What Does Genesis 20:16 Mean?

To Sarah he said, "I am giving your brother a thousand shekels of silver. This is to cover the offense against you before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated." The thousand shekels of silver given to Sarah, addressed specifically to her, not to Abraham, is the reparation that covers the offense against her specifically. The king's address to Sarah directly, acknowledging the offense against her as a person and compensating her rather than only restoring her to her husband, is the chapter's recognition that the one most directly at risk in the situation was Sarah herself. She was the one in Abimelech's household; the offense against her was personal.

The phrase "you are completely vindicated" or "this is a covering of the eyes" (a difficult Hebrew phrase, ke-suth enayim in Hebrew) is the declaration that the payment restores Sarah's honor before all who had seen her taken into the royal household. The public witnesses to the situation, the servants, the court, the community, need to know that the transaction has been honorably resolved. The silver is the public token of that resolution. The vindication of Sarah as a person who was wronged and is now compensated is the chapter's final moral accounting for the situation that Abraham's deception created for his wife.

The direct address to Sarah and the explicit vindication of her honor is the chapter's most progressive element by ancient Near Eastern standards: the woman who was taken into a royal household is treated as a person whose honor was at stake and whose restoration is explicitly effected. The covenant theology of the person-as-made-in-God's-image produces this recognition even in the pragmatic resolution of a crisis: Sarah is vindicated as a person, specifically returned as property. Jesus consistently addressed and restored the honor of those whom the surrounding culture had marginalized or treated as property, the woman caught in adultery, the Samaritan woman, the woman with the issue of blood, in exactly the same pattern of personal address and explicit vindication.