Genesis 20:12

Then, from a wish to make excuses for himself, he said, "Don't think I lied to you in that way; 'She is my sister on my father's side, though not my mothers, and she became my wife all the same.' She claims the same father as I … and hence I called her my sister. So don't condemn me. Even if the fear of death brought me to this sorry pass and the dread of your killing me but sparing her, still what was said by me was not a lie in the way you imply." See what great pains the good man takes to show that he had not told a lie even in this matter. For you to learn everything precisely from me (he is saying), listen also to the plan we formed between us "when God led me out from my father's home." Observe in this case, I ask you, the good man's wisdom. He teaches them by way of story that from the very beginning he had a special relationship with God and that God had personally moved him from home and led him there so that the king might learn that he was one of those people who had great confidence in God.

And yet indeed she is my sister,.... In the same sense as Lot was his brother; for she was sister to Lot, and both were the children of Haran, the brother of Abraham: she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; she was the daughter of his father, being his granddaughter, grandchildren are sometimes called children, but not the daughter or granddaughter of Abraham's mother; Terah having had two wives, by the one he had Haran, the father of Sarah, and by the other Abraham.

Some think she was own sister to Lot, who is called his brother Lot ( ch. xiv. 16 ), though he was his nephew; so Sarah is called his sister. But those to whom he said, She is my sister, understood that she was so his sister as not to be capable of being his wife; so that it was an equivocation, with an intent to deceive.

She is my sister - I have not told a lie; I have suppressed only a part of the truth. In this place it may be proper to ask, What is a lie? It is any action done or word spoken, whether true or false in itself, which the doer or speaker wishes the observer or hearer to take in a contrary sense to that which he knows to be true. It is, in a word, any action done or speech delivered with the intention to deceive, though both may be absolutely true and right in themselves.

yet indeed she is my sister--(See on Ge 11:31). What a poor defense Abraham made. The statement absolved him from the charge of direct and absolute falsehood, but he had told a moral untruth because there was an intention to deceive (compare Ge 12:11-13).

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — starts-lowercase