But God came to Abimelech in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.” – Genesis 20:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 9, 2012): Genesis 20

I grew up watching some old T.V. shows, and there seemed to be some recurrent themes. One of them is the idea of a speed trap. Today we think a speed trap is just a place where the police like to wait for speeders because people like to speed there. (By the way, those don’t work for long because once we realize they are there we just speed somewhere else.) The speed trap that I remember from the television shows I watched as a kid were places where speed limit signs were hidden by the branches of the tree or maybe behind a bush or buried in some really tall grass. And, at least in my shows, whenever the driver complains that he didn’t see the sign – that is when the police officer pulls back the bush to reveal that the speed limit sign really was there. Now, that is a speed trap.

But the one thing that never happened in these shows was that the police officer looked astonished at the driver with the words “Oh, you didn’t see the speed limit sign we hid in that long grass over there? Oh, in that case let me tear up the speeding ticket I was writing for you.” No, in these shows the speed limit sign is never an accident – it is planned. And just because you didn’t know the sign was there doesn’t mean that you aren’t guilty of violating the law.

One of the fallacies of our culture is that ignorance means innocence. If I don’t know, then I can’t be held responsible. In the church it is in the belief that either it is better to ask forgiveness rather than permission, or more often in our idea that people aren’t responsible for God’s law if they don’t know what God’s law is. But this verse would seem to argue the reverse.

There is no reason to believe that Abimelech was a believer in the one true God. And he definitely didn’t know that the woman that he was about to sleep with was the wife of Abraham, and yet God still held him responsible. And maybe that is what it means to walk in fear of God. It definitely is the reason we need to keep short accounts with God – and act at the will of his Holy Spirit in us, even when we don’t understand the reason why.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 21