Pharaoh's Fake Priesthood - Abraham 1:21-31

1:21-28 - The Pharaoh’s court is the one that is devastated by the death of the idolatrous priest who was killed by God when he tried to sacrifice Abraham. The rest of the chapter is Abraham giving the heritage and I honestly had no idea why, but the IM comments “the Pharaohs would fain claim (the priesthood) from Noah, through Ham.” Abraham was giving this background on Egyptian royal structure because he was demonstrating the way that Pharaoh justified his religious practice. Again, being so close chronologically from the flood, it makes sense why he would feel the need to add in some legitimacy there. The king of Egypt “was a descendant from the loins of Ham,” and apparently had mixed “blood of the Canaanites by birth.” Maybe Abraham’s not talking about all Pharaohs because it would be pretty hard to mix blood with a people who weren’t even around initially with Noah, but apparently at some point this Pharaoh had Canaanite ancestry. From Noah was Ham and Ham had a daughter named Egyptus, who was named after her mother Egyptus, and because the land of Egypt was discovered by a woman the Caldean’s named it that “which signifies that which is forbidden.” I’m not exactly sure why or what that means, but it must be important. When Egyptus discovered the land eventually named Egypt, “it was under water,” but she settled her sons there anyway. The oldest son of Egyptus, who it appears was named Pharaoh and he established the first government, “which was patriarchal.” This first Pharaoh was “a righteous man,” who governed and judged “his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations,” but he was cursed “pertaining to the Priesthood.” We know that God has been selective with who has been allowed the hold the priesthood historically, so maybe that’s what happened here. Maybe like in the days of Moses, only certain blood lines were allowed to hold the priesthood. If Pharaoh was a righteous man then his inability to hold the priesthood probably wasn’t a reflection on him as a person and might have had more to do with blood lines, etc. Abraham even starts is in the next verse, that “Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of priesthood,” but Pharaoh still laid claim to it, this is how Terah was led astray. 1:29-31 – After Pharaoh’s priest was killed by God, “there came a fulfilment of those things which were said unto me concerning the land of Chaldea, that there should be a famine in the land.” Abraham notes that his father “was sorely tormented because of the famine,” which begs the question why did Terah suffer but Abraham did not? His suffering in the famine caused Terah to repent of trying to kill Abraham, and somehow Abraham ended up with “the records of the fathers, even the patriarchs,” and with that “a knowledge of the beginning of the creation, and also of the planets, and of the stars, as they were made known unto the fathers,” and Abraham kept this record “for the benefit of my posterity that shall come after me.” It’s interesting because I wonder if when Abraham and Sarah end up going to Egypt and Abraham teaches about astronomy, if all that knowledge came from this record.