Sarah Leading Hagar to Abraham (detail), Caspar Netscher 1673. The Leiden Collection
Sarah Finally Separates Herself from Abraham
In protest against the binding of Isaac, Sarah returns alone to Hebron, the site where YHWH promised her a son. This move marks the moment when she stops following her husband Abraham and finds her own path.
Published: November 22, 2024
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Tammi J. Schneider, Sarah: Mother of Nations (New York: Continuum, 2004), 3.
See discussion in Schneider, Sarah, 113. Certain fragments of Sarah’s life story do offer a glimpse of her character, wants, and needs. Two especially long pieces concern her rivalry with Hagar, her maidservant turned husband’s concubine, who gives birth to Ishmael, Abraham’s oldest son (Gen 16 and 21). Another deals with when she learned that she was to become pregnant and give birth to a son, despite her and Abraham’s extreme old age (Gen 18).
Much of my own work ever since has concerned the enterprise of feminist midrash.
Chapters 15–17 contain no geographical information.
In the first half of the chapter, Isaac is born and Ishmael is expelled, but the story does not have a geographic reference point.
The various midrashim that equate Keturah, the woman Abraham marries after Sarah’s death, with Hagar seem to admit that there was something unjust about Hagar’s expulsion, and that Abraham remains connected to Hagar and Ishmael—long after the birth of Isaac. His repeated push southward throughout his life reinforces this reading.
He writes:
רמב"ן בראשית כג:ב "ויבא אברהם" – לשון רבינו שלמה: מבאר שבע. ואין זה לומר שהיה עומד שם ממה שכתוב: וישב אברהם בבאר שבע (בראשית כב:יט), כי איך תהיה שרה בחברון. אבל הכונה לומר שהלך שם כיום לצרכו, ושמע במיתת שרה ובא משם לספוד ולבכות.
Ramban Gen 23:2 “Abraham came”—Rabbi Solomon (=Rashi) writes “from Beersheba.” But this does not mean that he lived there, based on the verse (Gen 22:19) “and Abraham dwelt in Beersheba” for how could Sarah [then] have been in Hebron? Rather, the intent is to say that he went there for a day or son on business, and then he heard hat Sarah died, so he came from there to mourn and cry for her.
Karo was born in Spain, where he started his own yeshiva, but was expelled from there in 1492, then from Portugal in 1497, and travelled through North Africa to Istanbul, where he published his commentary in 1517.
See Sifrei Deuteronomy §333.
It reads:
בראשית רבה (תיאודור-אלבק) נח ויבא אברהם לספד לשרה מאיכן בא, ר' לוי אמר מקבורתו שלתרח לשרה בא, אמר ליה ר' יוסי והלא מקבורת תרח לקבורת שרה היו שתי שנים, אלא מאיכן בא, מהר המורייה.
Gen Rab (Theodor-Albeck) 58 “Abraham came to mourn for Sarah”—whence was he coming? Rabbi Levi said: “He came from burying Terah (his father, in Ḥarran) straight to [burying] Sarah.” Rabbi Yossi said to him: “But wasn’t Terah’s funeral separated from Sarah’s by two years? Rather whence did he come? From Mount Moriah.
In his commentary, Rashi makes the point explicit:
רש"י בראשית כג:ב לספד לשרה – ונסמכה מיתתה לעקידה, שעל ידי בשורת עקידה שנזדמן בנה לשחיטה, וכמעט לא נשחט, פרחה רוחה ומתה.
“To mourn for Sarah”—her death was juxtaposed to the Akedah, for on account her being informed of the Akedah, that her son was prepared for slaughter, and was almost slaughtered, he soul left her and she died.
Much later in the consolation prophecies of Isaiah, a further connection will be forged between the image of a carved rock or cave and the ultimately and miraculously fertile womb of Sarah:
ישעיה נא:א שִׁמְעוּ אֵלַי רֹדְפֵי צֶדֶק מְבַקְשֵׁי יְ־הוָה הַבִּיטוּ אֶל צוּר חֻצַּבְתֶּם וְאֶל מַקֶּבֶת בּוֹר נֻקַּרְתֶּם. נא:ב הַבִּיטוּ אֶל אַבְרָהָם אֲבִיכֶם וְאֶל שָׂרָה תְּחוֹלֶלְכֶם כִּי אֶחָד קְרָאתִיו וַאֲבָרְכֵהוּ וְאַרְבֵּהוּ.
Isa 51:1 Listen to Me, you who pursue justice, you who seek YHWH: Look to the rock you were hewn from, to the quarry you were dug from. 51:2 Look back to Abraham your father and to Sarah who brought you forth. For he was only one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many.
