Once again, Abraham starts lying about
his relationship with his wife, Sarah. After travelling to Gerar, Abraham
claims that Sarah is his sister (remember, this is a half-truth), and King
Abimelech takes her.
Genesis 20:7, NIV “Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for
you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you
and all yours will die.”
Okay, since Abraham is a prophet, he
can pretty much get away with anything. Lying, shmying. Who cares? He’s God’s
favorite! I truly don’t see how this meshes with an all-loving God, when the
Abraham story shows multiple time that God has his own elite crew, plays
favorites with them, and threatens to kill the people who fall for Abraham’s
lies. Abraham plays the part of a fool perfectly, over and over again, and God
defends him every single time. Or, Chapter 20 is the same story that is in
Genesis 12, retold in a different way, with a slightly different ending.
In this version of the Sarah-as-sister
scam, Abimelech confronts Abraham, and asks why he lied, so this time we get to
find out the reasons behind it. Abraham was apparently in fear for his life,
because “there is surely no fear of God
in this place” (Gen 20:11). Sounds to me like Abimelech’s kingdom practices
a different religion. So much for cultural diversity. It also happens to be the
exact same fear that Abraham mentioned in Chapter 12 when entering Egypt.
The author of this chapter throws in a
real zinger at the end. After everyone makes up, Abraham receives oodles of
treasures for lying—again—we find out that God had closed the womb of every
single woman in Abimelech’s household because of Abraham’s wife, Sarah.
The Bible continues to use a person’s
ethnicity, nation, or town, to make a judgment call about them. Sounds about
right for documenting the beliefs of a historical period, but not as divine
inspiration.
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