Why sarai to sarah

This is taken up in Galatians 4 as a figure of Christians being children of the free woman , that is, of Jerusalem which is above, which, says the apostle , is our mother. Ishmael represents the man born after the flesh , who persecutes him born after the Spirit. Sarah lived to the age of , and died in Kirjath- arba , and was buried in the cave of Machpelah , which was purchased as a burying place.

Her history is given in Genesis Sarah is held up in the New Testament as an example of faith Heb. Genesis 11 relates that Abram and his brother Nahor married Sarai and Milcah, respectively v. However, in Genesis 20 , when Abraham explains his wife-sister ruse to Abimelech of Gerar, he claims that Sarah is his non-uterine sister v.

This contradiction has led some readers to identify Sarah with the otherwise unknown Iscah. Forced by famine to leave the land, Abraham is fearful that Egyptians will kill him in order to take the beautiful Sarah.

His concerns make sense in the biblical milieu, for in the Bible, beauty sets up the beautiful to be desired and taken. Furthermore, in the ancient world adultery was considered a very grievous offense, possibly even worse than murder.

It certainly enriched Abraham, who was given bride wealth for a sister, something that he would never have received as a husband. Genesis 12 relates this strange wife-sister episode in a matter-of-fact fashion. The Gerar story emphasizes that Abimelech never touched Sarah because God immediately intervened with dreams. Moreover, the narrator is not at ease with the wife-sister ruse and may no longer understand it. So, Abraham not only relates that Sarah is his half-sister, but also makes it clear that the ruse is done by the grace and benevolence of Sarah.

She herself is not in danger of her life—but the reader knows that nascent Israel is in danger of losing its ancestress. Her own experience of servitude in Egypt perhaps has made her feel threatened by the Egyptian Hagar rather than sympathetic to her.

Abraham then restores the authority over Hagar to Sarah. Abraham seems content to keep Sarah out of the loop and to consider Ishmael the child of the promise.

The miracles that God performed for Sarah in Egypt have not taught him her importance. It is likely that Sarai is simply the possessive form of Sarah i. Secondly, who was Sarah in the Torah? Sarah was childless until she was 90 years old. Sarai is a Hebrew name borne from the Bible; she was Abram's wife and Isaac's mother — essentially the matriarch of all the Israeli people. Means "lady, princess, noblewoman" in Hebrew. In the Old Testament this is the name of Abraham's wife, considered the matriarch of the Jewish people.

Her name was originally Sarai, but God changed it at the same time Abraham's name was changed see Genesis Sarai means quarrelsome , and Sarah means Princess. The name Sara is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "princess". Some Old Testament sources give Sara as a variation of Sarai, the Biblical personage's original name, and some give it as the authentic form of the new name of Isaac's year-old mother.

Pronunciation of "Sarah", "Sara" and other names with the letter "a" before "r" Sara: Sah-rah "a" as in "bat" Sarah: Se-rah "a" as in "air". Sarai is largely used in English and Hebrew, and it is derived from Hebrew origins. When her youth had been restored and she had given birth to Isaac, the people would not believe in the miracle, saying that the patriarch and his wife had adopted a foundling and pretended that it was their own son.

Abraham thereupon invited all the notabilities to a banquet on the day when Isaac was to be weaned. Sarah invited the women also, who brought their infants with them; and on this occasion she gave suck to all the strange children, thus convincing the guests of the miracle B.

Sarah's behavior toward Ishmael, whom she drove away from his father's roof, is justified on the ground that she saw him commit the three greatest sins, namely, idolatry, unchastity, and murder, ib. Legends connect Sarah's death with the sacrifice of Isaac ib. According to one, Samael came to her and said: "Your old husband seized the boy and sacrificed him.

The boy wailed and wept; but he could not escape from his father. According to the other legend, Satan, disguised as an old man, came to Sarah and told her that Isaac had been sacrificed.

She, believing it to be true, cried bitterly, but soon comforted herself with the thought that the sacrifice had been offered at the command of God. She started from Beer-sheba to Hebron, asking every one she met if he knew in which direction Abraham had gone.

Then Satan came again in human shape and told her that it was not true that Isaac had been sacrificed, but that he was living and would soon return with his father. Sarah, on hearing this, died of joy at Hebron. Abraham and Isaac returned to their home at Beer-sheba, and, not finding Sarah there, went to Hebron, where they discovered her dead "Sefer ha-Yashar," section "Wayera". During Sarah's lifetime her house was always hospitably open, the dough was miraculously increased, a light burned from Friday evening to Friday evening, and a pillar of cloud rested upon the entrance to her tent Gen.

The two forms of the name, "Sarah" and "Sarai," are identical in meaning; it is difficult to understand the reason for the change. The writer of Gen. Accordingly, the change would be similar to that of "Joshua" to "Jehoshua.

The element "sarah" is identical with a part of the name "Israel," and "Sarah" and "Sarai" are appropriate names for Israel's mother Isa. Robertson Smith, "Kinship and Marriage," p. The story of Sarah's life, brief and incomplete as it is, presents nevertheless curious repetitions, e.

Marriages with half-sisters were, in primitive matriarchy, regarded as anything but incestuous. From the point of view of the history of culture these episodes are very instructive.

But it is not very probable that Abraham would have run the risk twice. Moreover, a similar incident is reported in regard to Isaac and Rebecea ib. This recurrence indicates that none of the accounts is to be accepted as historical; all three are variations of a theme common to the popular oral histories of the Patriarchs.

That women were married in the way here supposed is not to be doubted. The purpose of the story is to extol the heroines as most beautiful and show that the Patriarchs were under the special protection of the Deity. The promise of Isaac and the explanation of the name are given in duplicate.