When God said of Israel, "I have given her a certificate of divorce", it was a rhetorical statement only. (He's not *actually* married to Israel, after all.) God made promises to the twelve tribes of Israel and to utterly reject any of them would be to cease being God. Abraham's semi-repudiations of Sarah in Egypt and Philistia were prophetic of God's semi-repudiation of Israel and Judah. He expelled them from the land and from Zion for a time, but he also promised to restore them. Just as Abraham would never have utterly rejected Sarah, God will never utterly reject the physical, genetic descendants of Jacob.
#genesis 20 #vayeira