Chapter 19 is the last we see of Lot and his unhappy family. In chapter 20 the story switches back to Abraham and Sarah. You can read it here in the New Revised Standard Version or here in The Message paraphrase version.
What happens with Abimelech in this chapter is very similar to variation of what happened with Pharaoh in Genesis 12:10-20. Abraham comes across like a con-man with God as his semi-willing partner in a scam to collect lots of good stuff.
The details aren't spelled out as explicitly here as in Genesis 12, but the pattern is close enough: 1) Abraham and Sarah come into a new land. 2) The ruler of the land wants so sleep with Sarah. 3) Abraham fears the ruler will kill him to take his wife so… 4) Abraham passes Sarah off as his sister. 5) The ruler takes Sarah into his home. 6) God speaks to the ruler, warning him away from Sarah. 7) Terrified, the ruler gives Sarah back to Abraham and also gives him a rich bribe to avoid the wrath of God.
So, what is the point of this odd story? That, if you've got God on your side you can get away with just about anything? While I don't doubt there are some who would interpret it that way, that's not the real point; it's just part of the background of how the story was written.
I've said before on this blog that not all biblical authors have the same understanding of God. In some stories, God only cares about Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel. Foreigners are treated as unimportant, or even with a sense of contempt. In other stories (like Ruth and Jonah) foreigners are treated with respect and it is clear that God also cares for them.
This story obviously belongs to the first category. As far as the writer is concerned, foreigners like Abimelech don’t really matter so he sees no problem in showing God treating him unfairly, but I think this is the writer's issue and not God's. The story isn't rally about Abimelech, after all. It's about God and Abraham and their relationship, a relationship that is characterized time and again by Abraham's lack of trust in spite of God's trustworthiness.
Abraham has been promised life and abundance by God several times now, but in spite of this, he still has a lot of doubt. His scheme to pass Sarah off as his sister comes out of the (as it turns out unjustified) fear that the local ruler is going to have him killed in order to steal his wife. Rather than trusting in God to protect him, or showing some integrity as a husband, he throws his wife to the wolves. Abraham's priority is saving his own skin. He's not a faithful man in this story, not to Sarah and not to God.
But God is faithful to Abraham. The patriarch doesn't deserve to be saved but God saves him anyway. God has made Abraham a promise and will go to any length to keep that promise… even when Abraham has done nothing to be worthy of the promised blessing.
And that's the message in a nutshell: God keeps faith with people, even when people don't keep faith with God. It's a message of hope that when we give up, or alter, or make mistakes, or even do what we know is the wrong thing, God is still faithful to us. That's a massage of grace that is so much a part of God's character that it shows up even in a primitive, narrow-minded, intolerant of foreigners story like this.
