Meanwhile, Abraham travels to Gerar. King Abimelech of Gerar, like all kings Abraham meets, takes a liking to Sarah and Abraham again employs his timeworn lie that Sarah is his sister. Abimelech acts to incorporate Sarah into his household but before he can consummate the relationship, God comes to him in a dream. He tells Abimelech that if he so much as lays a finger on Sarah that he and his entire household will die. Abimelech rightly objects that he was deceived and God replies that he knows this and instructs him to restore Sarah to Abraham and further names Abraham as an official ‘Prophet,’ the first of the Bible.
The next morning, Sarah is on her way back to Abraham and an indignant Abimelech confronts him. Abraham explains the situation, adds yet another lie that Sarah is only his half-sister but does admit that she is also his wife. The JSB argues with itself on the point of whether Abraham and Sarah are really half-siblings: the Bible itself does not specifically mention any such relationship between the two though a somewhat circuitous argument can be made that they are. It seems relatively evident that Abraham’s a bit of a liar and for his deception, Abraham is rewarded with his wife, 1,000 pieces of silver, several sheep, oxen, slaves and the right to settle anywhere he wants on the king’s land. Abimelech gets the shaft; all he gets is his life and the lives of his people back, something he clearly had before Abraham came along.
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