[89] This is the opening of the story of the friend of God, and it is followed by actions which call for anything but contempt. But their greatness is not clear to everyone, but only to those who have tasted virtue and who recognize the greatness of the good things which belong to the soul and therefore are wont to deride those which win the admiration of the multitude.
[90] God, then, approving of the action just related, at once rewards the man of worth with a great gift; for when his marriage was threatened through the designs of a licentious potentate, God kept it safe and unharmed.
[91] The occasion which led up to the attempted outrage originated in the following way. There had been a failure of the crops for a considerable period, at one time through a great and excessive rainfall, at another through drought and stormy weather; and the cities of Syria, hard pressed through continual famine, were stripped of their inhabitants who scattered in different directions to seek for food and to procure necessities.
[92] Abraham, then, learning that there was a rich and abundant supply of corn in Egypt, where the river by its seasonal flooding had turned the plains into pools, and well-tempered winds had produced and fostered a fine growth of corn, set off thither with his whole household.
[93] He had a wife distinguished greatly for her goodness of soul and beauty of body, in which she surpassed all the women of her time. When the chief people of Egypt saw her and admired her beauty, since the highly placed leave nothing unobserved, they told the king.
[94] He sent for the woman, and, marking her surpassing comeliness, paid little regard to decency or the laws enacted to shew respect to strangers, but gave rein to his licence and determined nominally to take her in marriage, but in reality to bring her to shame.
[95] She who in a foreign country was at the mercy of a licentious and cruel-hearted despot and had no one to protect her, for her husband was helpless, menaced as he was by the terror of stronger powers, joined him in fleeing for refuge to the last remaining championship, that of God.
[96] And God, Who is kindly and merciful and shields the wronged, had pity for the strangers and plied the king with almost intolerable pains and grievous penalties. He filled him body and soul with all manner of scarce curable plagues. All appetite for pleasure was eradicated and replaced by visitations of the opposite kind, by cravings for release from the endless tortures which night and day haunted and racked him almost to death.
[97] The whole household, too, shared the punishment with him, since none had shewn indignation at the outrage, but all by consenting were almost accomplices in the misdeed.
[98] Thus the chastity of the woman was preserved, while the nobility and piety of the man was evidenced by God, Who deigned to grant him this signal boon, that his marriage, which would have been in almost immediate danger of violation, should remain free from harm and outrage, that marriage from which was to issue not a family of a few sons and daughters, but a whole nation, and that the nation dearest of all to God, which, as I hold, has received the gift of priesthood and prophecy on behalf of all mankind.