1. In connexion with the stay in Gerar an incident is recorded of Abraham which (if it is to be regarded as historically distinct from and not a variant of the narrative already told of his visit to Egypt, and again told of Isaac) seems almost incredible. The narrative records that Abraham repeated to the prince of Gerar the same disingenuous story about his wife for which he had been rebuked some twenty years before in Egypt, and that a second time, and of set purpose, Sarah passed as no more than his sister.
n general outline the narrative is very similar to that of Gen_12:10-20 (Abram and Sarai in Egypt), and Gen_26:6-11 (Isaac and Rebekah at Gerar). The repetition is remarkable, especially as in each case the excuse is the same, that the wife is a sister. It is difficult to avoid suspecting that the three narratives are variations of the same fundamental theme, a story told popularly of the patriarchs and attributed sometimes to different occasions in the life of Abraham, and once also to an occasion in the life of Isaac.1 [Note: S. R. Driver.]
2. Taking the narrative as it stands, one is forced to conclude that to Abraham's mind the stratagem still appeared to be excusable in self-defence. Perhaps even now it would wear the same complexion in the eyes of most Orientals. To speak the truth for the truth's sake is one of the very latest of virtues, and in no Eastern race has it ever come to blossom. But, assuming that the unveracity of the trick did not shock the patriarch's conscience, how could he be blind to its impolicy? As on the earlier occasion so again the natural result was certain to ensue. In that age, as in more recent times, Oriental princes assumed the right to collect into their harem, not always from sensual desire, but quite as often for reasons of dignity, females of distinction who were not already under the shield of marriage. He must have known that he was exposing his wife to such a risk. But to expose her to it at the very moment when he was expecting her within a year to become the mother of a God-given heir, argued either an astounding thoughtlessness or a no less astounding presumption. Either he acted with a disregard of probable consequences most unlike the gravity of his character, or he ventured to presume in a culpable degree on a second interposition of God. One thing, however, is certain, that Abraham sought to escape unpleasant consequences at the cost of his own self-esteem.
John Lawrence was nothing if he was not truthful; he was transparent as the day, and my highest aim has been to render to so “heroically simple” a character that homage which is its due-the homage of unalloyed truth.… He always said … exactly what he thought. He always acted … exactly as he spoke.1 [Note: Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence.]
When last in Edinburgh, Scott had given his friend William Burn, architect, directions to prepare at his expense a modest monument for the grave of Helen Walker, the original of Jeanie Deans, in the churchyard of Irongray. Mr. Burn now informed him that the little pillar was in readiness, and on the 18th October Sir Walter sent him this beautiful inscription for it:-
“This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory of Helen Walker, who died in the year of God, 1791. This humble individual practised in real life the virtues with which fiction has invested the imaginary character of Jeanie Deans; refusing the slightest departure from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless showed her kindness and fortitude in rescuing her from the severity of the law, at the expense of personal exertions which the time rendered as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of poverty when combined with love of truth and dear affection.”1 [Note: J. G. Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, ch. lxxxi.]
Me let the world disparage and despise-
The world, that hugs its soul-corroding chains,
The world, that spends for such ignoble gains.
Let foe or bigot wrap my name in lies;
Let Justice, blind and maimed and halt, chastise
The rebel-spirit surging in my veins;
Let the Law deal me penalties and pains;
Let me be outcast in my neighbours' eyes,
But let me fall not in my own esteem,
By poor deceit or petty greed debased;
Let me be clean from undetected shame;
Know myself true, though heretic I seem;
Know myself faithful, howsoe'er disgraced;
Upright and strong, for all the load of blame.2 [Note: Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark (1913), 119.]
3. In contrast with the patriarch's duplicity, one gets from the sequel of this incident a pleasing impression of the manners of the early Philistines, and the personal nobility of their chief. With Pharaoh on an earlier occasion God had dealt only through the indirect agency of events, which Pharaoh was left to interpret as he could. On Abimelech's house also a plague was sent. But the Divine interpretation of that plague was conveyed to him through a dream, and that under no disguise of parable, but in plain words as from God. Dreams form a channel for communications from Heaven which Scripture commonly represents as employed in the case of persons who, though not prophets, are yet worshippers of God. The impression to be gathered from this narrative certainly is, that the Philistine sheikh recognized the true God and feared Him. His “integrity” of heart is acknowledged by the Divine Voice. His horror at the sin into which he had well-nigh been betrayed is expressed in language which leaves nothing to be desired. With a praiseworthy care for his people, he warns them also against similar errors. Whatever can be done to compensate for his involuntary wrong, he eagerly does.
Notice that in the warning addressed to Abimelech sin is treated as not wholly an affair of the conscience and inward motive, but an external fact-a violation of the objective moral order, which works out its consequences with the indifference of a law of nature to the mental condition of the transgressor (cf. the matricide of Orestes, etc.). At the same time God Himself recognizes the relative validity of Abimelech's plea of ignorance. It is the first faint protest of the moral sense against the hereditary mechanical notion of guilt. But it is a long way from Abimelech's faltering protestation of innocence to Job's unflinching assertion of the right of the individual conscience against the decree of an unjust fate.1 [Note: John Skinner, Genesis, 317.]
It is intensely difficult to indicate the mischief of involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in measure; fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned to that lower field-not by sin, but fate.2 [Note: John Ruskin, Ariadne Florentina, § 154 (Works, xxii. 399).]
“Negligences and ignorances”-how often these weigh down our sorrowful, our well-nigh despairing spirits! Against wilful sin long years of struggling fealty may have taught us to watch; but then, while we have gone gaily forward, eager and unafraid, a little duty has not even been guessed, a little kindness left undone, and “inasmuch as ye did it not” has filled the wide earth and air with the thunder of its judgment. “So foolish was I, and ignorant: was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless,”-ah, sorrowful heart, take comfort!-“nevertheless I am continually with thee. Thou hast holden me by my right hand,” and since I have no wisdom, Thou wilt give me Thine, “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me”-“to glory?” No, I would not ask for that, but just receive me where, being with Thee, I cannot again mistake, or forget-or fail. This “Nevertheless” I carry in my bosom, an eternal Amulet of Hope.3 [Note: Thoughts of a Tertiary.]
4. Abimelech is warned that the sin he is about to commit is the more serious because Abraham is a “prophet.” What ideas he attached to that venerable title of “prophet” we cannot tell, but the title itself was evidently familiar to him, and commanded his respect. He bowed at once, and cheerfully, to the intimation it conveyed, that his visitor was one who stood nearer God than other men, and enjoyed the special guardianship of Heaven.
The term nabi for a prophet is the oldest and most frequent of all, and is found in all the Semitic languages. It is, according to Ewald, from an independent root which has the meaning “to make clear.” Among the Arabians, nabi is “the speaker.” The primary meaning of the Hebrew word is, then, to be a clear speaker, or, in the passive form, to speak for another. “As the dumb man requires his messenger or interpreter to speak for him, so does the voice of God, dumb to the throng of men, require some one to utter it.” The Hebrew used the reflexive forms, niphal and hithpael, as the Romans expressed the same class of conceptions by the deponent verbs loqui, fari, vociferari, concionari, vaticinari. The conception that the prophet does not speak his own thoughts but those which he has received from God, is, then, inseparably connected with his title. Thus Aaron is said to be given to Moses as his “prophet” (Exo_7:1), or “mouth,” as he is elsewhere designated (Exo_4:16); because he is to speak for Moses as an ambassador or interpreter speaks for his superior. Nor is this germinal idea wanting in the wider use of the word when it is applied to Abraham (Gen_20:7) as one in friendly communion with God; for this patriarch here receives the title “as the God addressed or inspired, because the inward speaking or inspiration of God constitutes the essence of prophecy.”1 [Note: G. T. Ladd, The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, 125.]
5. The thing that is most remarkable in the whole story is that God should apparently have taken Abraham's part instead of humbling and punishing him in the sight of the heathen. To us the Almighty seems to have had just cause for contracting Abraham into Abram, and sending him back into his own country “a sadder but a wiser man.” In discussing a subject so delicate we must awaken the attention of our whole mind and heart; for the loss of a word may be the loss of a truth.
(1) Observe, first of all, that if the Divine purpose is to be turned aside by the fault or blemish found in individual character, the Divine government of man is at an end, and human progress is an impossibility. Adam failed, so did Noah, so did Abraham, so did Lot. So clearly was it established as a sad and mournful truth that no individual man was perfect, that once and again God was moved to abolish the human race from the earth altogether. It was not Adam that sinned, or Noah, or Abraham; it was human nature that sinned. There seems to be a little advantage of one man over another in this or that particular, but the advantage even when real is only partial. Pharaoh seemed to be a better man than Abraham, but he was not so in reality. Take them bulk for bulk, character for character, Pharaoh was not to be mentioned with Abraham. Esau seemed to be a brave and noble son of the soil, and Jacob seemed to be a sneaking and vile schemer, with the making of an assassin under his smooth skin; but the judgment is not to be fixed at any one point; you must take the full stretch of time required by the Almighty in working out His purposes, and then it will be seen that under all appearances there was something undiscernible by the human eye which made every man chosen to leadership and renown in the holy kingdom the best man that could have been chosen for the purpose. You say that Abimelech was better than Abraham; now let me ask you what you know about Abimelech? Nothing but what is stated in this chapter. Very well. You are so far right. You have seen Abimelech at his best and you have seen Abraham at his worst, and then you have rushed to a conclusion.
The springs of human character lie beyond the reach of outward observation. External action is but an inadequate and often deceptive measure of inward spiritual capacity. What a man does or has done, or within the limits of our brief and bounded life can ever accomplish, is but an imperfect and often blurred and confused expression of the hidden potentialities of the spirit. Of that which constitutes the essence and reality of a human soul an outward observer may easily form a mistaken, can only form a partial and inadequate estimate. Only to an eye which penetrates to the root of character, which can embrace in its judgment the unrealized and boundless possibilities of the future as well as truly interpret the meaning of the past, only to an eye which measures life, not by action merely, but by the principles from which action springs and the inexhaustible productive force that is in them-only to such an eye does the true complexion and character of a human soul lie open.1 [Note: John Caird, University Sermons, 116.]
In entering the narrow channel of the Bermudas, the pilot stands not at the helm, but at the bows, looking down into the deep water, clear as crystal, to see the coral reef above which, or rather through which, he is threading his dangerous way. Sometimes there is scarcely twice the ship's own breadth between point and point; yet between those he must go, cannot pause, and ten feet divergence on either side would be shipwreck. He may do his work very awkwardly, and even be conscious of great mistakes; but with the most perfect humility he may utterly disclaim the power of any one standing on the shore to judge his seamanship, who is looking along a smooth, level surface, instead of looking down upon a bed of rocks that lie beneath the surface. No wonder that his tacks, and turns, zigzag eccentricities of course are perfectly unintelligible. “I would have steered direct to that point.” “Yes, my good friend, but did you see the rock? and if not, what can you know about the matter? Come up here, and then give me an opinion if you can.” Now, the pilot who is up there is not a wiser man than the other, but he has got a different point of view, and from that point he defies all human judgment, until you go and sit beside him.1 [Note: Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 170.]
(2) In the next place let us consider, knowing human nature as we do, how beneficial a thing it was to the great men themselves to be shown now and again that they were imperfect, and that they were only great and strong as they were good, as they were true to God. To be an illustrious leader, to have power and authority amongst men, always to be in high places, and to be absolutely without a fault of disposition, temper, or desire, is enough to tempt any man to think he is more than a man; and even to be without actual social fault that can be pointed out and blamed is not unlikely to give a man a false notion of the real state of his own nature.
We may learn quite as much from our failures as from our successes. I have seen more truly what I am by my faults than by my graces, and never have I prayed with so glowing a fervour as when I have seen that there is but a step between me and death and that I have nearly taken it.2 [Note: Joseph Parker.]
We need to beware of what we call success. The men who live in the region of easy successes never come to much. They match themselves against small things. It is in encountering the great things, where failures are so plentiful, that we come to our best. You aimed at the moon and hit a tree. Well, the endeavour was worth while, and perhaps you hit something besides the tree. It is often the invisible hits that count. The outside mark is untouched, but if you have made bull's-eyes in the region of fortitude, of patience, of industry, of self-mastery, the scoring has not been bad. When Madame de Chantal declares “there is something in me that has never been satisfied,” she is striking a note of failure that really means success. It means that we are made for such high things that the lower, however largely they bulk, do not enter in the calculation.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Life and the Ideal, 266.]
Even our failures are a prophecy,
Even our yearnings and our bitter tears
After that fair and true we cannot grasp;
As patriots who seem to die in vain
Make liberty more sacred by their pangs.
Presentiment of better things on earth
Sweeps in with every force that Stirs our souls
To admiration, self-renouncing love,
Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one:
Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night
We hear the roll and dash of waves that break
Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,
Which rises to the level of the cliff
Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind,
Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs.2 [Note: George Eliot, A Minor Prophet.]
