And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.
Yet indeed she is my sister - (see the note at Genesis 11:31.) Terah must have been a polygamist, or a widower who had contracted a second marriage, if Sarah was sister to Abraham. But Sarah (= Iscah) is called not the daughter but the daughter-in-law of Terah (Genesis 11:13), and she is represented as Abraham's niece (Genesis 11:29), the daughter of Haran, who might be Terah's son by a first wife, and consequently Sarah and Abraham were descended from Terah by different wives; or, it may be that the word "sister" is used here in the same latitude of meaning as "brother" is (Genesis 14:14). The law of incest in early times was probably traditional, and therefore liable to indistinctness and uncertainty. Hence, marriages with half-sisters have at all times been frequent in Eastern countries; and every reader of ancient history will recollect the well-known instances of Cambyses (Herodotus, 3:31) and Herod Aggippa ('Juv.,' 6:, 157).
What a poor defense Abraham made! The statement absolved him from the charge of direct and absolute falsehood; but he had told a moral untruth, because there was an intention to deceive (cf. Genesis 12:11-13). 'Honesty is always the best policy.' Abraham's life would have been as well protected without the fraud as with it: and what shame to himself-what distrust of God-what dishonour to religion might have been prevented! "Let us speak truth every man to his neighbour."