Is the purpose of this story to tell us that Abraham was a coward lacking in faith that he would use his wife to protect him from death? No, God brought Abraham there to teach Abimelech a lesson.
This incident gave Abimelech a good dose of humility as well and that’s a lesson we would do well to learn. It’s more pleasant to learn from other people’s mistakes than our own.
Why is it that God specifically told Moses to write down these places? We may not have a complete picture of it but God did not ask Moses to write this down just for the sake of history. There’s a bigger picture to be found in the names of these places that Moses records and we endeavor to discover God’s picture.
We will look at this chapter carefully. The events of this chapter occur near the end 40 year wilderness exile. After nearly 40 years, the people still complain about being removed from Egypt and “dying in the wilderness.”