17: CALLING A HISTORICAL PASSAGE A JOKE 145son. But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the
boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you,
do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named”
(Gen. 21:10-12).These are not examples of Abraham “obeying” Sarah, as Bilezikian
claims. Genesis 16:2 is an example of a husband giving in to a wrong-
ful request from his wife, resulting in disobedience to God, for in this
verse Abraham gives in to Sarah’s urging and has a son by Hagar. For a
husband to grant his wife’s request surely does not prove that she has
authority over him, any more than it shows a reversal of authority when
God grants one of our requests, or when a parent grants a child’s
request. And when Abraham grants Sarah’s wrongful request, with dis-
astrous consequences, it proves even less. Bilezikian shows no awareness
that the Bible does not hold up this incident of sin as a pattern for us to
imitate.
In Genesis 16:6, Abraham does not obey Sarah but is clearly the
family authority who (again wrongfully) gives in to Sarah’s recrimina-
tions and allows her to mistreat Hagar and Ishmael. Why does Bilezikian
refer to these examples of sin as positive examples of a husband’s obey-
ing his wife? To use such a procedure is to contradict the force of these
passages.
Then in Genesis 21:11-12, God tells Abraham, “Listen to whatever
Sarah tells you,” but this was specifically about casting out Hagar and
Ishmael. Abraham did what Sarah asked here not because he was obey-
ing his wife but because at this specific point God told him to do what
Sarah said. God used Sarah to convey his will to Abraham, but no pat-
tern of husbands obeying their wives is established here. In fact, the
exceptional intervention of God suggests that Abraham would not ordi-
narily have acceded to such a request from his wife.
So is Bilezikian right to say that Peter’s statement is an example of
“humor” and to imply that Peter uses Sarah (“as Sarah obeyed
Abraham”) as a negative example? Certainly not. But in actual fact, in
this same discussion Bilezikian goes beyond his statement about Peter’s
“sense of humor” and overturns everything that Peter says about wives
submitting to their husbands. Bilezikian says,