And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.
Abraham said of Sarah ... She is my sister - fear of the people among whom he was, tempted him to equivocate. His conduct was highly culpable. It was deceit, deliberate and premeditated-there was no sudden pressure upon him-it was the second offence of the kind-it was a distrust of God every way surprising, and it was calculated to produce injurious effects on the people around. Its mischievous tendency was not long in being developed.
Abimelech king of Gerar. Abimelech = father of the king, or my father-king. The name, like that of Pharaoh, seems to have been an official title, and probably assumed to distinguish the kingship as hereditary, not elective. He had a court and an army (Genesis 21:22); and from the close affinity of the government and usages to those of Egypt, there is every reason to believe the sovereigns were connected with the shepherd kings who ruled in lower Egypt (Deuteronomy 2:23), but who, being worsted in the politics convulsions of that country, had on their expulsion established themselves in the extensive pasture lands which lay along its northern border. Those early Philistines were a settled population, who occupied themselves for the most part in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and keeping cattle. They were far superior in civilization and refinement to the Canaanitish tribes around; and this polish they doubtless owed to their Egyptian origin.
On Abraham's arrival in Gerar he was exposed to the same risk on account of his wife's beauty, that he had formerly experienced in Egypt and the same result followed-namely, that of Sarah's being taken into the royal harem-a result to which Abraham himself had directly led, by following the unworthy course of equivocation concerning her relation to him as his wife. Abimelech sent and took her to be one of his wives, in the exercise of a privilege claimed by Eastern sovereigns, already explained, Genesis 12:19.