What Does Genesis 20:9 Mean?

Then Abimelech called Abraham in and said, "What have you done to us? How have I wronged you that you have brought such great guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done." Abimelech's confrontation of Abraham is a formal accusation in the context of their unequal power relationship: the king confronting his guest of lower political status for actions that nearly resulted in the king's death. The question "What have you done to us?" is the complaint of a ruler whose entire kingdom was placed at risk. "Such great guilt upon me and my kingdom" is the political and moral language of a leader accounting for the welfare of all under his authority.

"You have done things to me that should not be done" is the moral language of natural law rather than Torah. Abimelech is a Philistine king with no access to the Abrahamic covenant's specific ethical requirements; his judgment that what Abraham did "should not be done" comes from the moral knowledge available to all humans as created beings. This is the natural law tradition in its biblical expression: the moral knowledge that deceiving someone about the marital status of a spouse is wrong is not restricted to the covenant community but is available to all human beings as a matter of the created moral order. Paul argues in Romans 1-2 that Gentiles who do not have the law have the law written on their hearts.

The pagan king rebuking the covenant patriarch for ethical failure is one of the most uncomfortable reversals in the patriarchal narrative. Abraham is the great man of faith, the friend of God, the one through whom all nations will be blessed, and he is being correctly rebuked by a Philistine king for deception that put the king and his household in mortal danger. The biblical narrative refuses to idealize its heroes; the same faith that is credited as righteousness in chapter 15 coexists with the fear and deception of chapter 20. Jesus alone among the biblical figures is without the moral failures that Mark everyone else, which is what makes Him the one sufficient sacrifice and sufficient intercessor for all the others.