Genesis 23:1-2

2008.Jan.13 00:21

Sarah

Read Genesis 23:1-2 | Full Chapter

Sarah lived 127 years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
(Genesis 23:1-2, ESV)

These are the years of the life of Sarah. She was born Sarai, probably in Ur of the Chaldeans. She journeyed with her husband and his family first to Haran (Genesis 11:31) and then to Canaan, with a side stop in Egypt (Genesis 12). Big moments in her life include not quite becoming a concubine of various kings (Genesis 12, Genesis 20), convincing her husband to sleep with her slave, getting mad about it afterwards (Genesis 16), and having her first and only child at ninety (Genesis 21).

So, it occurs to me that the emphatic points of Sarah’s story have to do with traveling and sex. I’m not sure that’s unusual, though.

Anyway, Sarah seems to me to have lived a good life, both in the sense that she received significant blessings from God and in the sense that she was righteous, that is, she was generally obedient and generally had faith. I don’t mean to belittle how she treated Hagar, which was pretty bad for a while, but from my cynical view, being a complete jerk to only one person in your life is exceptionally good.

I think I may have said this before, but Sarah and David strike me as very similar, they lived righteously, with one big except. Where we really see David’s repentance in several passages (Psalm 51, 2 Samuel 12), I don’t know if Sarah ever repented for her treatment of Hagar (and I suppose, it’s my interpretation that Sarah acted sinfully in this matter, but I am confident in that interpretation). For Sarah, her sin was wrapped in a pressing desire for a child. Maybe her desire was primarily cultural, maybe a child is something she deeply wanted, maybe God had placed a specific desire in her heart… Whatever reasons, Sarah let her desire dictate her actions at one point, from which so much bitterness and hurt grew in her home. God’s plan for the eventual birth of Isaac was the same after the birth of Ishmael as before, regardless of Sarah’s faith. But Sarah’s lapse of faith produced pain in her life, whereas later, persisting in her faith produced laughter and joy.

And again, none of this has any bearing, I think, on how we should see Ishmael.