Genesis 25:1-4

3. Abraham's Provisions for His Various Lines (Genesis 25:1-18)

(1) The Line by Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4)

1 And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. 2 And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. 3 And Jokshan begat Sbeba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim. 4 And the sons of Midian: Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah.

A chronological problem arises here. The following excerpts will suffice to make it clear. Abraham's marriage to Keturah is generally supposed to have taken place after Sarah's death, and his power to beget six sons at so advanced an age is attributed to the fact, that the Almighty had endowed him with new vital and reproductive energy for begetting the son of the promise. But there is no firm ground for this assumption; as it is not stated anywhere, that Abraham did not take Keturah as his wife till after Sarah's death. It is merely an inference drawn from the fact, that it is not mentioned till afterwards; and it is taken for granted that the history is written in strictly chronological order. But this supposition is precarious, and is not in harmony with the statement, that Abraham sent away the sons of the concubines with gifts during his own lifetime; for in the case supposed, the youngest of Keturah's sons would not have been more than twenty-five or thirty years old at Abraham's death; and in those days, when marriages were not generally contracted before the fortieth year, this seems too young for them to have been sent away from their father's house. This difficulty, however, is not decisive. Nor does the fact that Keturah is called a concubine in Genesis 25:6, and in 1 Chronicles 1:32, necessarily show that she was contemporary with Sarah, but may be explained on the ground that Abraham did not place her on the same footing as Sarah, his sole wife, the mother of the promised seed (KDBCOTP, 261-262).

Murphy (MG, 358-359): According to the laws of Hebrew composition, this event may have taken place before that recorded in the close of the previous chapter. Of this law we have several examples in this very chapter. And there is nothing contrary to the customs of that period in adding wife to wife. We cannot say that Abraham was hindered from taking Keturah in the lifetime of Sarah by any moral feeling which would not also have hindered him from taking Hagar. It has also been noticed that Keturah is called a concubine, which is thought to imply that the proper wife was still living; and that Abraham was a very old man at the death of Sarah. But, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that these sons were in any case born after the birth of Isaac, and therefore after Abraham was renewed in vital powers. If the renewal of vigor remained after the birth of Isaac, it may have continued some time after the death of Sarah, whom he survived thirty-eight years. His abstinence from any concubine until Sarah gave him Hagar is against his taking any other during Sarah's lifetime. His loneliness on the death of Sarah may have prompted him to seek a companion of his old age. And if this step was delayed until Isaac was married, and therefore separated from him, an additional motive would impel him in the same direction. He was not bound to raise this wife to the full rights of a proper wife, even though Sarah were dead. And six sons might be born to him twenty-five years before his death. And if Hagar and Ishmael were dismissed when he was about fifteen years old, so might Keturah when her youngest was twenty or twenty-five. We are not warranted, then, still less compelled, to place Abraham's second marriage before the death of Sarah, or even the marriage of Isaac. It seems to appear in the narrative in the order of time. The promise (Genesis 17:4-6) that Abraham should be exceedingly fruitful and the father of many nations, looks beyond the birth of Isaac, and finds its fulfilment in other descendants as well. This, like most other alleged discrepancies, is found not in the text itself, but in arbitrary critical assumptions. (UBG, 308). There is no way of determining with any degree of certainty whether Abraham was still living when Issac and Rebekah were married, or, if so, how long he lived after that event.

As for the tribes that descended from these six sons of Keturah, efforts to identify them have not been very successful. (Cf. 1 Chronicles 1:32-33.) (Incidentally, who was Keturah? Rashi identifies her with Hagar who received the name because her deeds were as comely as -incense-' (ketoreth); also, because she kept herself -chaste-' (kasher, cognate root to katar, of which Keturah is the passive participle), from the time that she separated from Abraham (SC, 32). Such an identification, however, cannot be harmonized with the plural, concubines, Genesis 25:6.). It seems obvious that these tribes, descendants of Keturah and her sons by Abraham, peopled a considerable part of Arabia to the south and the east of the Promised Land, under the name of Midianites (Exodus 2:15)among whom Moses took refuge, the Sabaeans (Sheba, Job 1:15; Job 1:6; Job 19; 1 Kings 10:1), the Shuhites (Job 2:11), the Dedanites, etc. The Arabian tribes with whom the Israelites acknowledged a looser kinship than with the Ishmaelites or Edomites are represented as the offspring of Abraham by a second marriage, cf. 1 Chronicles 1:32 ff. (ICCG, 349). There are named here six sons of Abraham, seven grandsons, and three great-grandsons, making sixteen descendants by Keturah.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

See Genesis 25:12-18.