What Does Genesis 20:11 Mean?

Abraham replied, "I said to myself, 'There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.'" Abraham's explanation begins with his assumption about Gerar: "no fear of God in this place." He assumed that a society without the fear of God would not respect the life of a married man whose wife attracted the interest of powerful men. The assumption shaped the deception: if there is no fear of God, there is no moral restraint on the behavior of the powerful, and the powerful will eliminate the husband to take the wife without legal or moral consequence. The self-protective deception was driven by this assumption about the moral character of Gerar.

The irony of the explanation is visible to the reader who has just watched the chapter unfold. Abimelech has demonstrated exactly the opposite of Abraham's assumption: he had not touched Sarah, he responded to the divine dream with immediate fear and obedience, he demanded a full account from the person who wronged him, and he conducted the confrontation with judicial fairness. The place that Abraham assumed had no fear of God has just displayed far more godly response to the situation than the covenant patriarch himself. The assumption about the godlessness of outsiders has been falsified by the behavior of the one assumed to be godless.

Jesus consistently challenged the assumption that the covenant insiders were more responsive to God than the outsiders. The Roman Centurion's faith exceeded what Jesus had found in Israel; the Samaritan leper was the one who returned to give thanks; the Samaritan merchant stopped when the Jewish travelers passed by. The covenant that was given to produce the fear of God in its community does not guarantee that fear will be found only within the community. Abimelech's response to the divine dream is the Genesis 20 version of the centurion's faith: unexpected faithfulness from the expected pagan, confounding the covenant insider's assumption about where the fear of God resides.