(Gen. 23.2)
To an attentive reader, it would appear that Sarah has died alone. In fact, the Torah records specifically that Abraham dwelt in a different a city, Beer-Sheba, on the outskirts of a different land, “the Land of the Philistines.” It is here in Beer-Sheba that Isaac was born and raised, it is to here—their family home—that Isaac and Abraham return after the ordeal of the Akedah. So how, just a few verses later, without segue or sequitur, does Sarah come to dwell and, ultimately, die in Hebron? How does she become separated from Abraham, so far away it would seem, that he must journey to her? “And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.”
If physical distance is a metaphor for psychic distance,
then at the end, Abraham and Sarah were miles apart. The Hizkuni (13th
century commentator, France) suggests that Abraham originally “sent her away so
she would not sense the Akedah.” The brief comment provokes wonder. Does
Abraham send Sarah away because he cannot face her, much less the prospect of
returning to her without Isaac? Or in a more modern vein, does Sarah leave him,
for how can she even look at her husband, this stranger, who
would contemplate the murder of her one and only son?
Either way there is a vast chasm between them. But one wonders
if this distance, to some extent, existed all along. Consider Abraham’s public
habit of claiming Sarah as a sister instead of a wife. “This is the kindness
that you can do for me: in every place to which we come, say of
me, you are my brother.” (20:13) If the act of marriage is a public declaration
that affirms relationship, what would repeated public denials affirm—if not its
absence?
One might add Abraham’s eventual preference for Hagar and
Ishmael. After God’s promise to Abraham that Sarah (not Hagar), would
would be the mother of his elected heir, Abraham retorts, “Would that Ishmael
might live in your favor!” (Gen. 17.18) It is “God who remembers Sarah,” and
Abraham who forgets.
Perhaps the best illustration of their emotional
estrangement is again depicted in geographic terms. We read last week, at the
start of Parashat Vayera, how on a sweltering day, three messengers appear at the
entrance of Abraham’s tent. The Torah tells us twice that Abraham seats them
and serves them outdoors ‘beneath the shade of a tree.’ But if the sun
was so terribly strong, why not forgo the shade of a terebinth and move the
repast to the much cooler tent?
Noticing something amiss, one guests inquires, ‘“Where is
Sarah your wife?” Pointedly, the Hebrew word used for “where” –ayyeh— is
the same interrogative used to question Adam in the Garden: Where are
you? (ayeka); And the same used to question Cain: Where (ayyeh)
is Abel your brother? This in not an innocuous, ‘Is your wife home?’ Instead it
is a question for Abraham’s soul, ‘Where is Sarah in your life? Why is she not
aside you? How long must she remain behind you, hidden from kings and
messengers and, above all, hidden from you. “And Sarah was listening at the
tent flap, which was behind him.” (Gen. 18.10)
This week we read the Torah Portion of Hayyei Sarah,
literally translated, “The Lives of Sarah.” Naturally, Abraham must
mourn the life that was lived, but there is too a mourning for a life that was
not; a life with Sarah in one city and Abraham in another. Sarah could have
died with a husband by her side, instead she died alone.
