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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.JPG "All of the promises to Abraham and promises to Abraham and Sarah together. | Land of Honey")
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1.jpg "Overlooked Truths in Proverbs 31 | land of honey")
21.jpg "the many different activities in proverbs 31 demonstrate that being a woman of valor can look like a lot of different things! this poem celebrates the various professions, skills, hobbies, and value of women from all walks of life. - Overlooked Truths in Proverbs 31 | Land of Honey")
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123.jpg "Being able to laugh, acting with dignity, speaking with wisdom, generosity, and fearing YHWH are all celebrated in Proverbs 31 | Land of Honey")
2.jpg "\"Beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears yhwh is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise.\" -Proverbs 31:30-31 - understanding women in the Bible | Land of Honey")
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