Who was Sarah?
When they lived The patriarchal age, traditionally placed around the nineteenth century BC
In short
Sarah was Abraham’s wife and the mother of Isaac. Genesis introduces her as barren, and she stays that way for decades: she hands her servant Hagar to her husband to bear children for her, laughs when she hears the promise of a son in old age, and later demands that Hagar be sent away.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 8 min read
Sarah first appears in a genealogical list and leaves it carrying the sentence that will organise everything after it: she was barren, with no child. From there Genesis spends twelve chapters circling a promise of descendants made to a couple who keep getting older without one.
The Sarah of most sermons is the woman of faith who waited. The Sarah of the text is more interesting and far less smooth: she negotiates, proposes practical solutions, laughs at a divine promise, lies about having laughed and, later on, demands an expulsion her own husband finds harsh. The book records all of it without erasing anything.
The sentence that organises everything
Sarai — her name in the first half of the story — is introduced in a list of marriages, and the narrator adds a piece of information nobody asked for: she was barren. It is a short line, placed deliberately before any promise, and it is the obstacle around which the rest is arranged.
The time span is worth measuring. Between the first promise of descendants made to Abram and the birth of Isaac, decades pass inside the narrative itself. This is not a chapter of waiting; it is a lifetime of it, and the text fills the gap with episodes in which the promise looks like it is being abandoned.
29Then Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai. And the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30But Sarai was barren and had no children.
Notice the economy: the verse introduces two wives and, of the second, supplies the name of her father and her grandfather. Of the first it supplies only the absence of children. The asymmetry is deliberate, and it primes the reader.
The sister in Egypt
The first thing that happens to Sarai after the promise is a famine that pushes the couple into Egypt. There Abram asks her to present herself as his sister, so that he will not be killed on her account. The plan works: she is taken into Pharaoh’s house, and Abram is treated well precisely because of it.
It is one of the most uncomfortable passages in Genesis, and the text does not soften it. There is no explicit condemnation from the narrator, Sarai is given no speech, and the episode is resolved from outside — plagues in Pharaoh’s household, who discovers the deception and expels the couple. The same story will happen again, with another king, further on.
11And when he was close to entering Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai: “I know you to be a beautiful woman.
12And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘She is his wife.’ And they will put me to death, and retain you.
13Therefore, I beg you to say that you are my sister, so that it may be well with me because of you, and so that my soul may live by your favor.”
The request takes three verses, and the third spells out the calculation: things would go easily for him on her account. The text records the motive without dressing it up, and gives Sarai no line of reply.
Hagar, and the solution Sarai proposed
Years later, the initiative is hers. Sarai states that her childlessness came from God himself, proposes that Abram have a child with the Egyptian servant Hagar, and says plainly that she may yet receive sons through her. Abram agrees without argument.
This is not an improvised moral shortcut: it was a recognised legal practice in the ancient Near East, in which a servant’s child could be reckoned as the mistress’s. What the text narrates next, however, is the domestic failure of the arrangement — Hagar conceives, relations between the two women sour, and Sarai treats her badly enough to make her run away.
1Now Sarai, the wife of Abram, had not conceived children. But, having an Egyptian handmaid named Hagar,
2she said to her husband: “Behold, the Lord has closed me, lest I give birth. Enter to my handmaid, so that perhaps I may receive sons of her at least.” And when he agreed to her supplication,
The proposal is hers, and the phrasing is dry: since the Lord has closed her, let Abram go in to the servant. The text then records that he agreed to her request — the first of two occasions on which it notes exactly that.
The laughter
Sarah’s best-known scene happens at a tent door. Three visitors arrive, Abraham receives them, and one of them announces that she will have a son the following year. Sarah, listening from behind, laughs to herself — and the text reproduces her thought, which is about age and about the body, not about theology.
What follows is a small drama in three speeches: the question about why she laughed, her denial, and a one-line reply. It is one of the few places in the Bible where somebody lies to God and the conversation simply continues.
A detail that rarely accompanies the scene: Abraham had laughed too, a chapter and a half earlier, at the same news — and there the text records no rebuke at all. And when the boy is born, it is Sarah who picks the verb back up on her own initiative, saying that God has given her laughter and that anyone who hears will laugh with her. The name Isaac carries that laughter in it.
15God said also to Abraham: “Your wife Sarai, you shall not call Sarai, but Sarah.
16And I will bless her, and from her I will give you a son, whom I will bless, and he will be among the nations, and the kings of the peoples will rise from him.”
The change of name arrives with the promise, and what is promised to her is not merely a son: nations and kings are said to come from her. It is the first promise of that scale addressed to a woman by name in Genesis.
12And she laughed secretly, saying, “After I have grown old, and my lord is elderly, shall I give myself to the work of delight?”
13Then the Lord said to Abraham: “Why did Sarah laugh, saying: ‘How can I, an old woman, actually give birth?’
14Is anything difficult for God? According to the announcement, he will return to you at this same time, with life as a companion, and Sarah will have a son.”
15Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh.” For she was terribly afraid. But the Lord said, “It is not so; for you did laugh.”
Four verses containing laughter, question, lie and correction. Note that the final reply carries no punishment, no withdrawal of the promise and no consequence of any kind — the scene simply ends.
6And Sarah said: “God has brought laughter to me. Whoever will hear of it will laugh with me.”
After the birth, Sarah gives the word back in another sense. Laughter that was disbelief becomes laughter shared, and she is the one who makes the turn, unprompted.
The expulsion
Isaac is born, grows, and on a day of feasting Sarah sees Hagar’s son and demands that both be cast out, with an argument about inheritance: the servant’s son will not inherit alongside hers. The text says Abraham found this very hard, and reports that he did it anyway.
It is the second moment the narrative records Abraham carrying out a decision of hers. And it is the episode that permanently separates the two lines of Genesis — Isaac’s and Ishmael’s — with consequences the book goes on tracking.
9And when Sarah had seen the son of Hagar the Egyptian playing with her son Isaac, she said to Abraham:
10“Cast out this woman servant and her son. For the son of a woman servant will not be heir with my son Isaac.”
In this edition, what Sarah sees is Hagar’s son playing with Isaac. Other editions say he was mocking, and the difference changes what a reader understands about her motive. Her stated argument, though, is identical in both: inheritance.
Hebron, and the first piece of property
Sarah dies at Arba — a place the text identifies with Hebron — and Abraham comes to mourn her. The following chapter is given over entirely to negotiating a grave: he buys a cave and the field around it, in a transaction recorded with witnesses and a price.
It is worth noticing what that means inside the story. The only piece of land Abraham ever owns in the promised land is a tomb, and he buys it because of her. The promise of an entire country is realised, in his lifetime, as a plot purchased to bury his wife.
1Now Sarah lived for one hundred and twenty-seven years.
2And she died in the city of Arba, which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn and weep for her.
The text states how many years she lived — something the Bible does for very few women — and records Abraham’s mourning in two verbs: to mourn and to weep.
What the text does not say
Biblical figures gather layers of tradition that Scripture does not support. Telling the two apart does not diminish the story — it gives back what is actually written.
What is commonly said
Sarah laughed out of unbelief and was rebuked for it; Abraham, by contrast, believed.
What Scripture says
Abraham laughs at the same promise a chapter and a half earlier, and the text records no rebuke in his case. And it is Sarah who picks the laughter back up after the birth, saying that God has given it to her. Laughter runs through the story of both of them, and it is not treated only as a failing.
What is commonly said
Sarah is the biblical model of the submissive wife.
What Scripture says
The letter of 1 Peter does cite her calling her husband lord, and that passage exists. Genesis, however, twice records Abraham doing what she determines: when she proposes Hagar and when she demands the expulsion — the second against his declared wishes. The Bible carries both portraits and does not reconcile them.
What is commonly said
Sarai became Sarah because the new name meant princess.
What Scripture says
The change of name is in the text, together with the promise that nations and kings would come from her. The meaning of the two names is not explained there. The "princess" reading comes from later commentators, not from the passage.
What is commonly said
Sarah waited in silence, patiently, until the promise was fulfilled.
What Scripture says
The narrative shows the opposite of passive waiting: she proposes a legal solution to the inheritance problem, mistreats the servant when it goes wrong, laughs at the promise, denies laughing, and later imposes an expulsion. The text does not present her as a model of serenity.
Where this person appears
29Then Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai. And the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30But Sarai was barren and had no children.
Her entry into the story, with the piece of information that will organise twelve chapters.
1Now Sarai, the wife of Abram, had not conceived children. But, having an Egyptian handmaid named Hagar,
2she said to her husband: “Behold, the Lord has closed me, lest I give birth. Enter to my handmaid, so that perhaps I may receive sons of her at least.” And when he agreed to her supplication,
The proposal about Hagar, made by her, and Abram’s agreement.
12And she laughed secretly, saying, “After I have grown old, and my lord is elderly, shall I give myself to the work of delight?”
13Then the Lord said to Abraham: “Why did Sarah laugh, saying: ‘How can I, an old woman, actually give birth?’
14Is anything difficult for God? According to the announcement, he will return to you at this same time, with life as a companion, and Sarah will have a son.”
15Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh.” For she was terribly afraid. But the Lord said, “It is not so; for you did laugh.”
The laughter at the tent, the denial and the reply — in four verses.
1Then the Lord visited Sarah, just as he had promised; and he fulfilled what he had spoken.
2And she conceived and gave birth to a son in her old age, at the time that God had foretold to her.
3And Abraham called the name of his son, whom Sarah bore for him, Isaac.
The birth of Isaac, announced with the formula that closes the waiting: as promised, at the time foretold.
1Now Sarah lived for one hundred and twenty-seven years.
2And she died in the city of Arba, which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn and weep for her.
Her death at Hebron, with her age recorded and Abraham’s mourning. It is the chapter that ends with the purchase of the first piece of land.
11By faith also, Sarah herself, being barren, received the ability to conceive offspring, even though she was past that age in life. For she believed him to be faithful, who had promised.
How the New Testament reads her: crediting her with faith in the one who had promised. Worth reading alongside Genesis rather than instead of it.