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Parashat Chayyei Sarah: Genesis (23.1-25.18)

by Rabbi Alexandra Wright

The sedra Chayyei Sarah opens and closes with the death and burial first of Sarah and then Abraham. It is striking that the phraseology used to sum up their lives is identical: chayyei Sarah/chayyei Avraham – literally “the life of Sarah/the life of Abraham.”

Va-yiheyu chayyei Sarah me’ah shanah v’esrim shanah v’sheva shanim, sh’nei chayyei Sarah… (Genesis 23.1)

V’eleh y’mei sh’nei chayyei Avraham, ashser chay, m’at shanah v’shiv’im shanah v’chamesh shanim (Genesis 25.7).

“These are the days of the years of Abraham’s life: he lived 175 years. Abraham breathed his last and died in good old age, full of age, and was gathered to his people.”

These two deaths provide an outer, symmetrical framework to the sedra, pointing towards to the importance of the mission on which Abraham’s servant is sent to find a wife for Isaac. Only with Sarah’s death does it suddenly become urgent to think about the continuation of the family line. Only with her death, is land purchased and Abraham’s temporary status as a ger v’toshav – a foreigner who is resident in the land – transformed.

Sarah’s influence throughout this sedra is pervasive. Abraham’s mourning and grief set the scene to his negotiation with the Hittites over the Cave of Machpelah. There is something forlorn and vulnerable in his approach to the Hittites, full of courtesy and respect, which is reciprocated, but also full of entreaty and longing. This is to be the burial site for himself as well, for Isaac and Rebekah, for Jacob and Leah. It takes 19 verses before Sarah is buried in the cave of the field of Machpelah, facing the very place, Mamre, where the two received the news that Sarah was to give birth to Isaac. Birth and death so often follow each other in quick succession.

Then, having lost his own wife, Abraham’s thoughts turn to a spouse for his son Isaac. Again we sense the presence of Sarah, or rather Abraham’s loss which remains poignant throughout this chapter. Just as Sarah had come from his own kin, so Isaac’s bride must be chosen from among Abraham’s wider kin.

Invited into the home of Rebekah’s father, the servant presents himself to the family saying: “Sarah, my master’s wife, bore him a son in her old age, and my master has given him everything he owns.” Although it is Abraham who has despatched the servant, it is Sarah whose role as a mother is brought to the fore in this tale and again at the end of the chapter: “And Isaac brought [Rebekah] into the tent of his mother Sarah; he took Rebekah and she became his wife and he loved her. Thus did Isaac take comfort after the death of his mother” (Genesis 24.67).

The silence in the text between the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac) and the death of Sarah is haunting. The midrash embellishes on the story suggesting that Sarah dies of grief when she realises that Abraham has taken Isaac. Isaac is completely absent from all the nuptial negotiations throughout this long chapter. Only when the servant returns with Rebekah and her servant girls, do we encounter the contemplative, quiet, shadowy figure “going out towards evening to stroll in the field.” He sees camels coming from the distance, foreshadowing his blindness later on when he allows himself to be deceived by his younger son Jacob. Rebekah who will turn out to be the more articulate, manipulative, tougher of the two, sees Isaac immediately and dismounts from her camel.

Isaac’s courting and marriage of Rebekah take place inside the tent of his mother, Sarah. Isaac’s loss is even more poignant as he brings Rebekah into the tent, allows himself to love her and to feel comforted after Sarah’s death. These incremental and touching changes in Isaac will allow him to plead with God on behalf of his wife to give them both children in the following parashah. Perhaps his own experience as the child of an elderly mother who had waited so long for him, gave him the insight and sensitivity to understand his wife’s despair and longing for her own child.