I gave the woman many days, that we might feast on account of our union and that she might mourn that great household from which she would go out and might prepare herself for life in Gerar. For she had lived a nomadic life, but I am not much for wandering out on the sands.
During that time, I began to hear a strange voice at night as I was drifting to sleep, and it would say to me “Abimelech, you are a dead man!” And I would rise in confusion and search my house and have my men search all around and we found no one. And they said it was a demon but I knew it was not.
Then one night, I was awakened by my own voice, and I realized that I was speaking aloud in my sleep, and my words were as follows: “Abimelech you are a dead man!” and I panicked for I believed that I was actually dead, and then I stopped and listened and I repeated the words again but I knew that they came through me but not from me, for they were words of prophecy from Adonai, whom I worship.
And I heard the voice again, but this time it was not my own, nor the one that I had heard before, but surely it was the voice of Adonai. And He said: “Look, you are a dead man, for the woman which you have taken, she is a man’s wife.”
“Adonai!” I gasped, “will you kill a righteous nation?” For I perceived that the infertility that we had experienced these last many days was a curse from Adonai, because Sarah was indeed Abraham’s wife, though I knew it not. And I perceived that God would crush our nation into oblivion because of this misunderstanding.
He did not immediately answer and in my fear I continued to apologize saying “Did he not tell me ‘She is my sister’? And she, even she herself said ‘he is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.”
I was silent again and waited and He spoke to me as in a dream or a vision, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. And I also withheld you from sinning against me, and I did not allow you to touch her. Now then, restore the wife to her man. He is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you will not restore her, know that you will surely die, you and all that is yours.”
And I rose early, before the dawn, and I called my men around me and told them these things, and they were very fearful, for like me, they fear Adonai with a great and holy fear.
So with my men around me, I went to Abraham’s tent and I called out to him, “Man of God, what have you done to us? How did I so greatly offend you that you thought it right to bring on me and my kingdom this great sin? You have done a thing to me that ought not to be done!” And thus I challenged him, for prophet or not, he was surely in the wrong.
He came out of his tent but he did not speak a word, and so I cried out again, though I was close enough to him that I did not need to cry out if I were not incensed against him.
“What did you see, that you have done this thing?”
At last the great man answered me. “Because I thought to myself, surely the fear of God is not in Gerar, and they will kill me that they may gain my wife. And indeed, she is my sister - the daughter of my father, though not of my mother - and she became my wife.”
He drew near to me now and I saw tears in his eyes as he continued, speaking meekly it seemed: “When God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘this is your kindness which you must show to me: at every place to which we shall come, say of me, “He is my brother.”’”
I placed my hand on his shoulder and we looked at each other, and we said no more, and I returned to my house and he to his. Later that day I came to him, with more sheep and oxen and slaves than I had given during my entire courtship with that lady Sarah, and I restored to the man his wife and gave him these many gifts and entreated him that he should pray for me. I said also to him “Look, my land is before you, dwell wherever you will.” And looking to Sarah I said “Look, I am giving your brother a thousand pieces of silver. Let it be as a veil to cover your eyes, and the eyes of all those who are with you and with me, that you may be cleared.”
So Abraham prayed to God on my behalf, and God healed me and my wife and my men and women, that they bore children once more.