Sarah- Hebrew/Jewish FigureMortal"First Matriarch"

From Ur to Canaan

God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, and Sarah went with him. They lived in tents, moving from Haran to Canaan as strangers in a land they had been promised but did not yet own. When famine drove them south into Egypt, Abraham feared that Pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah, whose beauty was extraordinary even in old age. He told her to say she was his sister. Pharaoh took her into his house. God struck the household with plagues until Pharaoh discovered the deception and sent them both away. Years later, the same thing happened with Abimelech of Gerar. Again Abraham called Sarah his sister; again God intervened, this time warning Abimelech in a dream before he touched her.

The Laughter

God had promised Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars, but decade after decade Sarah bore no children. After ten years in Canaan, she offered her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abraham. Hagar conceived Ishmael, and the household fractured. Hagar looked on Sarah with contempt. Sarah drove her out, though an angel sent Hagar back.

When Abraham was ninety-nine and Sarah ninety, three visitors appeared at their tent near the oaks of Mamre. Abraham slaughtered a calf and prepared a feast. During the meal, one visitor said: "I will surely return about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son." Sarah, listening from the tent door, laughed to herself. "After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?" The Lord asked Abraham: "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Afraid, Sarah denied it. "No," the Lord said. "But you did laugh."

Isaac was born the following year. Sarah said: "God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me." At the child's weaning feast, she saw Ishmael laughing and demanded: "Cast out this slave woman with her son." Abraham was distressed, but God told him to listen to Sarah. He sent Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness with bread and a skin of water.

Machpelah

Sarah died at Kiriath-arba, which is Hebron, at the age of 127. She is the only woman in the Hebrew Bible whose lifespan is recorded. Abraham mourned and wept for her, then negotiated with the Hittites to purchase the cave of Machpelah and its surrounding field. He paid four hundred shekels of silver, full price, for clear ownership. It was the only land he ever bought in Canaan.

The Midrash connects her death to the Binding of Isaac: upon hearing that Abraham had taken their son to Mount Moriah, Sarah's soul departed before she learned Isaac was spared. The Talmud counts her among Israel's seven prophetesses, and Genesis Rabbah teaches that the cloud of God's presence hovered over her tent, departing at her death and returning only when Rebekah arrived as Isaac's bride. Rashi read her age this way: at one hundred she was as sinless as at twenty, and at twenty as beautiful as at seven.