Tag Archives: covenant of Sarah

Lech Lecha – but should it have been Lechi Lach? Finding Sarah in the text

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“Then Abram journeyed by stages toward the Negev. There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw how very beautiful the woman was. Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace. And because of her, it went well with Abram; he acquired sheep, oxen, donkeys, male and female slaves, jennies, and camels. But GOD afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram. Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me! Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife; take her and begone!” And Pharaoh put some men in charge of him, and they sent him off with his wife and all that he possessed.”   Genesis 12: 9-20)

Three times in the book of Genesis we have the strange story of the “wife-sister tale”, what the late feminist biblical scholar, Phyllis Trible, called “texts of terror”, where the woman is used as a chattel or commodity in the negotiations between the men.

Here in Egypt where Abram fears that the Pharaoh will take Sarai into his harem and kill Abram if he knows that Sarai is married to him; again a few chapters later when Abraham and Sarah meet Abimelech, the Philistine King of Gerar (Genesis 20), and finally when Isaac and Rebecca meet Abimelech in Gerar (Genesis 26).

In the story here in Parashat Lech Lecha, Abram persuades Sarai to lie both because he is afraid for his life. In the other two stories, at least Abram and Isaac tell the lie themselves rather than expect the woman to lie on their behalf, and commit herself to the unwanted attentions of another powerful man.

Abram is acutely aware of the beauty of his wife, indeed, he refers to it and to the danger it places him in should an Egyptian man see her and desire her. And his fear is borne out – her beauty is such that even the Pharaoh hears of it, and takes Sarai into his harem – but with the twist that Abram is given huge wealth as payment for her.

It seems that Abram is content with this arrangement – as the “brother” of the beautiful foreign woman he gains power and status. It takes God to intervene, and luckily for Sarai, God does.  Pharaoh and his household are afflicted with mighty plagues – a foreshadowing of events in the Book of Exodus. And apparently Pharaoh understands the reason for this great misfortune.

So much is left unsaid in this passage. How does Pharaoh know to ascribe the plagues to God’s displeasure on behalf of Sarai? The Midrash – Bereishit Rabbah – comes to the rescue:

“Rabbi Aḥa said: Even the beams of his palace were afflicted. *[This is the meaning of “The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household [beito],” the literal meaning of beito being “his house.” ] And everyone was saying: “It is over the matter of Sarai, Abram’s wife.” Rabbi Berekhya said: All the insolent ones have come in to touch the noblewoman’s shoe. [*This is a saying, referring to insolent behaviour on the part of lowly people who dare to touch the princess’s shoes, and are severely punished. The Midrash applies this saying to the members of Pharaoh’s household who acted disrespectfully toward Sarah.]
Throughout that night Sarah was prostrated on her face and saying: ‘Master of the universe, Abraham departed [from our home country] with a promise, and I departed only on faith. Abraham departed outside the cage, but I am in the cage.’ [*I am here is the cage with all these beasts.] The Holy One blessed be He said to her: ‘Everything I do, I do on your behalf.’ And all of them were saying: “…over the matter of Sarai, Abram’s wife.”
Rabbi Levi said: Throughout that night, an angel was standing with a rod in his hand. He said to her: ‘If you say: Strike, I will strike; if you say: Cease, I will cease.’ [*This is what is meant by “over the matter [al devar] of Sarai.” Al devar Sarai can also mean “by Sarai’s word.” ]
Why [was Pharaoh punished] to such an extent? It is because she kept telling him: ‘I am a married woman,’ but he would not keep away from her. [*“Over the matter of [al devar] Sarai, Abram’s wife” is expounded to mean: “by the words of Sarai, who said that she was Abram’s wife.”] “  Bereishit Rabbah 41)

But it introduces another problem – it looks like Sarai doesn’t tell the lie that she is Abram’s sister. Instead she prays, and her prayer is extraordinary – “Abram began this journey away from our home country with a promise from you, but I didn’t get that promise, I acted only in good faith in You – and where does that lead us? -Abram gets a great life, but I am trapped in this terrible situation”

She is up front with Pharaoh too, repeatedly telling him not to touch her, she is a married woman and not available to him.  Not a chattel to be bargained away, but a strong an courageous person of integrity.

In Parashat Lech Lecha we begin the story of Abram, the man described as Ivri – who crossed a border and became a Hebrew, the man whose covenants with God are foundational to the history of Judaism. And we see from the midrash that the story of this man who is often upheld as the role model for great faith is incomplete without the woman who journeyed with him – that her faith was greater than his, for she did not hide who she was, nor allow herself to be a passive actor in this story. The midrash fills in the missing details. God intervenes because of  Sarai’s prayer, and God’s reassurance to her – “everything I do, I do on your behalf” is a far greater commitment than the promise to Abram of an eventual homeland and myriad descendants. The scene is set for the divine blessing to be bestowed on both Abram and Sarai – it will ultimately be Sarah’s son with Abraham who will continue the covenant, not any of the other sons of Abraham listed in bible.

The pattern of these texts of terror, of male fear and even self-centredness, of women’s strength and faith, and of God’s interventions in history, raise many questions about how bible understood our patriarchs and matriarchs.  So often what bible presents as the male preserve of power is undermined or redirected by the women in the text – think of Sarah and Hagar, of Rebecca ensuring her favourite son gets the blessing from his blind father, of the race to bear sons between Leah and Rachel… But I think the relationship between God and Sarah shows a respect and a tenderness towards her that is particularly worth noticing. And I cannot help noticing that when Abram and Sarai have their names changed in this sidra, for him the addition of the letter “hey”  a letter used to signify the name of God, for her not only the “hey” but she loses the “yud”. The letter yud is used to denote the number 10. The letter hey denotes the number 5. It is as if Sarah has given half of her “ten” to Abraham, to bolster his faith – another hidden nudge to remind us that without the supportive presence of Sarah, Abraham might have been yet another biblical figure who fades into the text without changing it. 

Phyllis Trible wrote of the bible and its patriarchy (ironically quoting the book of Joshua)  “I face a terrible dilemma: Choose ye this day whom you will serve: the God of the fathers or the God of sisterhood. If the God of the fathers, then the Bible supplies models for your slavery. If the God of sisterhood, then you must reject patriarchal religion and go forth without models to claim your freedom.” (Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation Phyllis Trible Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 30-48

Indebted as I am to the works of Phyllis Trible, I would venture to say that we can in fact find the models in the biblical text to claim our freedom, and in this parasha it is, quite unequivocally, the matriarch par excellence, our ur-mother Sarah.

Sarah, a matriarch whose multifaceted life gives us all something to live up to.

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The Matriarch Sarah is the only woman for whom a sidra, the weekly torah reading, is named.  The first wife of Abraham, the mother of Isaac, she is the also the first of the four biblical matriarchs. What do we know about her? No genealogy is given for her when we first meet her as the wife of Avram living in Ur of the Chaldees, although Avram does at a later point say she is his half-sister. (Gen 20:12). Her name when we first meet her is “Sarai” which may be a name derived from the goddess Ishtar who was also called “Sarrat”, and although scholars also suggest it may be a name meaning priestess of that pagan cult, we tend to assume her name comes from the Hebrew for prince or leader –S.R.R.  making Sarah a princess of our people.

The first thing we know about Sarah is that she is unable to conceive a child, and so when she does so at the age of 90, her husband being one hundred years of age, this is clearly because of divine intervention and both parents laugh in disbelief when God tells them. Abraham asks God to give Ishmael the role of heir (Gen 17:17-19) but God is very clear – the covenant with Abraham will be passed down through a son he shall have with Sarah. She is an important and necessary figure in the divine covenant and as proof of this her name is to be changed along with Avram’s and she too is blessed in similar language to the blessing given to Abraham.

The change of names must catch our attention. When Abraham’s name is changed it is to clearly alter his destiny. God tells him “your name will no longer be called Avram (exalted father) but your name shall be Avraham because I have given to you the fatherhood of a multitude of nations”. The letter ‘hei’ has been added to Avram’s name – and this letter, with the numeric value of 5 which is the magical number for protection, is also a letter which symbolically denotes the name of God.

Sarah’s name change is rather different. God speaks not to her but to Abraham, saying “You shall not call her name Sarai, because her name is Sarah. And I will bless her and also give you a son with her. And I will bless her….”

Sarah is already her name – there is no change except that now Abraham will call her by her name. There is no added letter to her name – instead one could argue that part of her name has been taken away, the yod (numerical value ten, symbolically used for the name of God) has transmuted into the letter hei. It has been halved, and one half given to Avram in order to fit him for the role he is to take on. You could say that Sarah is diminished in order to enrich her husband.  Some of her divine spark is taken in order to build him up. She is the woman whose descendants will gain the eternal covenant. She has a special relationship with God – the only woman in torah to whom God talks directly – it is through the merit of Sarah that Abraham is able to achieve his destiny.

Another way of reading what happens to Sarah’s name is that the yod is turned into a hei by the addition of the letter dalet – when a scribe writes the letter hei in a torah scroll, it is by the combination of a yod and a dalet. So while at the same time as creating two hei letters from the yod, one could reason that Sarah had the letter dalet added to her name. The letter dalet is an ideogram for a doorway, as the Hebrew word delet reminds us. So knowing that she is Sarah means that Abraham begins to understand that she is the doorway and the gatekeeper to a deeper spirituality, a way to connect with God not just for himself but for the generations to come. Sarah emerges as liminal, as the connector between two worlds, a woman who transcends experienced reality.

Sarah’s relationship with God is defined by the phrase we use in liturgy – “pokeid Sarah”.  The verb p.k.d has a number of meanings: to attend to, to visit, to muster, to remember, to account, to command.   God remembers Sarah’s desire for a child, God visits Sarah to announce that she will have a child, God appoints Sarah to be the matriarch of peoples, God pays attention to her and tells Abraham to do the same.

Abraham and Sarah were said to have been noticeably hospitable, open and inclusive. Sarah’s tent was said to be open on all sides to welcome desert travellers needing a warm welcome. The midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 60:16) tells us also that as long as she lived the Shechinah hovered over her tent, her challah dough was blessed and her Sabbath lights lasted the entire week until the next Shabbat.

She was also a notable prophet – the Talmud (Yerushalmi Sotah 7:1) tells us that her prophecy was greater than that of Abraham , and that God was referring to her prophetic power when telling Abraham “whatever she tells you, do as she says” (BT Sanhedrin). It also lists her among the seven women prophets (BT Megillah 14a)

Sarah lived to the age of 127, and the way the bible describes this implies she lived a number of different lives in these years. She was a woman of great complexity, a woman of great strength who was destined to become the progenitor and matriarch of many peoples.  It took time for this to be revealed – she is a woman both hidden in the tent and open to the world; a wife who travelled with her husband wherever he went at some real inconvenience to herself and a wife who was living in a different city from him when she died. Her relationship with Isaac was a strong bond – she ensured his protection when she saw that Ishmael was assuming a position of power that might damage him, and he was comforted for her death by the love of his wife Rebecca, a touching phrase which tells us a great deal about the bond between them.

Sarah’s relationship with Isaac is at the core of the text. The covenant of blessing is destined to be the given to the child of both Abraham and Sarah, but Abraham is clearly fond of both boys, even suggesting to God that rather than have another child, Ishmael could take the role. So it is Sarah who must protect Isaac, who must shape and form him ready to take on his destiny. It is Sarah who engineers the removal of Ishmael from the scene, and who having protected her son from a potential rival retires from the fray.

But her protective action did not end the danger. God appears to ask Abraham to offer up Isaac on a specific mountain and Abraham does not argue but takes the boy on the journey, prepares him for his fate and is ready to slice the knife into him as a bound offering to God, only stopped by the urgent cry of an angel of God at the very last moment.

Because of the story of the death of Sarah being reported in bible immediately after this terrible text of the binding of Isaac, the midrash links the two, saying that Satan tricked Sarah into believing that Abraham had indeed killed their only son, and the soul of Sarah flew out of her body in her deep distress as she wished to live no longer. Another somewhat less believable version is that she died of happiness when she realised that she had been tricked and her son was still alive. (Pirkei d’R.Eliezer 32/ Ginzburg Legends of the Jews)

Either way, her life ends much sooner than that of Abraham who goes on to marry Keturah and have more sons, but who has become irrelevant to the purpose of the biblical narrative after that moment on Mount Moriah – except to buy the land in Hebron for her final resting place, the Cave of Machpela which will become the family mausoleum to this day.

The text moves on to focus on Isaac, son of Sarah and Abraham. Isaac will marry Rebecca and he will love her till his death. The love of his mother has made him who he is, a strong but unobtrusive figure perfectly placed between his famous father and his famous son, providing stability and warmth and entrenching the place of the covenant of blessing into the family firmly and steadfastly. The legacy of Sarah provided many things in rabbinic tradition – land properly bought within Israel, many converts to the one God, hospitality, steadfastness, divine merit, but for me her best legacy is Isaac. Often misunderstood and seen as less important than his colourful father and sons, he is a man who has shown himself to be so well loved that he can overcome the trauma of near filicide to build a relationship of love and trust with wife and sons, and to put down roots and live alongside the other tribes. That, I am sure, is the inheritance he got from Sarah. That, and the covenant of blessing which is usually – wrongly – ascribed to Abraham alone. but which was given to him only because of the merit of Sarah. I used to have a fridge magnet that said “behind every successful man is an exhausted woman” – certainly the aphorism that most fits our first and most wondrous matriarch.