Daily Archives: February 15, 2017

SARAH

Sarah was an uncommonly beautiful woman married to a rich man who traveled the world (13:2). Even at the age of sixty-five, Sarah was apparently attractive enough that Abraham worried Pharaoh would be so smitten of her beauty that he would take her for his own and kill Abraham (Gen. 12:11). Fragments of ancient stories that survive to this day, relating similar events, bear out Abraham’s fears as well founded. Nor did Sarah’s beauty leave her with time, for when she was ninety-nine years old, Abimelech, king of Gerar, similarly was smitten by her beauty and “took her” (Gen. 20:1). However, God providentially protected Sarah from committing any transgression (Gen. 12:19; 20:6).

In both instances, Sarah unfortunately agreed to Abraham’s sinful request to lie about their relationship. Abraham’s motive was fear for his own life and his lie betrayed a weakness (Gen. 12:13). Sarah’s motive can only have been that to please her husband and trust in God for there was nothing good in this for her. Even if she had not agreed, she still might have been taken by force and if she was found out she might have been killed for lying to the Pharaoh.

To illustrate the principle of the wife being in subjection to her husband, Peter alludes to the fact that Sarah submitted herself to Abraham, calling him “lord” (I Pet. 3:6). There is nothing in the Bible, however, that would vindicate this lie, even if it was only a half truth (Sarah being his sister as well as his wife – Gen. 20:12). While there was no direct condemnation of the lie, everything we know about God and His word reveals that purposely not revealing the pertinent information constituted a lie. Abraham and Sarah’s time in Egypt was a low point in their life. Afterward, they both headed back to Bethel and to the altar which Abraham had built to call again on the name of the Lord (Gen. 13:4).

While Sarah excelled in beauty, she lacked in another womanly area: she was barren; she had no child (Gen. 11:30). Even today this is a curse to most women, but in that age it meant much more, for Abraham had no heir to carry on his heritage except a foreigner, a Damascene, named Eliezer, a steward (Gen. 15:2,3). How this must have hurt Sarah, who, as we have seen, wanted to please her lord, and who must have been aware of the promise given to Abraham by God, that through him should all the nations of the earth be blessed (Gen. 12:11,2).

Was it the pressure of having no child and knowing the promise of God to Abraham that drove Sarah to conceive an idea whereby Abraham could have a son of his own loins? In the very next chapter, after Abraham cried to God in despair that he had no heir, Sarah suggested to Abraham that he take her handmaid, Hagar, an Egyptian, to conceive an heir (Gen. 16:1,2). Is it not ironic that in Egypt Sarah was almost taken by the Egyptian Pharaoh to wife (Gen. 12:19) and now Abraham has taken an Egyptian to be his wife (Gen. 16:3)?

But Sarah’s plan to either circumvent God’s plan or, in her mind, help it along, backfired. This is forever and always the case. Whenever man deigns to help God, or supplant God’s will with his own in hopes of making things right, it is doomed to miserable and complete failure (Prov. 14:12). Centuries of conflict have resulted from Sarah’s “good intentions.” But God had not forgotten His promise to Abraham twenty-four years earlier and was going to fulfill it in His own good time and way.

When informed by the Lord that she was going to bear a son the next year, Sarah laughed (Gen. 18:9-15). Abraham also laughed when he was told this (Gen. 17:15-17). They were beyond the age of child-bearing and the idea seemed impossible. In response to her laugh, the Lord asked Sarah, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14). The answer, of course, is no and apparently both Abraham and Sarah believed this for Paul states that “through faith also Sara 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” (Heb. 11:11). Sarah judged God faithful, demonstrating her own faith.

When conveying the superiority of the New Covenant to the first century Judaizers, Paul, using their methods of interpretation, represented Sarah allegorically as the New Covenant (Gal. 4:24). Hagar and Ishmael represented Mt. Sinai and the Old Covenant that was in bondage and was after the flesh (Gal. 4:23,25). But Isaac’s birth was by the promise of God. He was born after the freewoman, Sarah, and we, like him, are children of the promise. “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26).

Eric L. Padgett