Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa 1 Samuel 17:49

ויאמר...אל שרה אשתו, concerning his wife Sarah he told anyone inquiring about her אחותי היא, he told the same to Avimelech who inquired, as we know from verse 5 when the latter referred to Avraham having told him that Sarah was his sister. We find a similar meaning of the word אל in Samuel I 17,49 when the lineויך את הפלשתי אל מצחו, means: “it struck the Philistine on his forehead,” or the line אל ההרים לא אכל in Ezekiel 18,6 where the word אל does not mean “to” but the line means: “if he has not eaten on the mountains.” Avraham said this as soon as he arrived in Gerar, as he had heard that the people of that town were wicked people, as he mentioned to Avimelech in verse 11 where he told him that there was no fear of G’d in that town. A generation later Yitzchok had a similar experience in Gerar. Neither Avraham nor Yitzchok are on record as having made similar comments about the local populations of other towns they visited. As to why Avraham risked going to a town full of wicked people and endangered both himself and his wife, this is something we discussed in 12,12. What is more surprising is the fact that Sarah, so many years after her experience in Egypt, was still so physically attractive that she inspired physical passions among the people who saw her. Clearly, her good looks must have been the result of her regaining her youthful vigour when she became pregnant at the time the angels visited Avraham, and she herself remarked on that phenomenon. The time frame in which the events reported in this chapter occurred must have been immediately after the beginning of her pregnancy, mentioned in 21,1 in the past tense, i.e. וה' פקד את שרה, “and the Lord had benevolently remembered Sarah (allowing her to become pregnant).