Genesis 20:12
Howbeit, otherwise also she is truly my sister, the daughter of my father, and not the daughter of my mother, and I took her to wife.
Open Genesis 20:12 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- alias autem et vere soror mea est, filia patris mei, et non filia matris meæ, et duxi eam in uxorem.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ γὰρ ἀληθῶς ἀδελφή μού ἐστιν ἐκ πατρός, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐκ μητρός· ἐγενήθη δέ μοι εἰς γυναῖκα.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְגַם אָמְנָ֗ה אֲחֹתִ֤י בַת אָבִי֙ הִ֔וא אַ֖ךְ לֹ֣א בַת אִמִּ֑י וַתְּהִי לִ֖י לְאִשָּֽׁה
Haydock's commentary
My sister, or niece, according to those who say she was daughter of Aran, who thus must have had a different mother from Abraham; (Menochius) or, as we rather think, Sara was truly his half-sister, born of Thare by another wife. His adding truly, seems to restrain it to this sense; and we know that in those countries, marriages of such near relations were allowed, though not when both had the same parents. Why should we not, therefore, believe Abraham, who certainly knew the real state of the question, and who would not tell a lie, rather than seek for improbable and far-fetched solutions? Said, who lived eight hundred years ago, mentions the name of Jona, Abraham's mother, as well as that of Tehevita, who bore Sara to Thare. The Hebrews, in general, give this explanation. (Calmet)
By calling Sara his sister without any addition, Abraham intended that the people should conclude he was not married: therefore he did not say she was his half-sister, as this would have frustrated his design, if, as St. Clement of Alexandria, asserts, such might and did marry under the law of nature. (Haydock)
Philo observes, the Athenian legislator, Solon, sanctioned the same practice, which was followed also by the Phœnicians. (Calmet)
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
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter XXIII. On Marriage
We ask if we ought to marry; which is one of the points, which are said to be relative. For some must marry, and a man must be in some condition, and he must marry some one in some condition. For every one is not to marry, nor always. But there is a time in which it is suitable, and a person for whom it is suitable, and an age up to which it is suitable. Neither ought every one to take a wife, nor is it every woman one is to take, nor always, nor in every way, nor inconsiderately. But only he who is in certain circumstances, and such an one and at such time as is requisite, and for the sake of children, and one who is in every respect similar, and who does not by force or compulsion love the husband who loves her. …
St Augustine City of God, Of Lot’s Deliverance from Sodom, and Its Consumption by Fire from Heaven; And of Abimelech, Whose Lust Could Not Harm Sarah’s Chastity
After this promise Lot was delivered out of Sodom, and a fiery rain from heaven turned into ashes that whole region of the impious city, where custom had made sodomy as prevalent as laws have elsewhere made other kinds of wickedness. But this punishment of theirs was a specimen of the divine judgment to come. For what is meant by the angels forbidding those who were delivered to look back, but that we are not to look back in heart to the old life which, being regenerated through grace, we have put off, if we think to escape the last judgment? Lot’s wife, indeed, when she looked back, remained, and, being turned into salt, furnished to believing men a condiment by which to savor somewhat the warning to be drawn from that example. …
St Augustine Against Lying, Section 23
23. But in all our doings, even good men are very greatly embarrassed in the matter of compensative sins; so that these are not esteemed to be sins, if they have such causes for the which they be done, and in the which it may seem to be rather sin, if they be left undone. And chiefly as concerning lies hath it come to this pass in the opinion of men that those lies are not accounted sins, nay rather are believed to be rightly done, when one tells a lie for the benefit of him for whom it is expedient to be deceived, or lest a person should hurt others, who seems likely to hurt unless he be got rid of by lies. In defense of these kinds of lies, very many examples from holy Scripture are accounted to lend their support. It is not, however, the same thing to hide the truth as it is to utter a lie. …