The Significance of Sarah in the Bible

Who is Sarah in the Bible and what does this Biblical matriarch teach us? I believe she is one of the most significant characters in Scripture, and that her presence has so much to teach us about faith and also about how the Living God esteems women.

In the Christian church today, Sarah is treated as a minor character at best. She is often overlooked in favor of her more well-known husband, Abraham. She is usually regarded as something of an assistant to him, and if anything about her is focused on, it's usually the infamous Hebrews 11 verse that has been used to shame thousands of barren women...Sarah had enough faith to get pregnant.

But there is so much more to her! God made promises to her. Angels showed up to give her messages. Two kings wanted her as their queen (including the Egyptian pharaoh - likely the most powerful man in the world at the time). God himself instructed her husband to call her princess. The Bible records her faith as exemplary. Peter wrote that her descendants are those who do what is right without fear. It's time to take notice of her. It's time to recognize the importance of Sarah from the Bible, and what her life teaches us today.

We don't know a lot about Sarah's life growing up in what is now the country of Turkey, but we do know plenty of adventures she had as an adult. Starting with her marriage to Abraham, a blood relative of hers (more on that later), their move away from their homeland and family to the Promised Land, and even some sojourns in the land of Egypt, leading up to her birthing her only child in her 90s. After she had died, at the age of 127, Scripture even records the story of the acquisition of the burial plot for this great woman.

When we look at Sarah, we need to see that she is not spiritually significant only because she was married to Abraham. She does not play a secondary role to him. While Abraham is expressly mentioned more often in Scripture, most all of these mentions are referring to Abraham and Sarah together as a unit. All of the promises to Abraham are promises to Abraham and Sarah together. Not just Abraham. Not just Sarah. But Abraham and Sarah as one, because they are both halves of a whole before YHWH. Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31 tell us that a husband and wife are one.

Abraham and Sarah are one in the eyes of the Creator. She has just as much of a part in this story as he does.

Both the Old and New Testaments tell us that a husband and wife are one. This does not mean that either loses their identity, but rather that who they are as individuals is a key part to who they become as one flesh. If you mix yellow with red, you will get orange. But if you mix that yellow with blue instead, then it becomes green. Both colors directly influence the end result. There is simply no way to have green without both blue and yellow. Together Abraham and Sarah became something different than what they would have been with anyone else.

We see this truth played out expressly in the story of Abraham having a son with Hagar. If God's promise of a son was just to Abraham, then it wouldn't have mattered who the mother was. But this story shows that God made this promise to Abraham and Sarah together.

After years of waiting for the promised heir, Abraham and Sarah still have not had a child. Keep in mind, they around the ages of 86 and 76 respectively, so it’s not surprising that they started to think that maybe this wasn’t going to happen. Sarah (who is still called Sarai at this point), starts to feel like maybe this promise is really more for Abraham than for her.

“And Sarai said to Abram, ‘See, YHWH has restrained me from bearing. Please, go into my maid; perhaps I will obtain children by her.’” -Genesis 16:2a NKJV

We can see from this language that Sarah must have felt that she was the reason YHWH’s promise had yet to happen. She blamed herself, perhaps thinking she was holding everyone back from God’s best. She took herself out of the picture, suggesting that Abraham could have children with Hagar, and then she could have some sort of stepmom or adopted mother role. This approach was successful, and sure enough, Hagar did conceive, and bore a son. You can imagine everyone congratulating themselves on his arrival. Their plan had worked. They made YHWH’s promise really happen. The boy Ishmael was living proof.

Except, YHWH had promised a son to Abraham and Sarah. Not to Abraham and Hagar. Not to Abraham and whoever. Not even a son from other parents that they would physically adopt. The promised heir would be Sarah’s flesh and blood, just as he would be Abraham’s. We see this clarified in Genesis 17:16 when YHWH said that Sarah would have a son with Abraham, and that Sarah specifically would be blessed and “become nations.” He also told Abraham to stop calling his wife ‘Sarai’, and start referring to her as ‘Sarah,’ which means princess. When the Living God calls someone a princess, I think we’d better take note of that. This tells us that this woman isn’t just a supporting character, but is highly esteemed and valued by YHWH.

If Sarah wasn’t important, if Abraham just needed a wife to birth and raise children, then why did the promised child need to come from her? Why couldn’t Ishmael have been a stand in, since he was, after all, Abraham’s son? Simply because when YHWH made that promise, he was making it to both of them. He promised that they would have a child, not just he. His words and instructions weren’t only for Abraham, just as they aren’t limited to men today. Sarah had a crucial role to play in this great story. While church organizations have largely underplayed the validity and value of her faith and actions, the Bible does not. In Hebrews 11 her faith is recognized.

“By belief also, Sarah herself was enabled to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the normal age, because she deemed Him trustworthy who had promised.” -Hebrews 11:11

Please do not read that as a chastisement for those who struggle with infertility. The Bible is not saying that if you just believe you will get pregnant, then that will happen. Belief is not a necessary element to having a baby, as millions of people who don't believe in God have children. Sarah did not seem to believe she herself would conceive a child. That’s evidenced by the Hagar debacle, and by her reaction to the words of the angels who visited her and Abraham. She heard the angel (or some would say YHWH himself in the flesh) say that she was to have a baby, she “laughed within herself.” Genesis 18:12 says her thoughts were, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my husband being old too?” Translated into modern parlance I imagine it something like, “Yeah right. After all these years of no pregnancies I’m finally going to have a baby when my husband is 100? Ha!”

We should also take another look at this passage where the angels appeared to Abraham with this news that Sarah would have a son. This Genesis 18 story is typically used to highlight Abraham's importance (he was visited by angels!), and underplay Sarah's (she was secretly listening). Church tradition would have us believe that heavenly visitors of some sort (again either angels or perhaps YHWH himself), came down to have a meeting with Abraham. But look at the text...

If I have now found favor in your eyes, please do not pass your servant by. Please let a little water be brought, and was your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. And let me bring a piece of bread and refresh your hearts, and then go on for this is why you have come to your servant. 3-5

And he took the curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree as they ate. 8

And they said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” 9

Abraham gives a rambling invitation for the visitors to stay and be refreshed. Then he goes to prepare veal, and serves it to them. And how do the angels respond? Do they tell Abraham they want to speak to him? Do they express gratitude for his efforts? No, they ask for his wife!

Could you imagine if this story was reversed? Say that Sarah was the one inviting the visitors to a meal and refreshments. The heavenly visitors say, “Yes, serve us,” (as they did to Abraham in 18:5), and then they ask to speak to her husband. Wouldn't that fit a lot better with the all too common storyline that women are somehow less important than men? But no, the angels show up and they want to speak to Sarah. Genesis 18 is completely upside down from what church tradition has taught us to expect. The real star of this passage is Sarah. The case can be made that Sarah then came to hear what the visitors had to say to her directly. And don't forget that YHWH himself insisted the promised child had to be from Sarah in Genesis 17:19.

Sarah didn’t make having a baby happen (though we see that she tried, hence the birth of Ishmael), and the takeaway isn’t that she just ‘had enough faith’ to become pregnant. Her faith was not in her body's ability to bear a child. Her faith was in God. All she knew was that YHWH was trustworthy. She believed God. And she continued to believe God, even though she hadn't yet seen him keep his promise. She chose to believe, even when she couldn’t see how things were going to work out. And because she made that choice she became the mother of “many nations” (Genesis 17:16). Many of us are physical descendants of Sarah, whether or not we are aware of that. But either way she is a spiritual mother to us.

And because there are spiritual matriarchs to our faith as well as patriarchs, we know that both men and women have instrumental roles to play in YHWH's plan of restoration, every day. Don’t even consider believing the lie that women’s beliefs and actions are secondary to the faith of the men in their lives! Both genders have great significance spiritually. If you read Hebrews 11, you’ll notice that while Abraham gets recognized for his faith, the words are different than how the next verses describe Sarah’s. And that is because she added something to their collective faith that he did not. The Bible doesn't say that the people of Israel came into being because Abraham had faith, but because Sarah did.

Sarah and Abraham were related. Genesis 20:12 tells us that Abraham and Sarah had the same father, but different mothers. They were related by blood. Scholars debate if they were really full half-siblings or if they were less close blood relatives. One school of thought is that Sarah was really his niece, since Abraham describes Lot as his “brother,” even though elsewhere in Scripture he is described as his nephew (Genesis 13:8). The logic being that if Sarah is a granddaughter of Abraham's father, they still have the same ‘father.’ Abraham justifies misleading King Abimelek by saying that Sarah was in fact his sister...but fails to mention their marriage.

No matter if they were full half-siblings or not, I think the point is that they came from the same place. They literally came from the same family. Abraham’s lineage is not somehow better than Sarah’s, and she is not lesser than him. She belongs here just as much as he does. By letting Sarah and Abraham come from the same family, YHWH was assuring that her bloodline couldn't be used against her, while also validating that Sarah is just as much part of his family as Abraham is.

We learn from Sarah's life that women are not secondary characters in the story of redemption. Her story teaches us more about what the Bible says about women and how the Living God honors women. When YHWH refused Abraham's plan of making Ishmael the heir, he demonstrated that Sarah had an equal part in the promises he had made to them. YHWH does not treat women as side-kicks or tag-alongs, but esteems them as he does their male counterparts. Don't miss that he taught us this story early on in Scripture. The New Testament tells us that God's family exists today because of the faith of Sarah. Never underestimate the faith of one woman.

Where is Sarah mentioned in the Bible? Where can I read about her?

We see Sarah mainly in Genesis, but she appears throughout Scripture, particularly when we keep in mind that most mentions of Abraham are actually referring to her as well. The prophet Isaiah speaks of her, as do the writings of Paul and Peter in the New Testament. The author of Hebrews honors her as an example of great faith.

Genesis 11-25
Isaiah 51:2
Romans 4:19, 9:9
Hebrews 11:11-12
1 Peter 3:6

These are passages that use Sarah's name to talk about her. But again, when the Bible speaks of Abraham, it most often means Abraham and Sarah. When Scripture references ‘Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,’ for example, this draws our attention not to Abraham's many sons, but to the one whose mother was Sarah.

More about women in the Bible:
Overlooked Truths in Proverbs 31
Should Women Be Silent in the Church? Understanding 1 Corinthians 14
Biblical Law and the Woman Caught in Adultery