What Does Genesis 12:19 Mean?

Pharaoh continued: "Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!" The expulsion from Egypt is Pharaoh's resolution to a crisis he did not create. He releases Sarai with pointed directness: "here is your wife," a statement that simultaneously restores the marital relationship and rebukes the concealment. He will not keep a married woman; he will not risk further divine displeasure; he will send this household out of his land and return things to the order they should have been in.

The phrase "take her and go" is the language of expulsion spoken without anger in the text, though the subtext of Pharaoh's position is clear. He is removing a source of household disruption and returning to the man who deceived him the woman he was deceived about. The generosity embedded in the expulsion is worth noting: Pharaoh does not punish Abram for the deception, does not confiscate the goods he gave him, does not arrange any restitution. He simply sends him out, retaining the moral high ground with the minimum necessary action.

The "take her and go" directed at Abram by a pagan king anticipates the "let my people go" that God's command to a later Pharaoh will contain. In both cases, a member of the covenant family is in Egypt under a Pharaoh's authority, and the resolution involves a divine intervention that results in departure with goods and a rebuke of the Pharaoh's household. The typology between chapter 12 and the Exodus is deliberate: what happened to Abram and Sarai is the scale model of what will happen to the nation that bears their name.