Genesis 20

Abraham and Abimelech

In Gerar Abraham again calls Sarah his sister, and the king takes her. God warns the king in a dream, names Abraham a prophet, and heals the king’s house when Abraham prays, keeping Sarah safe for the son the LORD has promised her.

Genesis chaptersChapter 20 of 50

As Genesis places it, Abraham was ninety-nine or a hundred (17:1; 21:5) and Sarah about ninety (17:17), in the year between the promise that Isaac would be born “at this set time in the next year” (17:21) and his birth (21:1–5). The text gives no year. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Chapter 20 is the second of three stories in which a patriarch living among foreigners calls his wife his sister: Abraham and Sarai in Egypt (Gen. 12:10–20), Abraham and Sarah…

Chapter 20 is the second of three stories in which a patriarch living among foreigners calls his wife his sister: Abraham and Sarai in Egypt (Gen. 12:10–20), Abraham and Sarah here in Gerar, and Isaac and Rebekah in Gerar (Gen. 26:1–11). The questions the stories share, whether Abraham lied, what “sister” could mean, and the Lord’s instruction before Egypt in the Book of Abraham, are taken up at Gen. 12:13. The notes here take up what is new in this chapter.

Its place in Genesis is what makes it tense. In chapter 17 God promised that Sarah would bear Isaac “at this set time in the next year” (Gen. 17:21). At Mamre the promise was repeated: “At the time appointed… Sarah shall have a son” (Gen. 18:14). Sodom fell in chapter 19. Then, in the months before Isaac’s birth (Gen. 21:1–2), the woman who is to bear him is taken into a foreign king’s house.

Most of the chapter is talk: God and Abimelech in a dream, then Abimelech and Abraham face to face. Abraham does not speak to God until he prays in verse 17. Abimelech returns in Gen. 21:22–34 to make a covenant with Abraham at Beer-sheba. A psalm later sums up stories like this one: the Lord “reproved kings for their sakes” (Ps. 105:14), warning them not to touch His anointed and to “do my prophets no harm” (Ps. 105:15).

The thread through the chapter

The chapter turns on the fear of God. Abraham explains himself to Abimelech: “I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place” (verse 11).

The chapter turns on the fear of God. Abraham explains himself to Abimelech: “I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place” (verse 11). By then the reader knows he was wrong. God came to Abimelech in a dream; the king answered with a plea of innocence, rose early, and told his servants, and “the men were sore afraid” (verse 8). The verb is yare’, “fear,” the root of the noun in Abraham’s “fear (yir’at) of God.”

Yet God does not exchange the two men’s places. He tells the king that Abraham “is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee” (verse 7), and the king’s house is healed only when Abraham prays (verse 17). Through it all the one the LORD is guarding is Sarah, “Abraham’s wife” (verse 18), and the next chapter begins, “the LORD visited Sarah as he had said” (Gen. 21:1). The promise is kept by the LORD, who “can maintain His covenant and secure the realization of His promise,” at a moment when the man who carries it is afraid.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–2

Abraham in Gerar

In plain words

Abraham moved on from there into the Negev, the south country, and settled between Kadesh and Shur, living as a foreigner in Gerar. Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister,” and Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah.

1 And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar.

Context #

Between Kadesh and Shur

Abraham moved into the Negev, the south country. “From thence” is not explained; the last place Genesis put him was Mamre, where the LORD had visited him (Gen. 18:1).

Abraham moved into the Negev, the south country. “From thence” is not explained; the last place Genesis put him was Mamre, where the LORD had visited him (Gen. 18:1). Kadesh and Shur are near where the angel found Hagar, “by the fountain in the way to Shur,” at a well “between Kadesh and Bered” (Gen. 16:7, 14).

Gerar was “a place in southwestern Palestine, near Gaza,” where Isaac would also live. A town near Gaza is hard to describe as “between Kadesh and Shur,” and the verse is read in more than one way: it may pass over a move from the desert to the coast, or Abraham may have kept his camp between Kadesh and Shur and gone from there to Gerar. Either way he “sojourned” (gur) in Gerar: he lived there as a foreigner, which matters in verse 11. Genesis gives no reason for the move.

Sources: Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. “Gerar”, Bible Dictionary. Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis, Trans. Sophia Taylor, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889); read on archive.org. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.

Related Scriptures #

Again?

Joseph Smith’s translation answers the first question a reader asks here, whether this is the same event as the one in Egypt told a second time.

Joseph Smith’s translation answers the first question a reader asks here, whether this is the same event as the one in Egypt told a second time. In both of his manuscripts the verse reads, “Abraham said again of Sarah his wife, she is my sister.” The one added word makes it a second event, and so the Prophet understood it.

Many scholars do take the Egypt and Gerar stories as “two versions of the same story.” In one such reading it is “almost incredible” that Abraham would do the same thing again, with Sarah “advanced in years” and the promise of a son just given, and the chapter is “most probably… a duplicate” of the tradition in chapter 12. Another reading answers that a repetition “in the space of 24 years is by no means startling,” since apart from the one shared point “all the more minute details are entirely different.” The text bears that out. In Egypt the princes praised Sarai’s beauty to Pharaoh (Gen. 12:15); here no one mentions it. Pharaoh learns the truth through plagues and sends Abraham off, “take her, and go thy way” (Gen. 12:19); Abimelech is warned by God in a dream and offers Abraham his land (verse 15). In Egypt Abram says nothing in his defense; here he explains himself at length (verses 11–13).

What “sister” could mean, and the Lord’s instruction before Egypt, are explained at Gen. 12:13.

Sources: Old Testament Revision 1, The Joseph Smith Papers. Old Testament Revision 2, The Joseph Smith Papers. Gaye Strathearn, “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah”, In Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2005), 100–116. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Context #

Why take a woman of ninety?

Sarah was about ninety (Gen. 17:17), and Genesis does not say why the king wanted her.

Sarah was about ninety (Gen. 17:17), and Genesis does not say why the king wanted her. One reading supposes that the king “was not concerned for sensual enjoyment, but that he desired to ally himself as brother-in-law to Abraham the wealthy nomad prince.” Marrying the sister of a rich stranger would make the king his kinsman. It remains an inference; the text gives no motive.

Abimelech means “Father-king.” Isaac later deals with an Abimelech in Gerar too, there called “king of the Philistines” (Gen. 26:1). The two kings are “possibly the same person”; some take the name as a title of Philistine kings, as Pharaoh was a title in Egypt.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis, Trans. Sophia Taylor, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889); read on archive.org. “Abimelech”, Bible Dictionary. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

Verses 3–7

God warns Abimelech in a dream

In plain words

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken, for she is a married woman.” Abimelech had not gone near her. He said, “Lord, will you kill a nation that is innocent? Didn’t he tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I did this with a clear conscience and clean hands.”

God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience. It was I who kept you from sinning against me; that is why I did not let you touch her. Now give the man back his wife. He is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live. But if you do not give her back, know that you will surely die, you and all who are yours.”

3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife.

Language #

A dead man

The Hebrew is two words, hinnekha met, “behold, you are dying.” The form is a participle, which puts death before the king “as certainly at hand.”

The Hebrew is two words, hinnekha met, “behold, you are dying.” The form is a participle, which puts death before the king “as certainly at hand.” Yet God’s next words leave him a way out: return the woman and “thou shalt live”; refuse and “thou shalt surely die” (verse 7).

Joseph Smith’s translation puts that condition at the start of the dream: “behold, thou hast taken a woman which is not thine own; for she is Abrahams wife. And the Lord said unto him, thou shalt return her unto Abraham, for if thou do it not thou shalt die.” In both texts the warning leaves the king a way to live, and he takes it at dawn (verse 8).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis, Trans. Sophia Taylor, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889); read on archive.org. Old Testament Revision 2, The Joseph Smith Papers.

4 But Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation?

Related Scriptures #

Abraham’s question in a king’s mouth

Abimelech asks God the question Abraham had asked about Sodom a short time before: “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?… Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

Abimelech asks God the question Abraham had asked about Sodom a short time before: “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?… Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:23, 25). The word for “righteous” is the same, tsaddiq, and the lexicon lists this verse with Abraham’s plea, under righteous in conduct “towards God.” Here it can be read “an innocent nation”: the king “appeals to the instinct of justice, that God will not punish the innocent, as if they were guilty.” He speaks for a whole nation, and the danger is to all of them: God’s warning covers “thou, and all that are thine” (verse 7), and the king will tell Abraham that he has brought a great sin “on me and on my kingdom” (verse 9).

The reversal is plain in the text. At Sodom Abraham pleaded for the righteous among a wicked people. In Gerar a foreign king pleads his own righteousness to God, and it is Abraham’s words that have put him in danger. God does not dispute the plea (verse 6).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.

5 Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this.

6 And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.

Language #

Kept from sin

God accepts Abimelech’s plea and tells him something he did not know: his innocence was partly God’s doing.

God accepts Abimelech’s plea and tells him something he did not know: his innocence was partly God’s doing. How God kept him back is explained in verse 17: God “healed Abimelech,” so the king himself had been struck along with his household. Joseph Smith’s translation states it outright: “Abimelech had not come near her; for the Lord had not suffered him.”

God calls what nearly happened a sin “against me”: “the violation of moral law is sin against God.” Abimelech will call it “a great sin” when he confronts Abraham (verse 9).

7 Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine.

Language #

The first prophet

This is the first time the Bible calls anyone a prophet (Hebrew navi), and the first prophet it names is Abraham.

This is the first time the Bible calls anyone a prophet (Hebrew navi), and the first prophet it names is Abraham. The lexicon gives the word’s sense as “spokesman, speaker, prophet.” What God says Abraham will do as a prophet, though, is not to speak to Abimelech but to speak for him. The verb hitpallel with be’ad, “on behalf of,” means to “intercede.” Abraham had already stood “before the LORD” to plead for Sodom (Gen. 18:22–33), which is called “prophetic intercession,” and “Abraham is a distinctive example of this.”

The same pattern comes back in scripture. God sends Job’s friends to Job with an offering: “my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept” (Job 42:8), and the sending of Abimelech to Abraham’s prayers “recalls” that verse.

Sources: Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis, Trans. Sophia Taylor, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889); read on archive.org.

Verses 8–13

Abimelech confronts Abraham

In plain words

Early in the morning Abimelech called all his servants and told them everything, and the men were terrified. Then Abimelech called Abraham and said, “What have you done to us? How have I wronged you, that you have brought such a great sin on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should never be done.” And Abimelech asked Abraham, “What did you have in mind when you did this?”

Abraham answered, “I thought, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother, and she became my wife. When God made me wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you can show me: everywhere we go, say of me, He is my brother.’”

8 Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid.

9 Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done.

10 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing?

11 And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake.

Context #

No fear of God in this place?

Abraham’s fear came from being a foreigner. He assumed that a people who did not fear God “would not be afraid of any Divine retribution, if they took the life of a stranger”;…

Abraham’s fear came from being a foreigner. He assumed that a people who did not fear God “would not be afraid of any Divine retribution, if they took the life of a stranger”; “the stranger had no rights,” and no kinsman nearby to avenge his death. The “fear of God” (yir’at Elohim) is reverence, piety. Joseph later reassures his brothers with the same appeal: “This do, and live; for I fear God” (Gen. 42:18).

Abraham was wrong about Gerar. When Abimelech told his servants of the dream, “the men were sore afraid” (verse 8), and the king acted throughout as a man answerable to God. One reading calls him “the God-fearing heathen monarch.” Genesis does not hide the contrast, but it does not end there: it is still Abraham’s prayer that God hears (verse 17).

12 And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.

Context #

Sister and wife

Abraham says that Sarah was his half-sister, a daughter of his father Terah by another mother.

Abraham says that Sarah was his half-sister, a daughter of his father Terah by another mother. This is the only place Genesis says so. When it records the marriage, it names Nahor’s wife Milcah as “the daughter of Haran,” and Haran as “the father of Iscah” too, but gives no father for Sarai (Gen. 11:29). The Jewish historian Josephus has a different family tree: Haran left “Sarai and Milcha his daughters,” and “Abram married Sarai,” his niece. In this he was following a rabbinic tradition that identified Sarai with Iscah. The Church’s wording does not choose between them: “Because Abraham and Sarah both descended from Terah, customs of their time would likely have allowed for Abraham to accurately refer to Sarah as his sister.”

A reader may also notice that the law of Moses would later forbid exactly this marriage, to “thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother” (Lev. 18:9).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Trans. William Whiston; online at penelope.uchicago.edu. Gaye Strathearn, “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah”, In Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2005), 100–116. Genesis 12–17; Abraham 1–2, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.

13 And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother.

Context #

Abraham’s explanation

Abraham’s last answer is that the arrangement was an old one. From the time “God caused me to wander from my father’s house,” he had asked Sarah to call him her brother wherever they went.

Abraham’s last answer is that the arrangement was an old one. From the time “God caused me to wander from my father’s house,” he had asked Sarah to call him her brother wherever they went. In Abraham’s own record the instruction first came from the Lord, as they drew near Egypt: “Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live” (Abr. 2:22–25). Genesis 20 records no new word from the Lord for Gerar, and the reason Abraham gives here is his own fear (verse 11).

He may also be choosing his words for a foreign king. The verb “caused me to wander” (hit’u) is plural in Hebrew, though “God” (Elohim) normally takes a singular verb; the plural appears in a few places “when an Israelite speaks to heathen, or else heathen are speaking of God.” In one reading Abraham is “accommodating himself to the polytheistic standpoint of the Philistine king,” describing his call as a wandering and “saying nothing about Jehovah, and the object of his wandering as revealed by Him.”

The Old Testament “is willing to show us the complexities of men and women like Abraham and Sarah,” and “we do not need to see the patriarchs and matriarchs as always acting perfectly,” which “does not mean that we should ascribe to them gross unrighteousness.” Of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, latter-day revelation says that “they have entered into their exaltation” (D&C 132:37).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.

Verses 14–18

Sarah restored and Abimelech healed

In plain words

Then Abimelech took sheep and cattle and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham, and he gave his wife Sarah back to him. Abimelech said, “My land is open to you; live wherever you like.” To Sarah he said, “I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. He is a covering of the eyes for you before all who are with you and before everyone.” And so Sarah was reproved.

Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, so that they bore children. For the Lord had closed every womb in Abimelech’s household because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

14 And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife.

15 And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before thee: dwell where it pleaseth thee.

16 And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was reproved.

Language #

A covering of the eyes

The Hebrew of this verse is difficult (“the text in the original is very doubtful”), and Joseph Smith’s translation gives it a plain sense: “behold, he shall give unto thee a…

The Hebrew of this verse is difficult (“the text in the original is very doubtful”), and Joseph Smith’s translation gives it a plain sense: “behold, he shall give unto thee a covering of the eyes, And it shall be a token unto all, that thou mayest not be taken again from Abraham thy husband.” Abraham, the “brother” who has received the silver, is to give Sarah a covering that will be a token to everyone, so that she is not taken from her husband again.

Otherwise the phrase is read as a figure. The lexicon explains a “covering of the eyes” as a covering “so that they cannot see the wrong, figurative of a present offered in compensation for it.” Jacob uses a related idiom when he plans to “appease” Esau with a present (Gen. 32:20); the Hebrew says, literally, to cover his face. On either reading the gift was large. Silver was weighed, not coined, and a thousand pieces (shekels) was a great sum when the law later valued a servant’s life at “thirty shekels of silver” (Ex. 21:32).

The last words, “thus she was reproved,” are uncertain too. The King James translators rendered the Hebrew verb (yakach) “reproved,” Joseph Smith’s translation keeps the word, and in 1828 to reprove still meant “to blame; to censure.” Read with different vowels, the same word means “thou art set right, righted, justified,” and a modern translation ends the verse, “you are completely vindicated.” Abimelech’s “thy brother” has an edge either way: it repeats the word Sarah had used, and one reading hears it as sarcasm.

Sources: Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Old Testament Revision 2, The Joseph Smith Papers. Old Testament Revision 1, The Joseph Smith Papers. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.

17 So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children.

18 For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham’s wife.

Context #

Wombs closed because of Sarah

Verse 18 explains the illness that had kept Abimelech from Sarah: no one in his household could bear children until Abraham prayed and “they bare children” (verse 17).

Verse 18 explains the illness that had kept Abimelech from Sarah: no one in his household could bear children until Abraham prayed and “they bare children” (verse 17). In Genesis a closed womb and an opened one are both the Lord’s doing. Sarai said of her own childlessness, “the LORD hath restrained me from bearing” (Gen. 16:2); the LORD “opened” Leah’s womb (Gen. 29:31); and God “remembered Rachel… and opened her womb” (Gen. 30:22).

All of this happened “because of Sarah,” and the timing gives it point. Abraham and Sarah “were still awaiting the time when they would be given a son to carry on the covenant.” A whole royal household was made barren for the sake of a barren woman of ninety who had been promised a child.

Verse 18 is also the only place in the chapter where the narrator uses the name the LORD (YHWH, Jehovah); everywhere else it is “God.” In one reading the change is deliberate: the disease came “not as Elohim… but as Jehovah, the God of salvation,” to guard His purpose and “the birth of the promised son from Sarah.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gaye Strathearn, “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah”, In Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2005), 100–116. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 20

The LORD who closes the wombs of Abimelech’s house “because of Sarah” (verse 18) is Jehovah, “the premortal Jesus Christ.” In Gerar He is guarding the mother of the son He had promised. Among the promises made to Abraham was that “Jesus Christ would be born through his lineage,” and Paul names the seed to whom the promises were made: “to thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). The Lord who kept Sarah safe in Gerar was guarding the line through which He Himself would be born.

Worth exploring next

The three wife-sister stories. Gen. 12:10–20; Gen. 26:1–11. “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah” (Sperry Symposium, Religious Studies Center) reads all three in the light of the Book of Abraham.
Abraham the intercessor. Gen. 18:22–33; Gen. 20:7, 17; compare Job 42:7–10.
Abimelech again. Gen. 21:22–34, the covenant at Beer-sheba.
The promise kept. Gen. 18:9–15; Gen. 21:1–7; Heb. 11:11.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828.
Old Testament Revision 1, The Joseph Smith Papers.
Old Testament Revision 2, The Joseph Smith Papers.
“Gerar”, Bible Dictionary.
“Abimelech”, Bible Dictionary.
“Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary.
Genesis 12–17; Abraham 1–2, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
Gaye Strathearn, “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah”, In Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2005), 100–116.
Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.
Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Trans. William Whiston; online at penelope.uchicago.edu.
Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis, Trans. Sophia Taylor, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889); read on archive.org.
Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
Genesis 18–23: Abraham—A Model of Faith and Righteousness, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).

I’ve studied Genesis 20