Lies about Sarah (again)

Genesis 20

We learned in the previous passage that Abraham had repeated his earlier behavior of calling Sarah his sister. This time resulting in Abimelech, king of Gerar, taking her in anticipation of marriage. However, we also learned of God's intercession and "warning" (although it was much more grave than a simple warning) to Abimelech.
The result is that Abimelech has only one option for survival; return Sarah and get Abraham to pray for him.

In this passage we see how Abimelech handles this warning and the way in which he confronts Abraham in light of God's intercession. With that, lets dive in and start looking at the text. Because of the length of this passage I will not be posting it unabridged, but will post the verses as we move through the passage, as needed.

In my opinion (take it or leave it) is that God put Abimelech in this situation not because he is a bad guy or because God is just unfair; rather, I think that God is working through Abimelech, who of all the biblical characters we have seen thus far, is probably the only one who could have put it to Abraham in this way and working with God, brought Abraham to a point of repentance. We will see that after this encounter, Abraham becomes increasingly faithful and able to act in the right way without falling back into old, unrighteous habits. If ever there was true human character shown in scripture, it is this; Abraham not only blames it on his own fear and judgment of people he doesn't know, but blames it on his wife and perhaps even blaming it on God by saying that He "caused me to wander". We can see in the moment that Abraham is not sorry for what he has done. Moreover, Abraham's excuse isn't defensible in anyway. He is standing in front of a man who obviously has fear of God saying that people in this country had no fear of God. He is saying that Sarah is his half sister which completely misses the point, she is his wife, that is the important part. As any parent will tell you (mine most certainly will) a half lie is a whole lie, telling 90% of the truth is not telling the truth and lying by omission is still lying. We can learn from Abraham in this situation, as well as Abimelech, that truth sometimes hurts and that lying only makes more problems.