The Final Reverberations of Sarah’s Life

And the life of Sarah was a hundred and twenty years and seven years,
These were the years of Sarah’s life. And Sarah died in Kiryat Arba which is Hebron
In the land of Canaan and Abraham came to lament for Sarah and weep over her.
But Abraham rose from before his dead and spoke to the Hittites, saying:
I’m a resident migrant with you, give me a burial plot among you
And I’ll bury my dead from before me;
But the Hittites answered Abraham, saying:
Hear us, milord, you’re a king by God among us,
Bury your dead in the choicest of our graves
There’s not a man of us will keep his grave from you, to bury your dead.
But Abraham rose and bowed before the council of the land, the Hittites,
And he spoke to them, saying: if it be in your souls to bury my dead from before me, hear me
And approach Efron son of Zohar for me to give me the double cave he has at the end of his field
At full price, give it to me as a burial plot among you.

The thing about this week’s Torah reading about Sarah’s life (Genesis 23:1 – 25:18) is that when it opens she’s dead, so it’s not really about her life. Only it is, because it shows how the actions she took in her life play out in the coming generations and most particularly in the field that Abraham purchases for her burial. Those actions play out through her and their effect on Abraham; you might describe Abraham’s career as being that of someone stuck between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the Eternal Rock, as we call Him, and the hard place being his formidable wife Sarah, every inch as determined a character as her righteous husband.

So let’s take a moment to ask: why does Abraham have to buy a field? He loved her deeply, he sang a dirge and wept bitter tears over her, but now he wants to buy a plot of land. Why? The reason is the same one that in a previous Torah reading led Sarah to give her maid Hagar to Abraham as a second wife. Sarah says, “Let me be built up by her,” because she doesn’t trust the Lord’s promise to Abraham that he’ll be a father of multitudes. Or perhaps she’s desperate: she’s heard that divine prophecy, she feels her barrenness is standing in the way, and through Hagar she can make it happen, at least in the short term. But as we know, it doesn’t turn out so pretty. Likewise Abraham now wants to buy a piece of land, a burial plot, to secure something enduring in this land where he’s doing well but who knows what the future might bring? Yes, the Lord has promised him that all this real estate is going to have his name on it sooner or later, but he needs to put money down on something stable and permanent. In this respect Abraham is like Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman, the archetypical American who has “always felt a little bit temporary” about himself. He has huge dreams that keep him awake at night, and even huger fears.