32.]
[Had the Philistines come suddenly upon Abraham, and threatened to put him to death for his wife's sake, we should the less have wondered that they were prevailed upon to conceal their relation to each other. But he had committed this same: offence many years before ; and had thereby ensnared Pharaoh king of Egypt ; nor was he then delivered without a divine interposition, and a just rebuke from the injured monarch b. Surely he ought to have profited by past experience: he should have been sensible of the evil of such a proceeding ; and, having been once rescued, as it were by a miracle, he should never have subjected himself again to such danger, reproach, and infamy. The repetition of so heinous a crime, after such a warning and such a deliverance, increased its malignity an hundred-fold.]
If we consider the offence of Abraham in this complicated view, we shall not wonder at,
II. The rebuke given him on account of it —
Abimelech, admonished by God in a dream to restore Abraham his wife, sent for him, and reproved him for the imposition he had practised. In this rebuke we observe,
1. Much that was disgraceful to Abraham —
[It was no little disgrace that Abraham, a saint, a prophet of the most high God, should be reproved at all by a heathen : but, when we reflect how much occasion he had given for the reproof, it was disgraceful indeed.
The uncharitableness which he had manifested was very dishonourable to his character. He had indeed just heard of the horrible impiety of Sodom ; and he concluded perhaps, that if a whole city so virulently assaulted Lot for the purpose of gratifying their diabolical inclinations with the men that were his guests, much more would some individual be found in Gerar to destroy him, for the purpose of gaining access to a female that was so renowned for her beauty. Glad should we be to offer this excuse for him : but he had before acted in the same manner without any such considerations to influence his conduct ; and therefore we cannot lay any material stress on this recent occurrence. But supposing he had been actuated by such reflections, what right had he to judge so harshly of a people whom he did not know? Abimelech justly asked him, " What sawest thou that thou hast done this thing? " He had no other grounds than mere surmise : " I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place." But why should he think so ?
b Gen. xii. 12—20.