Genesis 12:13
Say, therefore, I pray thee, that thou art my sister: that I may be well used for thee, and that my soul may live for thy sake.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Dic ergo, obsecro te, quod soror mea sis : ut bene sit mihi propter te, et vivat anima mea ob gratiam tui.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- εἰπὸν οὖν ὅτι Ἀδελφὴ αὐτοῦ εἰμί, ὅπως ἂν εὖ μοι γένηται διὰ σέ, καὶ ζήσεται ἡ ψυχή μου ἕνεκεν σοῦ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- אִמְרִי נָ֖א אֲחֹ֣תִי אָ֑תְּ לְמַ֨עַן֙ יִֽיטַב לִ֣י בַעֲבוּרֵ֔ךְ וְחָיְתָ֥ה נַפְשִׁ֖י בִּגְלָלֵֽךְ
Haydock's commentary
My sister. This was no lie; because she was his niece, being daughter to his brother Aran, and therefore, in the style of the Hebrews, she might truly be called his sister; as Lot is called Abraham's brother. (Genesis xiv. 14.) See Genesis xx. 12. (Challoner)
Others say, Sarai was the half-sister of Abraham, by another mother. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On the Apparel of Women, Chapter II
You must know that in the eye of perfect, that is, Christian, modesty, (carnal) desire of one’s self (on the part of others) is not only not to be desired, but even execrated, by you: first, because the study of making personal grace (which we know to be naturally the inviter of lust) a mean of pleasing does not spring from a sound conscience: why therefore excite toward yourself that evil (passion)? why invite (that) to which you profess yourself a stranger? secondly, because we ought not to open a way to temptations, which, by their instancy, sometimes achieve (a wickedness) which God expels from them who are His; (or,) at all events, put the spirit into a thorough tumult by (presenting) a stumbling-block (to it). …
St Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus states his objections to the morality of the law and the prophets, and Augustin seeks by the application of the type and the allegory to explain away the moral difficulties of the Old Testament
5. Again, we are not responsible for what is said of Abraham, that in his irrational craving to have children, and not believing God, who promised that his wife Sara should have a son, he defiled himself with a mistress, with the knowledge of his wife, which only made it worse; or that, in sacrilegious profanation of his marriage, he on different occasions, from avarice and greed, sold his wife Sara for the gratification of the kings Abimelech and Pharas, telling them that she was his sister, because she was very fair. …