Scripture Daily

Context No. 1439 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 20:11-18: in context

11Abraham said, “Because I thought, ‘Surely the fear of God is not in this place. They will kill me for my wife’s sake.’ 12Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. 13When God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is your kindness which you shall show to me. Everywhere that we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’” 14Abimelech took sheep and cattle, male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and restored Sarah, his wife, to him. 15Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you. Dwell where it pleases you.” 16To Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. Behold, it is for you a covering of the eyes to all that are with you. In front of all you are vindicated.” 17Abraham prayed to God. So God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, and they bore children. 18For the LORD had closed up tight all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Abraham, sojourning in Gerar, has passed Sarah off as his sister rather than his wife, and King Abimelech, having taken her into his household without knowing she was married, confronts Abraham. Abraham explains his reasoning: I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me for my wife's sake. He adds that Sarah is in fact his half-sister, and that he had asked her to say he was her brother wherever they went. Abimelech, more honorable than Abraham expected, restores Sarah with gifts, and Abraham prays, and God heals Abimelech's household, which had been struck barren because of Sarah.

Abraham's excuse reveals two failures worth noticing, both driven by fear. The first is the deception itself: fear for his own life led him to a half-truth designed to protect himself, even at the risk of his wife's honor. The great man of faith, afraid, resorted to a lie. Fear does this; it pushes us toward deception, toward saving ourselves by shading the truth, and even a man of Abraham's faith was not immune. But the second failure is quieter and just as revealing: I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place. Abraham assumed the worst about Gerar, took for granted that these foreigners were godless and would murder him, and acted on that assumption; and he was wrong. Abimelech proved more God-fearing and honorable than Abraham had assumed, more upright in this matter than Abraham himself. Fear had led Abraham not only to deceive but to a harsh and unfair judgment of others, to assume that God was not at work in a place and among people he did not know. There is a double warning here. Fear breeds deception, pushing us to protect ourselves by bending the truth; and fear breeds unjust assumptions about others, tempting us to write off whole places and people as godless when God may be more present among them than we imagined. Abraham assumed there was no fear of God in Gerar and found himself rebuked by a pagan king. We do well to distrust the fearful assumption that God is absent where we have not troubled to look.

Does fear push me toward deception, saving myself by bending the truth, and toward unfair assumptions that write off others as godless, when God may be more at work among the people and places I have dismissed than I assumed, as he was in Gerar?

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