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Footnotes
Abram does not become Abraham until Genesis 17:4, 5 when God makes a covenant with Abram and marks the new relationship by a change of name. God says: “No longer shall your name be Abram (the exalted father), but your name shall now be Abraham.” Abraham, is here taken to mean father of a multitude of nations.
Sarai becomes Sarah in Genesis 17:15, 16 when God tells Abraham (no longer Abram) that Sarah will be blessed with a son. “She shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.” Sarah, a variant of Sarai, means “princess.”
Endnotes
Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), Vol. 1, p. 30.
John Skinner, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1969), p. 285. In early Mesopotamian and Egyptian law, wives had slaves who were their own property; the slave could not be the husband’s concubine without the mistress’s permission.