What Does Genesis 12:20 Mean?

Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had. The Egypt episode concludes with a royal escort out of the country. Pharaoh does not simply tell Abram to leave; he orders his men to facilitate the departure, presumably to ensure it actually happens and happens without incident. Sarai goes with him, and "everything he had", the goods accumulated through the deception, leaves with him too.

The departure from Egypt with goods, escorted out by Pharaoh's men, is the exact pattern of the Exodus departure: the Israelites left Egypt loaded with goods (silver, gold, and clothing given by the Egyptians in Ex. 12:35-36), escorted out by the urgency of Pharaoh's own initiative after a devastating plague sequence. The first patriarch's Egypt episode is the template for the whole nation's Egypt episode. The pattern was established at the family level before it was repeated at the national level.

The chapter closes without a theological commentary from the narrator. No condemnation of Abram is stated; no affirmation either. The reader leaves chapter 12 with the full complexity intact: a man who obeyed an extraordinary call with genuine faith, descended into a foreign land driven by fear, executed a deception that placed his wife in danger, was materially rewarded for it, was morally rebuked by a pagan king, and was finally expelled with his family intact and his goods increased. God's covenant survived Abram's failure. That is the chapter's quietly devastating and quietly glorious message. Jesus is the covenant keeper through whom what Abram could not sustain is permanently maintained.