History and Story (7)

Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Genesis 23:2  NASB

Weep– We have reached the end of our stories about Sarah.  The only remaining mention of her is a short account of her death (she is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is mentioned, a practice that is otherwise exclusively patriarchal).  However, there are two New Testament references that shed light on this woman.  The first is 1 Peter 3:6, a verse that proclaims Sarah an example of submission to a husband.  Peter calls such women “holy women of former ages who hoped in God.”  Here is an insight that is not obvious in the Genesis accounts.  We do not see Sarah portrayed as holy and a woman of hope, but Peter certainly considers her to be both.  This theme is repeated in Hebrews 11:11 – “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised.”  Here is a different Sarah, a woman who trusted in God’s promise.  Three characteristics emerge about Sarah. First, she is obedient.  Secondly, she is holy.  And thirdly, she trusts God’s promise.

We can certainly find the first of these attributes in her relationship to Abraham.  She follows him obediently into the desert to a land God will show them. She obeys Abraham even when it requires her to submit her body to another man (twice).  In fact, we see a lifetime of obedience punctuated with moment of emotional outbursts and demands.

“Holy” is a bit more difficult. Peter uses the word hagios, a word that derives its meaning from the context of ritual purity and ceremonial observance.   In Peter’s context, it means “morally upright” or “consecrated.”  The problem is that the stories surrounding Sarah do not seem to fit this description.  Peter amplifies this by adding, “who hoped in God.”  Here is the connection to Sarah.  Obedience and hope.  Peter is arguing that a wife with a disobedient husband must take a new approach to revealing God’s truth.  She must submit to her husband in a spirit of holiness and hope in God.  In this way, the witness of her character will bring the truth of God’s redemption to bear on her husband.  Peter uses Sarah as his example because she did submit to unjustified suffering at the hand of her husband during a time when he was being disobedient.  On both occasions when Abraham told her to offer sexual relationship with a potential threat, she did so.  The results were disastrous, but that does not discredit the obedience.  In fact, the only way that Pharaoh knew his action was displeasing to God must have come from the mouth of Sarah.  She did not trust her husband’s protection, but she did not stop trusting God’s.  In the midst of a very difficult situation, she still proclaimed the authority of Yahweh (even over Pharaoh).  Perhaps obedience and hope were not so far from her character after all.

Finally, Hebrews tells us that Sarah demonstrated “faith” since she considered God faithful to the promise. Given our story about her laughter, this may seem hard to reconcile.  The Greek word “faith” in this verse is pistei, a derivative of pistis.  It means, “a firm conviction or belief in the truth.”  In order to understand the example of Sarah, we must see that Hebrews 11:1 focuses our attention on the idea that faith is firm hope in the reality of things not present in observable evidence.  The definite article is absent before the word pistis, indicating that this is the general idea of faith, not necessarily the New Testament particular concept of faith.  So, the author of Hebrews is telling us what characteristics accompany the broadest definition of faith and those are simply, hope in unseen realities.

In this regard, the author gives Sarah as an example.  First, he makes it clear that Sarah herself exemplified hope in unseen reality. The inclusion of the pronoun (herself) emphasizes that this woman who previously did not exemplify faith (the story of her laughter) nevertheless came to the place of putting trust in God. The exact verb is hegeomai, a word that means “to regard, to esteem” or “to count as.”  She put trust in God in that she regarded God’s promise as truth even when the observable evidence seemed contrary.  In fact, this must have been the case.  Sarah became pregnant.  She must have committed herself to the actions required to achieve pregnancy even though she formally said that she was worn out and that her husband was too old.  She obeyed the implications of her commitment to hope in God’s promise.

These two New Testament references to Sarah help us see the full picture of this woman.  Sarah was a woman of trials.  She lived with a man who disappointed her trust in serious breeches of fidelity.  She learned to adapt but that adaptation initiated a pattern of abuse rather than release. Her bitterness brought revenge rather than repentance.  Sarah’s life displayed the results of discontentment.  Even her victorious moment was laced with humiliation.  If Sarah shows us anything, she shows us how destructive the disobedience of one spouse can be to the other.

But this is not the end of Sarah’s story because the story of Sarah is not really about Sarah at all.  It is about God.  Sarah is the instrument of God.  She is the vehicle through whom God fulfills His covenant plans.  If this were not clear enough from the stories, the author of Hebrews presses us to this conclusion when he says, “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive.”  The Greek can be read in the sense that her body divinely received the needed ability to accept the deposited sperm—literally “into the throwing down of sperm.”   This is an Hebraic account reflecting the story of Mary.  A woman who cannot conceive because it is physically impossible for her to become pregnant is empowered by God so that her body becomes fertile.  It is God’s work through her.  In fact, God deliberately waits so that there is no human claim possible.  Sarah’s discontent is directly connected to God’s deliberate intention.  This is the reason that the author of Hebrews makes it clear that “even Sarah herself” finally sees God’s prior restraint is divine deliberation.

Sarah is vindicated.  But not in the way she hoped.  Her life has shaped her into a woman who cannot see the impossible glory of God’s unexpected surprises.  The story of Sarah is the story of God working in spite of us.  In the end, Sarah can only acknowledge the truth sarcastically, “God has made a joke of me.”  God’s joke is the triumph of His faithfulness regardless of human complaint.  God’s joke is the announcement of El Shaddai, “Is anything too difficult for me?” God’s joke is verdict that His wisdom seems foolishness to us.

Sarah is the foil of God.[1]  It is Sarah’s life that shows God’s triumph, not Abraham’s.  Abraham is a man on the journey to obedience, a man who must eventually sacrifice his own hopes and dreams for those of His Lord, a man who realizes that there is only one life-giver, El Shaddai.  Abraham is the recipient of life’s object lessons, played out in vivid detail in the lives of his wives and his sons.  Abraham is the beneficiary of Sarah’s sacrifice for it is Sarah who throws her life up against the wages of discontent and despair in order that God may show Abraham that life comes from what cannot be done.

In the end, perhaps it is Sarah who truly fulfills the meaning of “wife” from the Hebrew word ‘ezer (Genesis 2:18).  This is a masculine word used to describe a female who is equal (alongside) the male. Moreover, it is the word used to describe Yahweh’s relationship to His chosen people, a word of considerable status. The meaning behind this word is “to save from danger” and “to deliver from death.”  This is the Sarah we know.  Her obedience, even in infidelity, is a saving sacrifice for Abraham.  Her acceptance of God’s empowered fertility is a deliverance from the death of Abraham’s line.  Sarah may have been unaware that her life of discontent became the very ground God used to plant a tree of deliverance.

The end of Sarah’s life is almost unnoticed in the text.  But there is one phrase that we should not overlook.  Genesis 23:2 tells us something about Sarah that completes the picture.  “Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.”  The word for “mourn” is mispēd.  It is the customary grief shown for the dead.  We would expect it here.  But the text adds, “and to weep for her.”  Here is the verb bākâ, a word that shows particularly strong emotions.  Most interestingly, this word has five different senses in the Semitic languages, from weeping for joy to weeping over distress and sorrow.  But one sense is unique to the Tanakh.  It is the weeping of repentance.  Are we allowed in these circumstances to suggest such a meaning?  Abraham has spent his entire life with this woman. She has seen him through struggle and triumph, through disobedience and submission, through loss and gain.  She has endured his duplicity and his passivity. She has protected his legacy and provided his heir.  And in the end, Abraham may have seen his tragic abuse of a woman whose discontent came from his own disobedience to his God.  Perhaps Abraham is sobbing while repenting for what he did to her.

Sarah lived 127 years on this earth, the mother of the children of obedience.  When I finally meet her in His kingdom, I will humbly present myself before her and ask her to tell me the secrets she learned at God’s hand so that we can both laugh.  God made a joke of me so that His purposes would prevail.  That is my life too.  I serve a God who turns my expectations into jokes of independence in order that I might become a person of faithfulness.

Topical Index:  Sarah, mispēd, mourn, bākâ, weep, Genesis 23:2

[1]Sarah is also the foil of Mary.  There are many examples of figures in the Tanakh whose lives are counterbalances to New Testament people.  Consider Pharaoh in Exodus and Paul.  One refuses God’s command, the other obeys.  Both choices change history.