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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Sarah
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("princess".) (See ABRAHAM; ISAAC.) Sarah is Iscah, sister of Milcah and Lot (called "brother of Abraham." ), and daughter of Haran. As Nahor married his niece Milcah, so Abraham (), the youngest brother of the three, his niece Sarah, "daughter," i.e. granddaughter, "of his father not of his mother," probably not more than ten years his junior (; ) Sarai, "my princess," was her name down to when God changed it. She was thenceforward to be princess not merely of Abraham and his seed, but of all families of the earth.
An example of faith, though she erred in abetting Abram's pretence that she was his sister (her beauty was then great: , etc., ; ); still more in suggesting the carnal policy of Abram's taking Hagar to obtain children by her, when God delayed the promised seed by Sarah herself (-3); also in harshness to Hagar, when the retributive consequences of her own false step overtook her through the very instrument of her sin (-6; ; ); also laughing in unbelief at God's promise that she should bear a son in her old age (Genesis 18), forgetting that nothing is "too hard for the Lord" (see ; ), then denying that she laughed, through fear; faith triumphed at last (Genesis 21).
"At the set time the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken"; "God hath made me to laugh," said Sarah, "all that hear will laugh with me," namely, in joy as Abraham laughed (), not in incredulity, as in -15. Under God's prompting, Sarah, seeing Hagar's son "mocking" at Isaac the son of the promise during the feast for the latter when weaned (see the spiritual sense -31), said to Abraham, "cast out this bondwoman," etc. (See HAGAR.)
, "through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and that when she was past age (the Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus manuscripts omit "was delivered of a child") because she judged Him faithful that promised"; though first doubting, as the weaker vessel, she ceased to doubt, faith triumphing over sense. "Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord," and so is a pattern of a meek and quiet spirit to all wives (; ). The truth of the sacred narrative appears in its faithfully recording her faults as well as her faith. Her motherly affection so won Isaac that none but Rebekah could "comfort him after his mother's death" (-7). She was 127 when she died at Hebron, 28 years before Abraham, and was buried in the cave of Machpelah, bought from Ephron the Hittite; her "shrine" is shown opposite Abraham's, with Isaac's and Rebekah's on one side, Jacob's and Leah's on the other.