Sarah

In the Hebrew Bible

Narrative

In the biblical narrative, Sarah is the wife of Abraham. She was originally called Sarai. During the narrative of the covenant of circumcision in Genesis 17, God renames Abram and Sarai as Abraham and Sarah, then promises them that they will have a son. According to most modern scholars, both Sarah and Sarai come from the same root SRR, with both meaning "important woman". A minority of scholars derive Sarai from the root SRY, meaning "contend with" or "withstand", similar to the name Israel.

Terah, with Abram (as he was then called), Sarai and Lot, departed for Canaan, but stopped in a place named Harran, where Terah remained until he died at the age of 205. God told Abram to leave his country and his father's house for a land that he would show him, promising to make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, bless those who blessed him, and curse "him" that curses him. Following God's command, Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and the wealth and slaves that they had acquired, and traveled to Shechem in Canaan. Abram was 75 at this time.

There was a severe famine in the land of Canaan, so Abram and Lot and their households travelled south to Egypt. On the journey to Egypt, Abram instructed Sarai to identify herself only as his sister, fearing that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take his wife, saying,

I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'this is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you. When brought before Pharaoh, Sarai said that Abram was her brother, and the king thereupon took her into his palace and bestowed upon Abram many presents and marks of distinction. However, God afflicted Pharaoh's household with great plagues. Pharaoh then realized that Sarai was Abram's wife and demanded that they leave Egypt immediately.

Genesis 16:1 records that Sarai had "an Egyptian servant", Hagar, whom Sarai may have brought with her from this time.

After having lived in Canaan for ten years and still childless, Sarai suggested that Abram have a child with her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, to which he agreed. Hagar's pregnancy resulted in tension between Sarai and Hagar, and Sarai complained to her husband that the handmaid no longer respected her. At one point, Hagar fled from her mistress but returned after angels consoled her. She gave birth to Abram's son Ishmael when Abram was eighty-six years old.

Later Hebrew Bible references

Sarah is mentioned alongside Abraham in Isaiah 51:2:

Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you.

New Testament references

The First Epistle of Peter praises Sarah for obeying her husband. She is praised for her faith in the Hebrews "hall of faith" passage alongside a number of other Old Testament figures. Other New Testament references to Sarah are in Romans and Galatians. In Galatians 4, she and Hagar are used as an allegory of the old and new covenants:

"For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother...Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise...Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman."

Historicity

In the early and middle 20th century, leading archaeologists such as William Foxwell Albright and biblical scholars such as Albrecht Alt believed that the patriarchs and matriarchs were either real individuals or believable composites of people who lived in the "patriarchal age", the 2nd millennium BCE. But in the 1970s, new arguments concerning Israel's past and the biblical texts challenged these views; these arguments can be found in Thomas L. Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (1974), and John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition (1975). Thompson, a literary scholar, based his argument on archaeology and ancient texts. His thesis centered on the lack of compelling evidence that the patriarchs lived in the 2nd millennium BCE, and noted how certain biblical texts reflected first-millennium conditions and concerns. Van Seters examined the patriarchal stories and argued that their names, social milieu, and messages strongly suggested that they were Iron Age creations. By the beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists had given up hope of recovering any context that would make the patriarchs and matriarchs credible historical figures.

Religious views

In Judaism

Sarah first appears in the Book of Genesis, while the Midrash and Aggadah provide some additional commentary on her life and role within Judaism and its ancestral form, Yahwism. She is born Sarai (Hebrew: שָׂרַי) in Ur Kaśdim, or Ur of the Chaldees, believed to have been in present-day Iraq, 1,958 Anno Mundi, according to the Hebrew calendar. She was the daughter of Haran and the granddaughter of Terah, an idolater who worshiped the Moon god Nanna and high-ranking servant of Nimrod, the king of Shinar, or Mesopotamia, but not of his wife, Amathlai. Her name is a feminine form of sar (Hebrew: שַׂר), meaning "chieftain" or "prince". Through Terah, she would have been a 10th-generation descendant of Noah, still alive, living in the Mountains of Ararat, and over nine centuries old at the time of her birth. No details are given as to her life or her religious beliefs before Abraham's return to Ur Kaśdim to thwart Nimrod's efforts to proclaim himself a god. It is known she wed Abraham, then called Abram, sometime between the ages of forty and five and following her husband's public humiliation of Nimrod, she, along with her father Terah, her orphaned nephew Lot, her manservant Eliezer, and some three hundred others left Ur Kaśdim for Canaan, the present-day Levant, to save Abraham from a plot by Nimrod to destroy him, commanded to do so by God.

En route to Canaan, the group stopped in Harran, possibly located in present-day Turkey, settling there for some twenty years, until God urged them to move on and so, they left Terah behind to live out his days, and traveled through Shechem and Bethel, both cities in the present-day West Bank, and, when a famine strikes the region, to Mizraim, present-day Egypt. While in Mizraim, Sarah's beauty attracts the attention of Pharaoh and Abraham, fearing the Egyptians would kill him if they knew Sarah was married to him, introduces himself as her brother and so, Pharaoh bestows upon Abraham great wealth, in the form of livestock and slaves, including Hagar, so that he may take Sarah as his concubine, to live in his palace with him. For Pharaoh's unintentional transgression against Abraham, he and members of his household, save for Sarah, are stricken with plague. Pharaoh then realizes that Abraham is Sarah's husband, not only her brother. Despite Abraham's willful deceit of Pharaoh, Pharaoh does not punish Abraham nor does he require the return of the wealth Abram was given in exchange for Sarah. However, he orders them to leave Mizraim. After leaving Mizraim, Lot splits from their group amicably. He eventually settles in Sodom, over disputes related to the livestock.

They returned to Canaan, and a decade passed and still, she and Abraham had no children. Thus, Sarah offered Hagar, her slavewoman, as a concubine to her husband so that he may have a child. Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael. During Hagar's pregnancy, Sarah and Hagar's relationship deteriorated rapidly, with Sarah striking her and Hagar fleeing into the desert to avoid her, returning only at the urging of angels. God then told Abraham that Sarah would give him a son. Sarah, then ninety years old, laughed at this idea. But, as prophesied, she became pregnant with Isaac and she nursed him herself. She would ultimately demand that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away and so, Abraham banished them and sent them into the desert.

In Islam

The Islamic portrayal of Sarah, who is unnamed in the Quran, mimics that of her portrayal in Judaism and Christianity, in that she is a good woman, kin and wife to Abraham, who, after years of barrenness, has a son, the prophet Isaac (Is'ḥāq). However, notable differences exist in the portrayal of her relationships with Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael. She is not portrayed as Abraham's sister but his first cousin, said to be the daughter of Terah's brother, Haran, and Hagar is not portrayed as Abraham's mistress but a second wife, eliminating the hostility that Sarah feels for Hagar during her pregnancy and toward Ishmael.

The Quran likewise repeats the biblical story that Sarah laughed when she received a divine message confirming her pregnancy, although in the Quran this message is heralded by angels and not by God himself:

Tomb of Sarah

Sarah is believed to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (known by Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham). The compound, located in the ancient city of Hebron, is the second holiest site for Jews (after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem), and is also venerated by Christians and Muslims, both of whom have traditions which maintain that the site is the burial place of three biblical couples; Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah.

Relationship to Abraham

There are three stories in Genesis where a patriarch identifies his wife as his sister; scholars debate the relationship among these, with some saying that the account of the encounter of Abraham and Sarah with Pharaoh in Genesis 12-13 is the oldest, while the stories of Abraham and Sarah encounter King Abimelech in Genesis 20, and of Isaac and Rebecca's encounter with a different King Abimelech in Genesis 26, are interpretations of that one, generated to explain it or deal with other matters of concern. It is not clear which of the stories is actually older, or what the intent of the editors of the Bible may have been. Such unions were later explicitly banned in the Book of Leviticus (Leviticus 18:9). However, some commentators identify her as Iscah (Genesis 11:29), a daughter of Abraham's brother Haran, and point out that Abraham's claim that she was his half-sister was a lie to avoid saying that she was his wife.

According to Emanuel Feldman (1965), basing his argument on Albright's interpretation of the archaeology of Nuzu, a wife could legally be awarded the title "sister", and that this was the most sacred form of marriage, and hence Abraham and Isaac referred to their wives as "sisters" for this reason. Most archaeologists, however, dispute that view, instead arguing the opposite - that sisters in the region were often awarded the title "wife" in order to give them much greater status in society. Savina Teubal's book Sarah the Priestess posits that while Sarah was indeed both Abram's wife and sister, there was no incest taboo because she was a half-sister by a different mother.

In popular culture

Sarah has been featured in several novels, and she is the central character in Sarah by Orson Scott Card in the Women of Genesis series, Sarai: A Novel by Jill Eileen Smith (2012), and Sarah: A Novel by Marek Halter, and Song of Sarai by Zannah Martin. In the Christian fiction novel Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, the protagonist, called "Angel" throughout the duration of the story, is barren. At the end of the book, she reveals that her birth name is "Sarah" to her husband, who takes the revelation as a promise from God that they will one day be able to have children. Sarah is also the focus of one of several stories collected in Sarah and After by Lynne Reid Banks.

In the 1994 film Abraham, Sarah is portrayed by Barbara Hershey.

Sarah is also a subject discussed in nonfiction books. In Twelve Extraordinary Women by Pastor John F. MacArthur, her life and story is analyzed along with that of Eve, Rahab, Ruth, Hannah, the Virgin Mary, Anna the Prophetess, the Samaritan woman at the well, Mary of Bethany, Martha, Mary Magdalene, and Lydia of Thyatira. Sarah appears alongside several other biblical women in Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible: Flawed Women Loved by a Flawless God by Liz Curtis Higgs.