Abimelech

A Reality Check for Abraham {gn20:11}

Photo © Unsplash/michael podger

Photo © Unsplash/michael podger

Abraham, Abraham,
Judge of Gerar:
Always a tangled web you're weaving,
dependent, as you are, on your deceiving.

Abraham, Abraham,
Judge of Gerar:
You searched Abimelek's soul and found no respect for God—
or so you thought.

You concluded that you were in danger
since nobody in that land, you thought, would ever listen to God.

Were you including yourself in the count?

Abraham, Abraham,
Judge of Gerar:
As between you and Abimelek,
he was revealed as the one with ears open.
Your judgment was wrong.
Yet your judgment was right.

It wasn't so much that your conclusion was wrong,
just the person to whom you applied it.
Perhaps Jesus said to be careful with judging,
because others can be more of a mirror than we think.

Abraham, Abraham,
Judge of Gerar:
In misjudging others,
you judged yourself.

You imagined that no one in Gerar would respect God
                      ...because you didn't.

 

God is reassuring.

God is reassuring.

GENESIS 26

Ever since Adam and Eve chose to believe the serpent at the tree, relations  between human beings have been ruled by fear. This chapter is a great example. Isaac takes his family down to Gerar, and Abimelech is still the king (as he was in Abraham’s time). And, continuing the time-honored family tradition of dishonesty, Isaac told the same lie about Rebekah that his father had told about Sarah—and for exactly the same reason. He was afraid.

God reveals what's in the heart.

God reveals what's in the heart.

GENESIS 22

This is one of the chapters in the Bible that most of us are very familiar with. A lot of questions swirl around this story: Why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? And why in the world would Abraham do it, even without asking a single question? Regardless of the possible answers to these questions, I think this chapter tells us something very important about God that is easy to overlook: He knows what’s in the heart, and He knows how to reveal it.

God doesn't demand perfection.

God doesn't demand perfection.

GENESIS 20

Abraham, friend and prophet of God, was apparently a slow learner. It hadn’t been that long since he and Sarah lived in Egypt, and here he is, once again, telling the same lies to Abimelech, king of Gerar!

I was genuinely puzzled by this chapter of the Bible. I mean, Abraham already went through this in Egypt with Pharaoh. He told the lie about Sarah because he was afraid of what would happen to him, and it ended up looking like God dealt more severely with Pharaoh instead of dealing with Abraham, who told the lies in the first place.