Genesis 20:3

God was not happy with Abimelek's plan. And so one night God spoke to Abimelek in a dream and said, “You are going to die. You have taken Sarah to be your wife. She is already married to Abraham.”

Barkly (portions)

In The King James Version

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.

In Context

2Abimelek, the king of Gerar heard about Sarah, so he sent someone to get her. He wanted Sarah to be his wife. And it was there that Abraham again said, “Sarah is my sister.”

4At that time, Abimelek had not touched Sarah or gone to bed with her and so he said to the Lord, “But Lord! Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and she said that Abraham was her brother. I did not know that I was doing something wrong. I thought she was not married. Would you kill me and all my people who have done nothing wrong?”

Read all of Genesis 20

Cross References

Genesis 28:12In the night he had a dream. He saw stairs going up from the ground all the way into heaven. And he saw God's angels going up and down the stairs.

Genesis 37:5One day, Joseph had a dream and he told his brothers about it. He said, “I had a dream last night. All of us were out in the paddock tying up bundles of long grass, called wheat. My bundle was standing up in the middle and all your wheat was standing in a circle around my wheat. Then your wheat bowed down to my wheat.”

Genesis 40:5One night both the baker and the man who gave the king his wine, had dreams. Their dreams were different and had different meanings.

Genesis 41:1It was 2 years later that Pharaoh, the king of Egypt had a dream. In his dream he saw himself standing next to the Nile River.

Matthew Henry on Genesis 20:2-3

Abraham's Denial of His Wife. ( b. c. 1898.) 1 And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar. 2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah. Here is, 1. Abraham's removal from Mamre, where he had lived nearly twenty years, into the country of the Philistines: He sojourned in Gerar, v. 1 . We are not told upon what occasion he removed, whether terrified by the destruction of Sodom, or… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study Genesis 20:3