The story with Abimelech raises many questions. On the one hand, there is the very desire to pass off one's wife as one's sister in order to protect oneself from trouble. On the other, there is God's intervention in the situation on the side of a person who behaves, at the very least, strangely and cowardly...
The story with Abimelech raises many questions. On the one hand, there is the very desire to pass off one's wife as one's sister in order to protect oneself from trouble. On the other, there is God's intervention in the situation on the side of a person who behaves, at the very least, strangely and cowardly. How should all this be understood? What is Abraham so afraid of? Why does he not hope for God's help? It is quite natural that Abraham, if he thought badly of Abimelech, had to fear for his life. The only way to enter a lawful marriage with a married woman was to make her a widow. One may marry a widow, and formally the law would be observed. By passing Sarah off as his sister, Abraham quite obviously wanted to avoid precisely that scenario. This was simply a matter of survival at any cost, even at the cost of a feigned violation of marital faithfulness.
Feigned because it was forced: under no other circumstances would either Abraham or Sarah, of course, have agreed to such a thing. Abraham does not rely very much on God here, because he still does not know how and when God will want to intervene in his life. Abraham has his own experience of communion with God, but he does not yet have stable ideas about relationship with God. Today we know, at least theoretically, that God never leaves us. In antiquity people looked at this differently: no god was obligated to remain beside a human being constantly. Gods came and went, appeared and disappeared. One could ask one's god for help and hope for his intervention, but it was impossible to be sure of it. Abraham had to look at his God this way too, because he was a man of his time. He did not yet know in practice what God's omnipresence means. Pagan gods were not like that; they appeared and disappeared precisely because they could not be everywhere at once.
The God of Abraham was different. The One is not like pagan gods; but Abraham did not know this yet. He still had to become convinced that for his God there are no distances. As for Abimelech, he knew even less and acted, according to his own testimony, with a pure heart and without any hidden intention. That is why God stops him with a simple warning: there was no guilt at all in Abimelech for what was happening. The main lesson here was for Abraham, not for Abimelech. It was a lesson that may seem completely obvious to us today, but that was new for Abraham, like everything connected in his life with his God.
