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Sarah, "Mother of Nations"
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The first woman distinctly portrayed in the dramatic history of man's spiritual development is Sarah, beloved wife of Abraham, founder of the House of Israel. The story of the beautiful and distinguished Sarah and her husband, "Father of Faithful," covers more space in the Genesis account than does that of the entire human race from the Creation down to their time.
Sarah's life was one continuous trial of her faith in God's promise that she was to be the Mother of Nations. 'Through this trial she emerged as a woman of power, one who was a dutiful and beloved wife and who finally became a favored and venerated mother.
In Sarah's period, which was probably sometime in the nineteenth or twentieth century B.C., woman assumed little importance until she had given her husband a son, for it was through his son that a man lived on. The tragedy of Sarah's early life was that she was barren, but the miracle of her life was that she gave birth to Isaac, Son of Promise, when, humanly speaking, the time had passed when she could become a mother.
The miracle was achieved through the faith of Abraham and the loyalty of Sarah to her husband. While they still resided at Haran, God said to Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation" (Gen. 12:1, 2) .
Sarah's life became Abraham's. Where he went she went, not as his shadow but as a strong influence. Together they experienced the vicissitudes of nomadic life and found in them great spiritual significance. Abraham, man of God, was willing to forsake home and country for the unknown, with Sarah ever at his side. Her love and loyalty were blessed by Abraham's devotion to her.
Departure from their native land, the only land either of them had ever known, did not divide them in love or purpose. Dangerous were the wastelands and towns through which they traveled, but Sarah never looked back, as Lot's wife did later when she left Sodom. Tenaciously Sarah shared her husband's dangers and heartaches and also his great purposes and dreams.
Early in their wanderings, under the spreading tree of Moreh, in the rich valley of Shechem, Abraham built an altar to the Lord. Later he built an altar near Beth-el, twelve miles north of Jerusalem, and another under an oak at Mamre. It is easy to imagine that Sarah worshiped at these altars with her husband. Though less credulous than he, she had a high conception of wifely duty, for Sarah was obedient, to Abraham. She became what Peter calls an "heir" with Abraham of "the grace of life" (I Pet. 3:7) .
The adversity of famine that swept them later into the Valley of the Nile did not divide them, nor did great prosperity, which followed Abraham through most of the days of his long life. The intensity of their union deepened and became like a mighty force that nothing, not even Hagar, a secondary wife and mother of Abraham's first child, Ishmael, could diminish.
When Sarah and her husband started their wanderings, they both were in their mature years. The Bible says she was sixty-five and he was seventy-five. They had known only one home, Ur, about halfway between the head of the Persian Gulf and Bagdad. From this ancient city of reed and mud huts Sarah traveled with her husband along 'the level banks of the Euphrates and on around the Fertile Crescent to the trail south along the Mediterranean. The arch of this crescent was flourishing in these times as a place of rich caravan trade.
This couple's caravan was impressive in the beginning; and Abraham increased his wealth as he traveled. Their long entourage consisted of menservants and maidservants as well as sheep, oxen, asses, and other herds and flocks. The extent of their household later may be imagined by the fact that, at Abraham's word, no less than 318 servants, born in his house and trained to arms, accompanied him to the rescue of his nephew, Lot. Those left to attend his flocks and herds, which he possessed in great numbers, must have been in equal proportion. The beautiful confidence and true affection existing between Sarah and Abraham are reflected in the authority she had over this household during his absence. He recognized her as his equal. She never subjected herself to a lesser role, and Abraham never demanded it.
We can picture their long caravan with its riding animals brilliantly attired with wool and bead trappings, as were their riders, forming a cavalcade of color as it moved from the fertile green valley into the parched land where little grew but dry thorn bushes and tamarisk trees.
Perhaps the most impressive figure in the caravan was Sarah herself. Though Bible records furnish no further details than the fact that she was "a fair woman to look upon," we can picture her as wearing a flowing robe blending several rich colors, perhaps the warm reds and azure blue made familiar by the old masters. The drapery of her robe extended to a headdress with a veil that partly hid her face. It is easy to imagine she might have had alluring auburn hair, plaited and coiled in halo effect, exquisite olive skin, red lips and cheeks, deep-set eyes that brightened as she smiled, and a figure both commanding and graceful.
Sarah was a princess in bearing and character, as her name signified. From Babylonia, she brought with her the name of Sarai, but fourteen years later, at the time of her approaching motherhood, God changed her name from Sarai to Sarah, and her husband's name from Abram to Abraham (Gen. 17:5, 15).
Sarah was her husband's half-sister on the side of their father Terah, who had journeyed with them from Ur as far as Haran. Such marriages were not uncommon in the early patriarchal era. As Sarah and Abraham journeyed through strange and perilous country, Abraham passed his wife off as his sister, which was a half-truth. Possibly it was because he knew that these ancient monarchs would employ any means, however cruel and violent, to get the radiantly beautiful Sarah into their harems. Early in their wanderings Sarah was taken into King Pharaoh's court, but it is evident from the record that her ardent affection for Abraham was not diminished by the pomp, riches, and power of a great Egyptian king. Josephus informs us that Sarah, courageous and unafraid, admitted to her royal admirer that she was the wife of Abraham; consequently Pharaoh gave many gifts to Abraham because of the beautiful Sarah. Isn't it to Sarah's credit that her own fidelity to Abraham secured her escape?
The same situation recurred when Sarah and Abraham arrived, a decade or more later, at the court of Abimelech in Gerar. This king, too, we are told, desired Sarah for his harem, though these two similar stories may be variant records of the same incident.
Growing impatient for the birth of Abraham's promised son, and not understanding the divine delay, Sarah concluded she was the obstacle. The promise had been made about eleven years before when Sarah and Abraham had left their homeland. Because she had not yet conceived, Sarah devised the plan of giving her maid Hagar, probably obtained as a gift from Pharaoh, to her husband as a secondary wife, a common custom in patriarchal times. Hagar, who had become the favorite in Sarah's large household of servants, evidently enjoyed her mistress' full confidence.
With wavering faith but with a willingness to forsake her own vanity, Sarah went to Abraham and said, "Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai‚"(Gen. 16:2).
Sarah's lack of faith in her ability to give birth to a child of her own was to bring long years of anguish, for this child by the
bond-woman Hagar, she later would learn, was not the child God had promised. According to an ancient custom, the child of such a union as Sarah proposed between her maid and her husband would be regarded as Sarah's own child.
After having been admitted to intimacy with Abraham, and after learning she had conceived by him, Hagar became proud and assuming and quickly forgot her mistress' generosity in exalting her from the position of bondwoman to that of concubine. Understandably human, Sarah showed her worst self when she uttered reproach to her husband: "I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee‚" (Gen. 16:5).
Sarah, we can be quite certain, still enjoyed the love and confidence of her husband, for when she complained to Abraham about Hagar's insolence and impudence, he answered her saying, "Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee‚" (Gen.16:6). That was reassurance enough of Abraham's affection for Sarah and his recognition of her supremacy over a maid, even one who was to bear him a child.
Not one to submit tamely to ingratitude, Sarah took quick steps to reprimand Hagar. In no state of mind to take such reprimands, Hagar fled into the wilderness. "And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands‚" (Gen. 16:9).
There is no record that further enmity between Sarah and Hagar occurred until about fourteen years later. Sarah doubtless had formed an attachment to Hagar's son Ishmael, her foster son, and may even have regarded him as the Son of Promise. When the boy was thirteen years old, Abraham was circumcized, signifying that he had entered upon a covenant with God. Then God told Abraham that He would not establish His covenant with Ishmael but with a son whom Sarah would bear.
Soon after this three men came toward him as he sat in his tent door. Desiring to offer them his best hospitality, he hastened to Sarah's tent and asked her to make cakes upon the hearth for their guests. In this service Sarah became the first woman in the Bible to extend hospitality to guests.
Her guests turned out to be divine messengers who had come to tell Abraham that Sarah would give birth to a son. Out of curiosity Sarah was listening to their conversation from her own tent. Not knowing who these strangers were, "Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" (Gen. 18:12). In a later passage (Gen. 18:15) it is explained that she had laughed because she was afraid. Could it be that her laughter came from a sorrowful heart, that her mirth represented a heaviness of spirit? (Prov. 14:13).
Sarah surely had developed great faith or she could not have become the mother in the Bible's first story of a miracle birth. The ancient writers who recorded her story believed that with God nothing was impossible, not even the birth of a child to a woman long past the age to bear children.
Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, in speaking on salvation that comes not by law but through faith, best expresses the miracle of Isaac's birth in this manner, "And being not weak in faith, he [Abraham] considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb‚" (Rom. 4:19).
Soon Sarah was to know all the bliss of a young mother. She would even nurse her child at her own breast, experiencing the while a visible manifestation of the wonderful power and unchanging love of God. In later years her son Isaac would display tenderhearted qualities, evidence enough of the gentle influence of his mother in these formative years of his life.
On one of Isaac's birthdays, probably his third, his father made a great public feast, celebrating the child's weaning. At this feast, during which throngs of guests rejoiced, Hagar and Ishmael, who was now about seventeen years old, stood aside mocking. Once more Sarah, a woman of positive decision, demanded of Abraham, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac‚" (Gen. 21:10).
Like any mother of a toddling youngster, Sarah did not look forward to rearing him with a rough half-brother and his jealous mother. Probably there was more wisdom than harshness in the positive stand Sarah took against Hagar and Ishmael, for we have the record that God spoke again to Abraham, saying, "Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that
Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Gen. 21:12).
Early the next morning Abraham sent away the bondwoman and her son, first placing on her shoulder a skin bottle of water. Though Abraham had been Hagar's legal custodian, he now followed the patriarchal custom when he turned her out, because of her misdemeanors toward his wife. Though in distress when expelled from the household of Abraham and Sarah, Hagar was to find new strength from God, a God who had mercy even upon those who had acted wrongly. He protected Hagar by filling her jug with water and by teaching her son Ishmael to become an expert with the bow.
Now Sarah could instruct her son Isaac in wisdom and piety, without the discord that had been created by these two who had mocked her. Sarah is not to be condoned, of course, for not showing more love, even to those who had mocked her. But in this wasn't she protecting her child rather than herself?
As Isaac reached manhood, Sarah was to come face to face with an even greater trial. At God's command, Abraham set forth with their beloved Son of Promise to sacrifice him upon an altar. As Sarah
sorrowfully watched her husband and son depart for the mountains in the land of Moriah, we can imagine her anguish of heart. And yet this woman who had developed great faith could now turn to the same omnipotent God who had miraculously brought forth her child in her old age. He was a God of love and mercy and majesty. She would remain obedient to him.
Anxiety and sorrow were not to overwhelm her for long. She soon would learn that God did not demand the sacrifice of a son. A ram would be offered up instead of Isaac.
We have no record of Sarah in the years that follow her son's and husband's return from Moriah, but we can assume she enjoyed the love and companionship of a devoted husband and a loyal son until her death at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven years. She is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is recorded. This again signifies the important place that she held in the minds of early Hebrews.
In the Cave of Machpelah, near Abraham's well-loved oak of Mamre, Sarah was buried. In selecting this site for his wife's last resting place, again Abraham demonstrated his great affection for her. Records tell us also that he mourned for her (Gen. 23:2). A few years later, on his wedding night, Isaac took his bride Rebekah to his mother's own tent, thus showing how fondly he, too, cherished her memory.
At Hebron, over the cave of Machpelah which Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite (Gen. 23) there stands today a conservative Moslem mosque. The lower portions of the walls surrounding the enclosure are believed to date from the time of Solomon. Here in the mosque are the cenotaphs of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and other descendants of their family, erected just above their tombs in the cave below. Sarah, the first matriarch in the Bible, lies there in the honored place.
In Hebrews 11:11 she is mentioned with those whose faith was outstanding. It says of her: "Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised." In Galatians 4:23-31, she is the free-woman in what is called the Allegory of Agar or Hagar. The allegory tells that it was the free-woman (Sarah) who gave birth to a child according to the Spirit, while the bondwoman (Hagar) gave birth to a child according to the flesh.
The fact that Sarah is mentioned in three other places in the New Testament, I Peter 3:6 and Romans 4:19 and 9:9, as well as in Isaiah 51:2, is evidence of the revered place she held in Hebrew history. Today this "Mother of Nations" lives on, some four thousand years later, as the woman whose faith helped to achieve one of the miracle births of the Bible.
