Church Hopping

Abraham moves again in Genesis 20, I would guess this is because his business was livestock and he probably moved for them to have food. Apparently Sarah, who is about 90 by now, was still attractive enough to catch the eye of the king. Maybe it worked differently then and the men in power just took whatever woman they wanted or maybe Sarah just kept her beauty. God appears again to a pagan and the overwhelming effect of that encounter leads to fear.

Abraham is always known as this great man of faith, because of his willingness to do as God commands without questioning. In this passage I realized that he does have great faith in God for his own life, but he seems to doubt God’s sovereignty in dealing with the rest of the world. He knows that Abimelech and his people do not fear God, yet he doesn’t trust God to prevent them from interfering with the Abrahamic covenant.

I still have trouble understanding the role of women in Abraham’s time. I cannot imagine a wife who would agree to the sort of thing that Sarah did. She had to have known the consequences of saying this (i.e. being taken by other men). Of course this is a different culture, but also a different society where law was not set up to prevent injustice.

You also may want to note a small piece of trivia here. Abraham married his half-sister…awkward.