ವ್ಯಾಖ್ಯಾನ ಪ್ರಸ್ತುತ ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್ನಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾತ್ರ ಲಭ್ಯವಿದೆ. ಕನ್ನಡ ಅನುವಾದ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಲ್ಲಿದೆ.
Genesis 20 — A Second Time, the Same Lie
Abraham journeys to Gerar and again calls Sarah his sister. King Abimelech takes her. God warns Abimelech in a dream — she is another man's wife. The king restores Sarah to Abraham and gives him gifts. Abraham prays and Abimelech's household is healed.
“I also withheld thee from sinning against me.”
— Genesis 20:6
- v.1-2 Abraham's second lie about Sarah
- v.3-7 God warns Abimelech in a dream
- v.8-13 Abimelech confronts Abraham; Abraham's lame excuse
- v.14-18 Restoration, gifts, and intercessory healing
A startling glimpse of God's preserving grace. Abimelech intended evil through ignorance, but God Himself prevented him from carrying it out. I withheld thee from sinning against me.
How many sins each of us has been preserved from without knowing it? God's protection of His people often runs through restraint placed on others. We see the consequence; we do not always see the mercy that kept it from being worse.
The first use of the word prophet (Hebrew nabi) in the Bible — and it applies to Abraham. A prophet is not primarily a future-teller; he is a man through whom God speaks and a man who prays for others.
Even in his moral failure of this chapter, Abraham is still a prophet whose prayers God answers. God's gifts and callings are without repentance (Romans 11:29). His usefulness to God is not nullified by every personal failure.
Abraham assumed the worst about the place he was visiting and acted on his assumption. He was wrong. Abimelech feared God enough to obey a dream; Abraham's prejudice misjudged him.
Many of the lies we tell to protect ourselves are based on fears that prove unfounded. Faith does not require ideal conditions to walk straight. It walks straight regardless of who is watching.
The chapter that began with Abraham's lie ends with Abraham's prayer healing the very household he had endangered. God uses imperfect servants. The same hand that wrote the lie wrote the prayer.
Sarah was barren; Abimelech's household was barren; the chapter ends with their fertility restored. Almost as if God were demonstrating, on Abimelech's house, the power He was about to demonstrate on Sarah herself in the very next chapter.
Notice when an old fear returns and whispers the same old strategy. Twenty-five years after Egypt, Abraham repeated the same lie. The sins we have not killed are not dormant; they are waiting. When pressure recurs, the temptation will recur. Be more watchful where you have fallen before.
Christ is the perfect prophet of whom Abraham was a flawed shadow. Where Abraham's deception endangered others and his prayer healed them after, Christ's perfect truthfulness has always protected His people, and His prayer at the right hand of God secures their healing eternally.
The same lie as Genesis 12. Twenty-five years later. Sometimes the sins we think we left behind reappear in slightly different clothes when the same kind of pressure returns.
The man who would soon be tested with offering Isaac is, here, still struggling with self-protection by deception. Real saints have areas of immaturity even while growing in others. Abraham's great chapter (22) is preceded by his recurring failure (20).