Q&A: Please Say That You Are My Sister
Please Say That You Are My Sister
Question
What does “Please say that you are my sister” mean? After all, if the Egyptians were willing to commit murder, then they would also be willing to commit adultery. In other words, they could take Sarah even though she was Abraham’s wife, without murdering him. So what is the straightforward explanation here?
Answer
This is a well-known homiletical pilpul. But in pilpul, the questions are not the main thing; the main thing is finding a way to produce an answer. What kind of question is this? Obviously the Egyptians preferred murder to adultery, especially since adultery would be an ongoing situation as long as the husband remained alive, whereas murder solves the problem all at once.
Yeshiva-style pilpul is not an interpretation of the text. Don’t get confused.