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SARAH

(Heb. śārâ) (also SARAI)

1. The primary ancestress of the Jewish people, and of Christians and Muslims as well. Introduced late in Gen. 11 as Sarai, wife of Abram, she functions between Gen. 11 and 23 as companion to Abraham. Called by God from their dwelling in the East (Ur of Babylon via Haran), they start their biblical lives in old age struggling to discern implications of the promises God has made with them: land, progeny, blessing. Stories involving Sarah may be seen as the struggle of herself and Abraham to understand their role in receiving land, in begetting offspring, and in being blessing for and blessed by the peoples around them. In no instance is their path particularly clear.

They no sooner arrive in the promised Canaan when famine drives them to Egypt, where Abram’s survival strategy lands Sarai in Pharaoh’s palace (Gen. 12, , and with minor changes, Gen. 20). Once God intervenes with disapproval, the couple and their household depart and re-enter the land of Canaan, enriched by their encounter with the foreigner. Other episodes involving peoples of the land specify groups to whom their descendants eventually stand in relationship: Moabites, Ammonites, Canaanite kings, peoples of the Dead Sea neighborhood (Gen. 13, 14, 18–19).

But the primary promise, for Sarah, is the begetting of an heir through which the Jewish people will be descended. All of the episodes in which she figures may be seen as complications of her role as ancestress. No sooner is Sarai introduced than it is noted that she and Abram go childless; the promise of numerous descendants does not include directions for accomplishment of it. Abraham evidently has other alternatives to Sarah’s being the mother of the son: his sponsorship of his nephew Lot, perhaps even his temporary disclaiming of his wife when in foreign territory, and his adopting a slave of his household are plausible solutions to the prolonged childlessness of Sarah. Sarah herself eventually suggests that her husband beget a son by her Egyptian maidservant Hagar; that child, Ishmael, though blessed by God, is not the child of promise. But finally with orchestration by God about conception, naming, and circumcising, Sarah bears to Abraham the appropriate heir, Isaac, when she is 90 and Abraham 100 (Gen. 16–21). Having accomplished that deed, she vanishes, absent when Isaac’s life is threatened on Mt. Moriah (Gen. 22), dead at the age of 127.

Modern biblical scholarship poses several questions to the stories of Sarah and Abraham. Historians question whether and how to retrieve relevant social, political, and economic information. But the originating circumstances, time of composition, and reference of the materials remain opaque. Those who attempt to date the events of the narratives tend to place them midway through the 2nd millennium b.c.e. Those dating the composition of the sources differ; competent suggestions range from the 10th to the 5th centuries.

Social scientific criticism clarifies the efforts at childbearing in particular. Once rather confident at having found a 14th-century extrabiblical parallel to Abraham’s claiming his wife as his sister, recent scholars have been concerned to understand issues of marriage, kinship, and economics more systemically. Sarah’s urgency to bear is not an abstraction or ideal but a need to provide for Abraham a clear determination of who will inherit vertically the name, the land, the property rights; she needs a son to clarify her own status and ensure a potential caretaker for herself. Hence the episodes involving Sarah’s failure to produce an heir involve a mix of details historical, legal, sociological, and psychological as well as religious or theological.

Literary analysis of the stories, while still positing several voices or sources for the stories (most agree that texts emerge from the Yahwist [e.g., Gen. 12], Elohist [ch. 20], and Priestly [chs. 17, 23] strata), also undertakes a more wholistic analysis of the ancestral texts. The genealogies, once dismissed as secondary and tedious, now set agendas embellished by supplementing episodes. For Sarah, the question posed is how, despite her age and apparent barrenness and that of her husband, she will produce the “direct” vertical heir for Abraham. A detail such as Sarah’s silence when consigned by Abraham to the foreigner is assessed in terms of characterization or ideology. Caught between difficult circumstances, she may choose not to contribute to her own oppression, or she may wordlessly dread its approach — or her words may seem moot. Similarly, her competitive relationship with Hagar is shown to arise less from malevolence than from the threat Sarah must feel to her status as she continues childless or from narrative presuppositions.

References to Sarah outside Genesis are derivative of her roles as wife and progenitrix. In the OT she is mentioned only in Isa. 51, , where her name (with Abraham’s) is lent to postexilic factions. Paul makes similar reference (Rom. 9; Gal. 4), where Sarah and Isaac represent being chosen, promised, freeborn, over against Hagar and her son who represent opposite values. Her aged barrenness is also briefly referenced in Rom. 4; Heb. 11 as part of Abraham’s challenge to faith. Finally, having traveled some distance from the episodes of Genesis, she is named obedient to Abraham (1 Pet. 3).

Bibliography. A. Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to Genesis (Sheffield, 1993); N. Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage in Genesis: A Household Economics Approach (Minneapolis, 1993).

Barbara Green, O.P.

2. The daughter of Raguel and wife of Tobias (Tob. 3:7-8). She had been married to seven husbands, each of whom had been killed by the demon Asmodeus before the marriage was consummated.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SARAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)