READ: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+20&version=ESV LISTEN: https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.20 Abraham and Abimelech 20 From there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. 2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. 3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.” 4 Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? 5 Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” 6 Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. 7 Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.” 8 So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. 9 Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.” 10 And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?” 11 Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, ‘There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ 12 Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. 13 And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, “He is my brother.”’” 14 Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. 15 And Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” 16 To Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.” 17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. 18 For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. Abraham leaves the area possibly not knowing of the salvation provided for Lot and Lot's daughters. He returns to familiar territory where he lived after Abraham and Lot had split--the Negev desert, the land between Canaan and Egypt. Abraham also returns to his old ways of pretending that he's a single man and that his wife is available to taken into others' harems in order to protect himself from being killed and letting them take Sarah. Like us He often forgets that God's promises He makes come true and that we must be kept alive to see those things come to pass, and that we never need to lie, cheat or steal to make our own way or provide protection for ourselves, because it it God's job to provide for and protect us. That is what it means for Him to be our Father.
A pagan king is used to correct the man of God--the man the God calls a prophet, and God uses the opportunity to tell that king that he needs to go to Abraham so that his life may be spared, and while I'm sure this is true, God is using this opportunity to correct Abraham. Notice too that God is able to speak to the pagan just as easily as He can speak to the prophet. Abraham makes excuses saying that he believed the pagan king had no fear of God, but it was Abraham that had no fear of God at the moment, and it was the pagan the feared God and obeyed. We also finally see here that Abraham and and Sarah are half-siblings, but even this is a attempt to justify himself when he knows he has been caught. He then did finally take the blame and told the truth that he had told her to say that they were brother and sister ever since they left Haran. We see something important. Abimelech gives gifts to Abraham (the way a lesser king does to a greater king) and gives Abraham permission to live anywhere in the land that he pleased, and he makes restitution for taking Abraham's wife, even though he had no relations with her, and it we learn what it means that God had kept him from sinning, because apparently God had made him unable to have sex with Sarah and had also closed the womb of Abimelech's wife and all of his female servants so that no one in his camp could have children until Sarah was returned. Just as God had commanded, Abraham prayed for Abimelech and he and his people were healed, but in so doing it appears that Abraham finally realized the great sin he was committing by lying to others and the danger he put everyone else in as God was ready to kill not just this man, but his whole kingdom to save Sarah. While Abraham may have learned his lesson to never again use this line about Sarah being his sister, we do see that it is something that his children and grandchildren picked up on because we will see both Isaac and Jacob try the same line when they get stuck in similar places. We can only assume they learned this from their father and grandfather. There is no such thing as a little white lie. Abraham was willing to put others at risk to try to save himself in a way that made sense to him and God stepped in to save a people that would have been otherwise innocent, but would have unknowingly sinned because they believed and acted on the lie that someone else told them. One sin from one man in the Garden made all mankind fall, our sins also do not affect just us, and sometimes God has to speak through the pagan to correct His people because we don't really listen to Him. Hopefully we learn from this and trust God to provide and protect us even in situations where we are tempted to try to make our own way and to save our own skin. God is faithful to protect His people and bring all of His promises to pass.
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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