Genesis 20:7 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

He is a prophet. — This is not said as an aggravation of Abimelech’s sin, but as an encouragement to him to restore Sarah. It is therefore rightly joined with the words “He shall pray for thee.” For the word prophet is used here in its old sense of spokesman (comp. Exod. Genesis 7:1, with Genesis 4:16), and especially of such an one as mediates between God and man. There was a true feeling that God in His own nature is beyond the reach of man (Job 9:32-33; Job 16:21; 1 Timothy 6:16); and this in heathen nations led to men peopling their heavens with a multitude of minor deities. In Israel, after the founding of the prophetic schools by Samuel, the prophets became an order, whose office it was partly to enliven the services of the Temple with sacred minstrelsy (1 Chronicles 25:1), but chiefly to be God’s spokesmen, both declaring His will to Jew and Gentile (Jeremiah 1:5), and also maintaining religion and holiness by earnest preaching and other such means. In this way they were forerunners, and even representatives, of Christ, who is the one true and only Mediator between God and man. Not only Abraham, therefore, but the patriarchs generally are called “Christs and prophets (Psalms 105:15), as being speakers for God to man, and for man to God, until the true Christ and prophet came. Abimelech, moreover, is thus taught that he does not himself hold a near relation to God, but requires some one to speak for him; perhaps, too, he would gather from it that he had need of fuller instruction, and that he ought to try to attain to a higher level, and that Abraham would become a prophet to him in its other sense of being a teacher. (For the prophet as an intercessor, see Exodus 8:28-29; Deuteronomy 9:19-20; 1 Samuel 7:5; 1 Samuel 12:19; 1 Samuel 12:23; 1 Kings 13:6; Job 42:8.)