[And He Walks With Me] Genesis 20

2        Even after 25 years of following God faithfully and all of the material blessing and sociopolitical prominence God had bestowed upon him, Abraham was afraid and reverted to the same ruse he used in Genesis 12:10-20: Abraham said about his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Even after years of faithfully following God, we must be wary of our natural inclinations toward fear, doubt, greed, etc. They can still sneak up on us and cause us to say and do stupid things!

It seems strange to us that Abimelech of Gerar would [have] Sarah brought to him. At 90 years of age, it is hard to believe he found her attractive or expected her to bear children. It is far more likely that he saw this marriage as a way to secure an alliance with Abraham. After all, Abraham was the guy who defeated Chedorlaomer and his four partner kings in Genesis 14.

4        The fact that Abimelech had not approached her is key to the birth of Isaac in Genesis 21. If Abimelech had slept with Sarah, there would have been doubt regarding Isaac’s parentage.

7        Even after Abraham slipped up, God recognized he is a prophet. Often, our enemy will try to convince us that a momentary lapse destroys all the progress we have made following God. He is, after all, Satan the Accuser, and the accuser is going to accuse. Abraham’s lapse would certainly have relational implications with Abimelech, and he would have to sort out the whole mess. Yet, his one moment of weakness did not negate his lifetime of commitment to God.

11-13        The word rendered I thought implies that he had no credible evidence to support this belief that there is absolutely no fear of God in this place and they will kill me because of my wife. He merely assumed these things based on his own intuition. Intuition can be helpful in many situations. Indeed, it is a gift of God. Yet is not infallible and has been corrupted by sin just like the rest of us. We must, therefore, be wary of it and take the time to be duly diligent so that our decisions and behaviors are not based solely on intuition.

Any objective observer will recognize that Abraham’s rationale is weak. Perhaps Sarah really is [his] sister, and he can explain that she was the daughter of [his] father though not the daughter of [his] mother. So it was not a lie of commission to tell Abimelech that she was his sister. However, it was clearly a lie of omission to not reveal that she was also his wife. There are many sins that we must not commit, but it is just as sinful to not do the right things we know we should do.

14-16        Abimelech’s graciousness here reveals that there really was fear of God in this place (11).

Abimelech’s offering of one thousand pieces of silver was similar to the dowry offered by the family of a bride to the groom. Just as the dowry served as a deposit ensuring the bride’s virginity, Abimelech offered this gift to attest to the fact that Sarah had not violated her marital vows with him and was fully vindicated.

17-18        It is easy to assume that the events of this chapter happened relatively quickly, and indeed, the fact that God promised in about a year’s time… Sarah will have a son in 18:10 indicates that Sarah could not have been in Abimelech’s household for too long. However, there must have been some time for Abimelech to realize that either his previous wives and concubines were not getting pregnant at the rate they were before or one – or probably more – of those previous wives and concubines miscarried to show that the Lord had completely closed all the wombs in Abimelech’s household.