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SARAH
1. Wife of Abraham whose name was originally Sarai (Gn 11:29). Her name was changed to Sarah (“princess”) when she was promised that she would bear a son and become the mother of nations and kings (17:15-16). Sarah was both the wife and the half sister of Abraham (20:12).
Sarah accompanied Abraham in his journey from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran and eventually into the land of Canaan (Gn 11:31; 12:5). She remained barren for much of her marriage. When God promised Abraham that he would make of him a great nation (12:2) and that the land of Canaan would be given to his seed (v 7), Sarah was still barren.
After 10 years had passed (cf. Gn 12:4; 16:16) and Sarah continued without children, she gave her Egyptian slave, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine. Hagar conceived and bore a son, Ishmael (16:3-4). God promised that a nation would come from Ishmael (17:20) but indicated that he was not to be the child of the promise. Sarah herself was to be the mother of this child, even though she laughed when the birth was predicted. The fulfillment of this prediction took place with the birth of Isaac (21:2-3), when Sarah was 90 years old, 25 years after the original promise of a seed to Abraham (17:17; 21:5).
When famine forced Abraham and Sarah to journey down into Egypt shortly after their entrance into Canaan, Sarah was represented to the Egyptians as Abraham’s sister. This resulted in Sarah’s being taken into the harem of Pharaoh because of her great beauty (Gn 12:11-15), and Abraham’s being well treated and rewarded by the Egyptians instead of being killed. God intervened to protect the marriage of Abraham and Sarah by plaguing the house of Pharaoh to force Sarah’s release. A similar tactic was followed by Abraham and Sarah on another occasion in Gerar (ch 20), where she was taken into the household of Abimelech the king of Gerar. Again God protected Sarah, preserved her as the mother of the promised seed, and prevented any suspicion or doubt concerning who was the father of Isaac. Significantly, Isaac was born not long after this incident (21:1-5), his birth having been promised about a year earlier (17:21; 18:10-14). Sarah died at the age of 127 and was buried in the cave at Machpelah, which Abraham had purchased from Ephron the Hittite (ch 23).
Apart from the book of Genesis, Sarah is referred to in the OT only in Isaiah 51:2. Reference is made to her in the NT in Romans 4:19, 9:9, Hebrews 11:11, 1 Peter 3:6, and Galatians 4:21-31, although in the Galatians text she is not mentioned by name.
See also Abraham; Barrenness.
2. KJV spelling of Serah, Asher’s daughter, in Numbers 26:46. See Serah.
3. The heroine of the book of Tobit. Her prayer of anguish was heard by God, who sent the angel Raphael as a matchmaker to arrange her marriage to Tobias (Tb 6:9ff.). She had been tormented by a demon, who had caused the death of her previous seven husbands but was exorcised by Tobias using a recipe of fish heart and liver that was given to him by the angel Raphael (8:2). After the death of Tobit and his wife, Anna, in Nineveh, Tobias and Sarah, and their children returned to Sarah’s family in Ecbatana (14:12ff.).