Chapter 20
Abraham moves after Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. He had seen the smoke rising and moved away. Maybe connected, maybe not, but his move is next in the history. He travels toward the Negev, and settles between Kadesh and Shur. We aren't told why he makes this move. You wouldn't think that Zoar would be any threat to Abraham at all. Again Abraham claims that Sarah is his sister. She is 100 plus years old, and yet she is beautiful enough that Abraham thinks someone will kill him to claim her. And sure enough, the King of Gerar - the country where Abraham is living - sent for Sarah.
2026 - This verse:
2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, "She is my sister." And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. [Gen 20:2 ESV]
We see the stark reality in that culture of being a non-citizen, a stranger, a wanderer. Every time Abraham shows up somewhere, if the King/Pharoah or whomever likes the looks of his wife, they just send armed me to take her away from you. And if you cannot overpower a King and his whole city, you just lost her. We don't treat immigrants that way in this country. No one goes out and takes all their stuff - their wives and their children stolen to be slaves or worse. Our laws about immigration are not to be ashamed of because they are too harsh. We need to look backwards for historical precedent, and we need to look around for the practices of other nations. What we will find, if we are objective, is that we are on the right side of the normal curve when it comes to immigration law.
Possible FB post, 3/5/26.
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.
Genesis 20:6 ESV
God protects His own. Even though Abraham had created the situation himself by lying. And Sarah was still desirable, even at this age. God had kept this King from calling her to him.
2023 - Never noticed this one before...
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." [Gen 20:7 ESV]. Not just "a" prophet, but the first prophet!
Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.
Genesis 20:12 ESV
So not a lie. She is his half sister. And then this verse too:
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."'" [Gen 20:13 ESV] So we have the accounts of this happening twice, once in Egypt and now here in Gerar. But from this statement of Abraham's, it may have happened many other times also. It seems to have been their "standard story" when they arrived in a new place.
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. [Gen 20:14 ESV]
So Abraham profits yet again from this deception. Even if she is his sister in fact, the more important thing is that she is his wife first. But because first Pharoah, and now Abimelech know first hand that Abraham has the protection and blessing of God, they run him off...but they send massive gifts with him to "buy favor" from his God. On top of that, Abimelech tells Abraham he can live anywhere he pleases in Abimelech's kingdom. 2021 - We don't really know how long Sarah was in the house of Abimelech. (Actually, we do. It was about a year. We know this from the ages given in the next chapter, and from the fact that they left Gerar before Isaac was born, and we had a one year clock ticking on Isaac's birth. So they were there about a year.) But in vs 18, we see this: 18 For the LORD had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. [Gen 20:18 ESV] It seems almost certain that she was there long enough for this closing of the wombs to become evident. No one in Abimelech's house was getting pregnant, and from the verse before, they were all sick with something that needed healing. To "get rid" of Abraham, Abimelech, like Egypt, gave many presents, including slaves and money, plus he gave Abraham an unrestricted "deed" to live where ever he pleased in the land of Gerar, likely including the approved displacement of those already there. It seems very foreign to our modern way of thinking for God to use something like this to accomplish his ends, but the Bible is telling us that is exactly what God did.