Sarah Finally Separates Herself from Abraham

Genesis gives us very little insight into Sarah’s internal religious life. As Tammi Schneider of Claremont Graduate University has written, it is impossible “to see the entire life of Sarah or evaluate her completely because the [biblical] text was not written to discuss the story of Sarah: she serves as a character in someone else’s story”^[1]—namely Abraham.

Even the verse that begins with a retrospective tone, וַיִּהְיוּ חַיֵּי שָׂרָה “and the life of Sarah was,” only introduces us to the number of years she lived, 127, not to the sweep of her life, character, beliefs, or actions. Ironically, that “Life of Sarah” recounts not her life but her death. The rest of the chapter focuses—in great detail—on Abraham’s negotiation and purchase of a burial plot.^[2]

When I was about to graduate college, not entirely sure of the direction my life’s journey ought to take from that point on, I wrote “Biblical Graduations,” a poem that sought out post-graduation wisdom from the matriarchs and patriarchs of Genesis, written from the point of view of Isaac. It marked the beginning of my quest for the life-story of the biblical Sarah. It began:

Abraham, my father, was a very lucky man.
When he graduated Polytheism
God told him exactly what to do.
Sarah went with.
Abraham had already taught her of the
One God.
And on her own she learned
How to doubt and laugh and
Be heard outside her tent
By angels who come for dinner and
Remember and dawdle,
Pull sons out of tired bodies and
Tests out of brittle souls.

As I envisioned it, Abraham knows what to do with his life because God tells him what to do, and Sarah, his wife, simply goes along with all of it. None of them has to make any choices, least of all Sarah, who gets instructions secondhand. But then a shift occurs. Sarah begins to draw her own conclusions, to act out and doubt. Sarah begins to take initiative and set out on her own life course. It was way back then, in this germ of an idea, an incipient work of feminist midrash,^[3] that I began a kind of quest to uncover the story of Sarah the matriarch.

Abraham’s Wandering

Abraham’s story is of a man who is constantly travelling, characterized by compulsive journeying far into old age from place to place, as seen in the list of wanderings:

Ur of the Chaldeans—where Abraham is born (Gen 11:31).

Ḥaran—led by his father Terah, and accompanied by his brother Nahor and family, his wife Sarai, and his orphaned nephew Lot (ibid.).

Canaan—God sends him to “the land that I will show you.” He is accompanied by Sarai and Lot (Gen 12:1–5). 

Shechem / Elon Moreh—He stops to build an altar (12:6).

Hills between Bethel and Ai—He builds another altar (12:8).

Negev—wandering (12:9).

Egypt—during a famine (12:10).

Negev—after Pharaoh sends him away (13:1). 

Bethel—Here he splits with Lot (13:3).

Elonei Mamre near Hebron—he calls on YHWH (13:18). 

Dan and then Damascus—to rescue Lot from the army of the four kings (14:14–15).

Elonei Mamre—receives promise about Isaac from the three angels (18:1).^[4]

Gerar—no explanation is given as to why he moves to this Philistine town, where he comes in some conflict with its king, Abimelech (20:1).

Beersheba—still in the Philistine orbit, Abraham digs wells, makes an oath with Abimelech, and remains in this place a long time (21:22–34).^[5]

Moriah—to sacrifice Isaac upon receiving God’s command (22:1–18).

Beersheba—Abraham returns there after the akedah is thwarted (22:19).

Kiryat-arba/Hebron/Mamre—to bury his wife, Sarah (23:1).

Negev—Isaac is here when Rebecca comes; presumably this is where Abraham was as well (24:62).

Kiryat-arba/Hebron/Mamre—he is buried with Sarah (25:9).

Abraham is characterized in his saga by a kind of wildness or restlessness, reflected in how he hops around the land building altars, wanders the Negev wilderness, leaves one country for another then returns, and even in the way he rushes to feed his guests when they agree to take a rest and a meal by his tent. Even after God promises him the land, Abram travels to Egypt and later to Philistine Gerar.

This restlessness is further reflected in his first son Ishmael, a pere adam (a wild ass of a man), to whom Abraham remains attached:

^{בראשית טז:יב} וְהוּא יִהְיֶה פֶּרֶא אָדָם יָדוֹ בַכֹּל וְיַד כֹּל בּוֹ וְעַל פְּנֵי כָל אֶחָיו יִשְׁכֹּן.

^{Gen 16:12} He shall be a wild ass of a man; his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him. He shall dwell alongside of all his kinsmen.^[6]

Sarah’s Dies Alone

As for Sarah, for most of her life, she “goes with” Abraham. But toward the end of her life, this changes: Sarah dies in Kiryat-arba, apparently, by herself: 

^{בראשית כג:ב} וַתָּמָת שָׂרָה בְּקִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הִוא חֶבְרוֹן בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנָעַן וַיָּבֹא אַבְרָהָם לִסְפֹּד לְשָׂרָה וְלִבְכֹּתָהּ.

^{Gen 23:2} Sarah died in Kiryat-arba—this is Hebron—in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her.

Why is Abraham coming to mourn her? Where was he when she died? 

At the end the Akedah (binding of Isaac), the story preceding Sarah’s death, Abraham and his servants return Beersheba in the Negev:

^{בראשית כב:יט} וַיָּשָׁב אַבְרָהָם אֶל נְעָרָיו וַיָּקֻמוּ וַיֵּלְכוּ יַחְדָּו אֶל בְּאֵר שָׁבַע וַיֵּשֶׁב אַבְרָהָם בִּבְאֵר שָׁבַע.

^{Gen 22:19} Abraham then returned to his servants, and they departed together for Beersheba; and Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

Ostensibly, Abraham is still living in Beersheba at the time of Sarah’s death in Kiryat-arba, 43 kilometers away. Many traditional commentators, while noting this geographical disparity, reject outright the implication that the patriarch and matriarch were living apart at the end of Sarah’s life.

Abraham Was Just on a Trip to Beersheba

Rashi (R. Solomon Yitzhaki ca. 1040–1105) suggests that Abraham was just making a brief trip to Beersheba:

^{רש"י בראשית כב:יט} "וישב אברהם בבאר שבע" – לא ישיבה ממש, שהרי בחברון היה יושב, שתים עשרה שנים לפני עקידתו של יצחק יצא מבאר שבע ובא לו לחברון...

^{Rashi Gen 22:19} “And Abraham dwelt in Beersheba”—not a real dwelling, since he had already left Beersheba and been dwelling in Hebron (Mamre/Kiryat-arba). Twelve years before the binding of Isaac he left Beersheba and moved to Hebron…

Thus, Abraham was returning home when he came to mourn Sarah. Ramban (R. Moses Nahmanides, ca. 1195–ca.1270) also assumes that it is impossible for Abraham to have been living in Beersheba while Sarah lived in Kiryat-arba.^[7]

Sarah Went to Hebron to Die

R. Isaac Karo (1458–1535),^[8] in his Toledot Yitzchak commentary, admits that the simple meaning is that the two were living separately:

^{תולדות יצחק בראשית כג:ב} איך מתה שרה בחברון, [כיון] שדירתו של אברהם בבאר שבע... כי בבאר שבע נצטוה בעקידה, כי שם ביתו ואם כן מי הוליך שרה לחברון.

^{Toledot Yitzchak Gen 23:2} How is it that Sarah died in Hebron, [since] Abraham’s dwelling place was in Beersheba… for it was in Beersheba that he was commanded about the Akedah, for that’s where his home was, and if so, who brought Sarah to Hebron?

To answer this question, R. Isaac quotes the solution of his brother R. Ephraim—the father of the famous R. Joseph Karo, author of the Shulchan Arukh—that Sarah left Beersheba, which was part of the Philistine land, to die in Hebron, which was part of the holy land promised to her and Abraham:

כונת אברהם היתה מתחלה להקבר הוא ואשתו בארץ כנען, לפי שארץ ישראל מכפרת עון... ולפיכך כשהרגישה בעצמה אפיסת הכחות ויתרון החולשה, וידעה שלא תאריך ימים, צותה שיוליכוה לחברון למות שם... לפי שהיא בארץ כנען.

Abraham’s intention from the beginning was for him and his wife to be buried in the land of Canaan, since the land of Israel atones for sin…^[9] Therefore, when she (Sarah) felt that her powers were waning and feebleness was coming upon her, and she knew that she would not live much longer, she commanded [her servants] to bring her to Hebron to die… since it is in the land of Canaan.

ולזה ויבא אברהם מבאר שבע שהיא ארץ פלשתים ואינה ארץ כנען, לא קנה אברהם אחוזת קבר, שבבאר שבע אינו רוצה להקבר, ובארץ כנען לא היה דר לקנות אחוזת קבר, ונשאר כן עד שמתה שרה.

And thus “Abraham came” from Beersheba, which was in the land of the Philistines and not the land of Canaan. Abraham had not purchased a burial plot, since he didn’t want to be buried in Beersheba, and he wasn’t living in the land of Canaan such that he could purchase a burial plot, and things remained this way until Sarah died.

While I find R. Caro’s observation that Sarah leaves Beersheba on her own and returns to Hebron persuasive, her motive for this sudden change is better understood in the context of the Akedah, the story immediately preceding her death, a connection already noted by the Sages.  

Sarah’s Death and the Akedah

Based on the proximity of the Akedah story to the death of Sarah, Genesis Rabbah, the mid-first millennium C.E. midrash, suggests that Abraham was on Mount Moriah when Sarah died, and was thus coming from there back to Hebron to bury her.^[10] The Vilna addition has an additional gloss suggesting that Sarah dies of a heart attack or of shock upon hearing news of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac:

^{בראשית רבה (וילנה) נח:ה} ...ומתה שרה מאותו צער לפיכך נסמכה עקידה לויהיו חיי שרה.

^{Gen Rab (Vilna) 58:5} …Sarah died from this same pain (hearing Isaac was to be sacrificed), and that is why the story of the Akedah is juxtaposed to the death of Sarah.^[11]

A more vivid account appears in the late first millennium midrash, Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, in which the wicked angel Samael uses the Akedah to scare Sarah to death:

^{פרקי דרבי אליעזר לב} וכששב אברהם מהר המוריה חרה אפו של סמאל שראה שלא עלתה בידו תאות לבו לבטל קרבנו של אברהם אבינו. מה עשה? הלך ואמ[ר] לשרה: "הלא שמעת מה נעשה אח"ר בעולם?" אמרה לו: "לאו." אמ[ר] לה: "לקח אברהם את יצחק בנו ושחטו והקריבו על גבי המזבח לעולה." התחילה שרה לבכות ומיללת שלשה יבבות כנגד שלשה תקיעות שלשה יבבות יללות כנגד שלשה יבבות ופרחה נשמתה ומתה.

^{Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 32} When Abraham returned from Mount Moriah, Samael became angry, since he saw that his heart’s desire of stopping Abraham from performing a sacrifice failed. What did he do? He went and said to Sarah: “Did you hear what is happening elsewhere in the world?” She said to him: “No.” He said to her: “Abraham took his son Isaac to slaughter him, and sacrificed him on an altar as a burnt offering.” Sarah began to cry and weep, three cries for the three shofar blasts and three crying weeps for the three weeping shofar blasts (i.e., the tekiah, teruah, tekiah blasts of Rosh Hashanah). Then her soul left her, and she died.

This interpretation, while sensitive to Sarah’s absence from the Akedah story as well as to a mother’s visceral concerns for her child’s safety, does not explicitly deal with why Sarah is in Kiryat Arba and not Beersheba when she dies, but it does offer some direction: In the aftermath of the Akedah, a rift emerges not only between Abraham and Isaac, who is not mentioned as leaving with Abraham at the end of the story, but also between Abraham and Sarah. Abraham’s journey with Isaac to Mount Moriah compels Sarah, who had up until this point has been following Abraham’s lead, to set out on her own self-directed journey.

Sarah’s Independent Journey: A Modern Midrash

Sarah, as noted, spent most of her life following Abraham. With the episode of the Akedah, however, she ceases her “going with” and ventures back toward Mamre (Hebron, Kiryat-arba), the place where YHWH announced to Abraham and her that within the year, she would have a son. I would like, in yet another neo-midrashic vein, to suggest that she goes there to take up the matter with God directly.

If three divine messengers had taken the trouble to visit her and Abraham at this site to announce her impending pregnancy, how could that same God now insist on Abraham sacrifice this same child as an expression of his devotion? Hers was surely not a God who toyed with the emotions of a mother and insisted that a father undergo cruel and manipulative tests. Surely, she would remind God of that!

In my imaginative rereading of the story, Sarah returned to this prior home to wait in her tent for God’s angels to visit her once again and reassure her that her son would live. Reminiscent of their earlier visit, she laughed in gratitude upon their arrival, and promptly sent one of them hurrying on to Moriah, the supposed site of sacrifice to stop misguided, homicidal Abraham from laying a hand to her son. “You can tell him that he is an exemplary believer and God-fearer. Whatever it takes to stop him,” she said. She then waited for word of Isaac’s safety, after which she knew that her life’s journey was finally done.

Thus, when Abraham returns from the Akedah to Beersheba, he did not find Sarah there waiting for him. When he learned she had gone back to the vicinity of Mamre, Abraham was forced for the first time to follow Sarah. There he purchased the plot of land with a cave that would serve as both of their burial spots, as well as those of their son Isaac and his son Jacob, the place where YHWH promised her a son.^[12]  

Epilogue: Isaac Follows in Sarah’s Footsteps

Much later, Sarah’s son Isaac would live part of his life in this same place, and it would be there that he would reunite with his own son Jacob after the latter’s long sojourn in Aram:

^{בראשית לה:כז} וַיָּבֹא יַעֲקֹב אֶל יִצְחָק אָבִיו מַמְרֵא קִרְיַת הָאַרְבַּע הִוא חֶבְרוֹן אֲשֶׁר גָּר שָׁם אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק.

^{Gen 35:27} And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, at Kiriath-arba—this is Hebron—where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned.

After his struggle with the mysterious ish, “man,” who turned out to be a divine messenger, Jacob is renamed Israel:

^{בראשית לב:כט} וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא יַעֲקֹב יֵאָמֵר עוֹד שִׁמְךָ כִּי אִם יִשְׂרָאֵל כִּי שָׂרִיתָ עִם אֱלֹהִים וְעִם אֲנָשִׁים וַתּוּכָל.

^{Gen 32:29} Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel (Yisraʾel), for you have striven (sarita) with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.”

Jacob’s new name, Yisraʾel subtly recalls that of his grandmother Sarah, and his journey back into the land would echo that of his grandmother, and like her, he will eventually find his rest in Hebron/Mamre/Kiryat-arba after his own wanderings are over.