silence.

As far as addressing him as “lord” it may be as Cheryl suggests, simply the general way she referred to him. My use of “superior” earlier, while probably a bad choice of words, was in reference to the way she would have addressed him in that bad situation, i.e. as her older brother. Certainly the older brother in a brother sister relationship in that time would have received the title of “lord” from his younger female sibling. In fact, it strikes me that to not have called him “lord” would have raised suspicion about her true identity in relation to Abraham. So that too fits the scenario, although it is not testified to in scripture. As such, tying “my lord” into the prostituting activity is a stretch. But everything else seems to fall right into place and match up perfectly with the general message Peter is trying to convey.