Online Truth

You are the light of the world.  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.  Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house.  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.  Matthew 5:14-16

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

It could appear that Abraham’s somewhat deceptive stance (twice noting only that Sarah was his sister but not bringing out the fact that she was also his wife) may have actually been passed down to his own son, Isaac.

We find Abraham stating this “half truth” in Genesis 12:11-20 and again in the whole of chapter 20.  We’ll look first at the former passage in chapter 11.  Notice verse 17:

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.[1]

If this was Abram’s sin for telling this half-truth, we can only wonder why He put the plagues on Pharaoh.  On verse 19 the Zondervan NIV Study Bible says, “Egyptian ethics emphasized the importance of absolute truthfulness, and Abram was put in the uncomfortable position of being exposed as a liar.”

Chapter 20 may be a mite clearer:

20 From there Abraham journeyed toward the region of the Negeb, and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While residing in Gerar as an alien, ² Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” And King Abimelech of Gerar sent and took Sarah. ³ But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, “You are about to die because of the woman whom you have taken; for she is a married woman.” ⁴ Now Abimelech had not approached her; so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent people? ⁵ Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.” ⁶ Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart; furthermore it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. ⁷ Now then, return the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all that are yours.”

⁸ So Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants and told them all these things; and the men were very much afraid. ⁹ Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said to him, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that ought not to be done.” ¹⁰ And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What were you thinking of, that you did this thing?” ¹¹ Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. ¹² Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. ¹³ And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.’ ” ¹⁴ Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves, and gave them to Abraham, and restored his wife Sarah to him. ¹⁵ Abimelech said, “My land is before you; settle where it pleases you.” ¹⁶ To Sarah he said, “Look, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; it is your exoneration before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. ¹⁸ For the Lord had closed fast all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

²⁰ God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. ²¹ He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.[2]

On verse 12 here, the Zondervan NIV Study Bible says: “Abraham’s half-truth was a sinful deception, not a legitimate explanation.”

If the sin was Abraham’s here, why would it appear that God did not hold him responsible for it?  Why did He, instead, come to Abimelech in a dream and warn him?  Notice verse 7: “Now then, return the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all that are yours.”[3]

Here God apparently speaks well of Abraham, noting that he was a prophet and that He would honor Abraham’s prayer on Abimelech’s behalf.  And verse 17 tells us that God did hear Abraham’s prayer and healed Abimelech and his household.

In Genesis 26 we find that Abraham’s son, Isaac, pulled this same trick:

⁶ So Isaac settled in Gerar. ⁷ When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister”; for he was afraid to say, “My wife,” thinking, “or else the men of the place might kill me for the sake of Rebekah, because she is attractive in appearance.” ⁸ When Isaac had been there a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw him fondling his wife Rebekah. ⁹ So Abimelech called for Isaac, and said, “So she is your wife! Why then did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I thought I might die because of her.” ¹⁰ Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” ¹¹ So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death.”

¹² Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, ¹³ and the man became rich; he prospered more and more until he became very wealthy. ¹⁴ He had possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.[4]

Here it was a bold-faced lie, for sure, because Rebekah was not Isaac’s half-sister.  Yet Moses then immediately wrote in the very next verses (12-14) that God blessed Isaac mightily, in spite of this sin.

Then in Genesis 25 we find that Jacob, too, was a deceiver.  In fact, he came out grasping the heel of his brother, Esau.  Verse 26 tells us that he was, therefore, called Jacob.  The footnote in the NIV Bible says that “Jacob means he grasps the heel (figuratively, he deceives).”

Again, the Zondervan NIV Study Bible says of verse 26: “The name became proverbial for the unsavory quality of deceptiveness (see text note on Jer. 9:4).”  We can then see that in Jeremiah 9:4 (NIV), “beware of your friends” can alternately read “beware of a deceiving Jacob.”  And “every brother is a deceiver” can read, “every brother is a deceiving Jacob,” according to this same study Bible.

Nevertheless, Isaac gave the blessing to Jacob.  And when the Bible speaks of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we can realize that these men were not always perfect in their ways—leastwise not in their earlier years.

This can certainly be encouraging to us as we endeavor to overcome the flaws of the earlier years and, indeed, proceed to the later years.  Hopefully, our later years show some spiritual growth as we endeavor to increasingly walk in the ways of God.

HOME