Sarah

Sarah is the wife of the holy Patriarch Abraham and the mother of Isaac, through whom God's promise that a great people would be born of Abraham was fulfilled. Scripture shows her as a woman of faith, who received in old age the gift she had awaited all her life. The book of Genesis tells of her, and the years of her life cannot be fixed with precision.

In Abraham's footsteps

Her first name was Sarai, and God changed it to Sarah, which means "lady" or "princess". According to Genesis she was the daughter of Terah, though by a different mother than Abraham. With Terah, Abraham and Lot she left Ur of the Chaldeans and came to Haran, and when Abraham, at seventy-⁠five, received the command to go to the land God would show him, she followed him into Canaan, living as a stranger in tents.

Twice her beauty put Abraham's life in danger. In a time of famine, in Egypt, Abraham said she was his sister, and Pharaoh took her into his house. Scripture says that God struck Pharaoh's house with great plagues, after which she was returned. The same happened later at Gerar with King Abimelech, to whom God spoke in a dream and who gave her back to Abraham.

The promise and the birth of Isaac

Sarah was barren. After ten years in Canaan without children, she gave Abraham her Egyptian maidservant Hagar, from whom Ishmael was born. God then changed her name to Sarah and promised that she herself would bear a son. At the oak of Mamre, the three men whom Abraham had received announced that in a year Sarah would have a son. Hearing it from the tent, she laughed within herself, thinking it impossible at their age, and was told that nothing is too hard for God. This meeting is shown in the icon of the Holy Trinity by Saint Andrei Rublev, where the three guests are painted as angels.

The promise was fulfilled, and Sarah bore Isaac when she was ninety and Abraham a hundred. Later, seeing Ishmael mocking, she asked that Hagar and her son be sent away, and God told Abraham to do as she said, promising that Ishmael too would become a nation.

Repose

She lived a hundred and twenty-⁠seven years and died at Hebron. Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite a cave at Machpelah and buried her there. According to Scripture it was the first land Abraham owned in the promised land.

Veneration

The epistle to the Hebrews names her among the righteous who lived by faith, saying that she counted faithful the One who had promised. The Apostle Peter holds her up to Christian wives as an example of obedience to her husband. The Apostle Paul sees in her and Hagar the image of the two covenants, and in her descendants those born of the promise. The Orthodox Church honours her among the righteous of the Old Testament in December, before the Nativity of the Lord; some lists give the dates 12 and 20 December.