Introduction: After the events of Genesis 19, Abraham left Mamre/Hebron and journeyed southwest towards the Mediterranean Sea. He entered the land of the Philistines and settled at Gerar, between Kadesh and Shur. While there, he told the same lie about Sarah; only to a different king (compare this chapter with chapter 12). The lie didn’t work in Egypt and didn’t work here, even though Abraham believed it would!
1 Déjà vu all over again; the lie and what happened next
Text, Genesis 20:1-2, KJV: 1 And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar. 2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.
Haven’t we seen something like this before? Why, yes, we have, 25 years before! Abraham was still Abram, and Sarah, Sarai, when they all (these two and their entire household) went down to Egypt (Genesis 12). They were hoping to find food after a famine hit the part of Canaan where they were then living.
And what did Abram do? As mentioned in my message “The First Test of Faith”, Abram had already failed—he never asked God what to do or where to go. He failed again when he lied, saying, “She’s my sister,” even though Sarai was his wife .Pharaoh, king of Egypt, soon found out the truth about Sarai after he had taken her into his house (and who knows what kind of plans he might have had). Abram had the not-so-pleasant distinctions of, first, being kicked out of Egypt and, second, hearing a pagan king say “go thy way”—the first such instance in the Bible!
After they returned to Canaan, Abraham and his household faced a number of challenges; these are recorded in Genesis 13-18. Some of these challenges were good, such as receiving God’s promise in Genesis 15 and the promise of a son in chapters 17-18. It goes without saying that some of these weren’t so good, such as seeing Lot and his household departing, and then settling near Sodom. Lot and many others were taken captive and marched a long ways north of Sodom but Abram rescued him and the others (see Genesis 14).
But after Sodom was destroyed, and Lot had fled, along with his two (surviving?) daughters, Abraham and his household all decided to leave Hebron/Mamre, where they had lived for a long time. They moved southwest towards the Mediterranean Sea, settling in Gerar in the land of the Philistines (compare verse 1 with Gen. 21:32). These people were friendly towards Abraham at this time, it seems—there is no mention in this chapter of any hostile action by the Philistines T this particular time.
Except for one thing: and that involved Sarah.
Abimelech heard Abraham say, “She’s my sister”—not, “She’s my wife,”—so Abimelech decided to take her away from Abraham and keep her for himself. This has always seemed strange to me, because Sarah was now 90 years old! Was she was still beautiful enough to capture a king’s attention, even at that age? On the other hand, Abimelech may have thought, “She’s single, so maybe I can take care of her better than her brother” or something to that effect. Who knows what was going through his mind?
And Abraham did or said nothing to protest this which is recorded in the text.
Does any of this, I ask again, sound familiar? Abraham should have known that the same lie he had told 25 years before wouldn’t work now, and he probably should have guessed that he and Sarah would face the same results!
Fortunately for Abraham, and is spite of his failures, God intervened in a mighty and miraculous way. The next few verses have one of the few times God spoke to a non-Hebrew in a dream.
And what a dream! I wonder if Abimelech ever forgot it.
2 The truth comes out: the dream and a conversation
Text, Genesis 20:3-8. KJV: 3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife. 4 But Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation? 5 Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this. 6 And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. 7 Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine. 8 Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid.
When Abraham lived, there was not much, if any, of God’s written Word available. He walked by faith, and by direct communication with God. This is not to say that the stories of Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and other things were foreign to him, as he would have no doubt heard these from God Himself. It is true that just about every group, however defined, had their own accounts of these events, mangled though they were due to misinformation or deliberate scrubbing of some facts. After all, Paul would later write in Romans 1:18 that there were people who “hold the truth in unrighteousness”(other versions read “suppress” or “hold down”), choosing what to present and what to withhold. Propaganda had an early start!
Even so, God did speak to people by dreams. Abimelech seems to have been the first person, as recorded in Scripture, to receive a message from the True and the Living God by a dream.
Only for him, it may have seemed more like a nightmare!
Abimelech’s relationship with the God of Abraham is debatable, whether he was a believer or simply aware of Abraham’s God. Moses provided little information about Abimelech’s faith, or lack of same, here; he only mentions this conversation where God took the lead.
I mean, imagine you’re asleep, and you have a dream where you hear someone, anyone, maybe even somebody you never heard of saying, “You’re a dead man!”
Wouldn’t _that_ get your attention, and fast?? It sure did for Abimelech! But there was a little more to the message in the dream than just this warning, or sentence, from God. Abimelech was under the (pending) sentence of death because he had taken another man’s wife!
To Abimelech’s credit, he didn’t deny what he had done but he did appeal to the God of Abraham. He said, “Lord, will You slay a righteous nation (odd, as there is no mention in the text that the Philistines worshiped the God of Abraham)? And didn’t he say, “She’s my sister” and didn’t she say, “He’s my brother?” He went on to make a plea that he hadn’t done anything to Sarah-yet- because of the integrity of his heart and the innocence of his hands. Again, Abraham and Sarah had told these lies before, in Egypt, and now, they received the same result. The only difference, this time, is that God Himself intervened and spoke directly to Abimelech.
Still in the dream, God spoke again to Abimelech, saying, “Yes (and He didn’t deny Abimelech’s words or plea), I know all about what happened, and I kept you from sinning against her. I didn’t even let you touch her. But now, you need to give her back to her husband; he’s a prophet, he’ll pray for you, and you will live. If, however, you don’t, you and all that you have will surely die.”
I don’t think Abimelech got much sleep that night—and who would, after having a dream like that one! When morning came (and for Abimelech, it probably couldn’t come soon enough), he rose up “early in the morning”, then called all his servants. When he told them all he had heard, they were “sore afraid”, or, as some say, absolutely frightened!
What, then, were these men going to do, after hearing the words of Abraham’s God?
3 Facing the man, and facing the facts: Abimelech meets Abraham
Text, Genesis 20:9-14, KJV: 9 Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. 10 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? 11 And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife's sake. 12 And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. 13 And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother. 14 And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife.
Abimelech “called” Abraham, most likely meaning he came to Abraham face to face. Abimelech didn’t waste any time getting straight to the point. He had heard God speak during his dream and now it was time for Abimelech and Abraham to face some facts.
The first thing Abimelech did was to ask Abraham a series of questions. He started by asking, “What have you done to us (implying something was going on that hadn’t happened before Abraham arrived)? Indeed, something was going on but that problem would be revealed later.
His next question to Abraham follows on with the first, “And what have I offended you, that you brought such a great sin on my kingdom?” Then he followed up with a statement, “You did things to me that you shouldn’t have done.” Perhaps a pause followed, and then Abimelech asked his third question, “What did you see, that made you do this thing?” The first question dealt with Abraham’s deeds, “what have _you_ done?” to cause this (as yet unidentified) problem. The second dealt with Abimelech himself, “what have _I_ done to offend you?” The third question seems to add both together, “What did you _see_ that made you do this?”
Abraham’s response is not very clear, at least as translated in the KJV. He first says, “(I did this) Because there is no fear of God in this place.” Now, Abimelech had protested to God, saying, “Will You slay (destroy) a righteous nation?” and he had even recognized the God of Abraham, calling Him “Lord” and accepting God’s description of Abraham as a prophet. If there was no fear of God among the Philistines, Abraham had some fear of them, and he was about to explain why he felt that way.
He went on in his defense or explanation to Abimelech, saying in so many words, “they (you, as you as king will allow this to happen) will kill me for my wife’s sake.” That “defense” didn’t work in Egypt, 25 years before, and it wasn’t working now. Abimelech had taken Sarah anyway, and seemingly gave Abraham nothing except land where his livestock would graze. Oh, yes, Abraham was still alive, but he had lost his wife: this time making the second time.
Almost like an afterthought, Abraham did explain that Sarah was technically his sister, being the daughter of his own father but a different mother. (In those days it was not forbidden to marry close kin, but later, when God gave the Law to Moses, He pronounced severe penalties on those who did these things according to Leviticus 18:9, 20:17 and Deuteronomy 27:22). And after that, he also stated he wanted Sarah to show her “kindness” by saying “He’s my brother” wherever they went, even after they were married.
For whatever reason, this seemed to satisfy Abimelech. He gave Abraham more sheep, oxen, menservants and “womenservants” but most importantly, he gave Sarah back to Abraham, too! But even better things were in store.
4 Some final words and actions
Text, Genesis 20:15-18, KJV: 15 And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before thee: dwell where it pleaseth thee. 16 And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was reproved. 17 So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children. 18 For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham's wife.
The last verses of Genesis 20 relate how Abimelech gave Abraham permission to settle anywhere he would choose. Abimelech also spoke to Sarah, telling her he had given Abraham, her “brother”, 1000 pieces of silver (exact value uncertain). He also gave her a compliment, obscure, perhaps, to us: “he’s a covering of the eyes for you and all that are with you.” Then again, it may have been a slight or even a curse, as the end of verse 16 says, “Thus she was reproved.” Why Abimelech said these words is not clear.
Part of that problem might be that none of the women in Abimelech’s household was able to conceive or bear children. The text does not state how long this condition lasted; it may have been a month or longer for the women to discover this problem. True to God’s promise, though, in verse 7, Abraham prayed. As a result, God healed Abimelech and the women in his household and these women were now able to bear children. They were barren or unable to have children because Abimelech had taken Sarah, even though he thought she was single! Did he ever learn!
Conclusion
Abraham and Sarah should have known that lies never work and never bring glory to God. Abraham almost lost Sarah, for the second time; and Abimelech faced the risk of dying childless because he had taken Sarah. Honesty and trust in God would have prevented all of this.
Whenever you or I face challenges, problems, or difficult situations, the best thing to do is pray before doing anything else. Many years later Solomon would write in Proverbs 3: 5, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Abraham, Sarah, and Abimelech all trusted in their own understandings, and all nearly paid dearly for it.
Don’t let what almost happened to them happen to you!
Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV).
