Ibrāhīm Never Lied, Except Three Times

Ibrāhīm now made his hijrah out of Ḥarrān. Subḥān Allāh, Ibrāhīm (peace be upon him) lived the life of hijrah. So he left Ḥarrān, and he went to Egypt. When he got to Egypt, the news was carried to the king of Egypt at the time that there is a man who is accompanying the most beautiful woman. They were referring to Sārah (may Allah be pleased with her).

And this hadith is in al-Bukhārī. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says: Ibrāhīm never lied, except three times. Ibrāhīm never lied, except three times. And you'll see that these three lies don't even count as lies. Two of them were for the sake of Allah — and this is, I'm narrating to you the hadith — two of them, ithnatāni minhā fī dhāti Allāh: two of them are for the sake of Allah. When he said innī saqīm, and when he said bal faʿalahu kabīruhum hādhā. When Ibrāhīm said: I am ill, I am sick. And when he said: the big one is the one who did it.

You remember when we talked about the people of Ibrāhīm: that they would go out — they had this special night in which they would leave their town and go out and celebrate. All the town, they would leave. They would vacate the whole town; they would all go out and celebrate. So they wanted Ibrāhīm to come with them. But Ibrāhīm had a plan; he wanted to stay behind, because he had a plan in mind. But he can't stay behind except if he has an excuse.

So they told him: why aren't you coming with us? He said: I'm sick. What they understood is that he's physically ill. What Ibrāhīm meant inside is that he is sick of what they're doing. So that's a lie, because they understood something that he didn't: he meant something other than what they understood.

The second lie is when Ibrāhīm destroyed all of the idols. He hung the axe on the big idol; and then, when they came back and said, who is the one who destroyed the idols, Ibrāhīm said: he did. Now, obviously Ibrāhīm knows that he's not the one who did it. But Ibrāhīm wants to drive a point home. He wants to tell them: go and talk to your gods. Go and seek help from them, if they can do you any help. So these are the two that were done for the sake of Allah.