the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Sarah
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or ("princess".) (See ABRAHAM; ISAAC.) Sarah is Iscah, sister of Milcah and Lot (called "brother of Abraham." Genesis 14:16), and daughter of Haran. As Nahor married his niece Milcah, so Abraham (Genesis 11:27), 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 (Genesis 11:29; Genesis 20:12) Sarai, "my princess," was her name down to Genesis 17:15 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: Genesis 12:13, etc., Genesis 20:5; Genesis 20:13); 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 (Genesis 16:1-3); also in harshness to Hagar, when the retributive consequences of her own false step overtook her through the very instrument of her sin (Genesis 16:5-6; Jeremiah 2:19; Proverbs 1:31); 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 Jeremiah 32:17; Luke 1:37), 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 (Genesis 17:17), not in incredulity, as in Genesis 18:12-15. 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 Galatians 4:22-31), said to Abraham, "cast out this bondwoman," etc. (See HAGAR.)
Hebrews 11:11, "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 (1 Peter 3:6; Genesis 18:12). 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" (Genesis 24:6-7). 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.
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Sarah'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/s/sarah.html. 1949.
