December 2023

Parsha Chayai Sarah (Life of Sarah)

CHAYEI SARAH (חַיֵּי שָׂרָה) Life of Sarah)

Gen 23:1–25:18; 1Kings 1:1–31; Matt 2:1–23

By Raphael ben Levi

“Sarah lived to be 127 years old; these were the years of Sarah’s life.” (Gen 23:1)

Chayei Sarah, means ‘Life of Sarah,’ although we can see from the passage that it marks her death aged 127 in Kiriat Arba (modern day Hebron). Her life was celebrated retrospectively. The Bible never does much more than mention the birth of anyone, with the exception of Yeshua’s birth, because a person’s life can only be fully evaluated at the end rather than at the beginning.

Sarah is the first woman whose age and details of her funeral is the first occasion recorded in the Torah. Wherever there are first mentions in the Bible, it is something of special significance. Sarah’s death was linked in a sense to God’s covenant promise to Abraham about the land he and to his descendants would inherit for ever. Until now, Abraham had received nothing to date. But now he’d got a downpayment and it came through his purchase of a tract of land with a tomb from a legal sale which provided a burial place for Sarah.

The cave (tomb) of Machpelah was purchased from Ephron the Hittite the Hittite for 400 shekels, a huge amount of money for those times, over a 100kg of silver. Abraham paid the money willingly because he needed a place to bury his wife and his longing to own a piece of this land promised to him by God for his inheritance.

Our sages tell us that the Torah contains 600,000 letters (counting the spaces between letters), the number of people counted in the Exodus from Egypt symbolic that each Jew possesses something of the Torah. The same is true of the Land of Israel. Israel is the eternal inheritance of the Jewish people, equally the property of every individual Jew. And so it was from the very first moment of Jewish ownership of the Holy Land as described here in this parasha.

What does someone of 137 years of age do after such a bereavement? Abraham is described as being ‘Old and advanced in years’ yet, he lived a further 37 years because God still had some unfinished business for him.

(“30+7 – The gematria of 30 (3x 10) denotes in the highest degree the perfection of God’s order marking the right moment. Yeshua was 30 years at the commencement of His ministry. Lk.3:23; — Joseph also when he ruled over Egypt, – Gen 41:46 who was a type of Mashiach; and David when he began to reign – 2Sam. 5:4) This is underscored by the number 7.” (c.f., E.W. Bullinger ‘Number in Scripture’)

Bear in mind that

Seven times he had been promised the land of Canaan, yet when Sarah died he still did not own even a square-inch or even a place to bury his wife.
God had promised him many children, a great nation, many nations, as many as the grains of sand in the sea-shore and the stars in the sky. Yet at that stage he had only one son of the covenant, Isaac, whom he had almost lost, and who was still unmarried at the age of 37.

So again I ask, What does a man of 137 do – the Torah calls him “old and advanced in years” – after such a trauma and such a bereavement? We would not be surprised to find that he spent the rest of his days in sadness and memory. He had done what God had asked of him. Yet he could hardly say that God’s promises had been fulfilled. Seven times he had been promised the land of Canaan, yet when Sarah died he owned not one square-inch of it, not even a place in which to bury his wife. God had promised him many children, a great nation, many nations, as many as the grains of sand in the sea-shore and the stars in the sky. Yet he had only one son of the covenant, Isaac, whom he had almost lost, and who was still unmarried at the age of thirty-seven. Abraham had every reason to sit and grieve. Yet he did not.

The late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that in one of the most extraordinary sequences of words in the Torah, his grief is described in a mere five Hebrew words:(translated), “Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.” Then immediately we read, “And Abraham rose from his grief.” From then on, he engaged in a flurry of activity with two aims in mind: first to buy a plot of land in which to bury Sarah, second to find a wife for his son. Note that these correspond precisely to the two Divine blessings: of land and descendants. Abraham did not wait for God to act. He understood one of the profoundest truths of Judaism: that God is waiting for us to act.

How did Abraham overcome the trauma and the grief? How do you survive almost losing your child and actually losing your life-partner and still have the energy to keep going? What gave Abraham his resilience, his ability to survive, his spirit intact?

The psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl, was one of the most remarkable survivors of the Holocaust, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl who lived through Auschwitz, dedicating himself to giving other prisoners the will to live. He tells the story in several books, most famously in “Man’s Search for Meaning”. He did this by finding for each of them a task that was calling to them, something they had not yet done but that only they could do. In effect, he gave them a future. This allowed them to survive the present and turn their minds away from the past. Viktor Frankl learned this answer from the people who became his mentors. And through all of this he would marvel how they kept going knowing what they knew, seeing what they saw?

We know that the British and American soldiers who liberated the camps never forgot what they witnessed. The sight that met their eyes transformed their lives. If this was true of those who merely saw Bergen-Belsen and the other camps, how almost infinitely more so, those who lived there and saw so many die there.

Eventually Frankl discovered something. Most of the survivors did not talk about the past, even to their marriage partners, even to their children. Instead they set about creating a new life in a new land. They learned its language and customs. They found work. They built careers. They married and had children. Having lost their own families, the survivors became an extended family to one another. They looked forward not back. First they built a future. Only then – sometimes forty or fifty years later – did they speak about the past. That was when they told their story, first to their families, then to the world. First you have to build a future. Only then can you mourn the past. (c.f., edited from the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)

Two people in the Torah looked back, one explicitly, the other by implication. Noah, the most righteous man of his generation, ended his life by making wine and becoming drunk. The Torah does not say why but we can guess. He had lost an entire world. While he and his family were safe on board the ark, everyone else – all his contemporaries – had drowned. Imagine how Noah would likely have been overwhelmed by grief as he replayed in his mind all that had happened, wondering whether he might have done something more to save more lives or avert the catastrophe.

Lot’s wife, against the instruction of the angels, actually did look back as the cities of the plain disappeared under fire and brimstone and the anger of God. Immediately she was turned into a pillar of salt, the Torah’s graphic description of a woman so overwhelmed by shock and grief as to be unable to move on.

It is the background of these two stories that helps us understand Abraham after the death of Sarah. He set the precedent: first build the future, and only then can you mourn the past. If you reverse the order, you will be held captive by the past. You will be unable to move on. You will become like Lot’s wife.

Abraham heard the future calling to him. Sarah had died. Isaac was unmarried. Abraham had neither land nor grandchildren. He did not cry out, in anger or anguish, to God. Instead, he heard the still, small voice saying: The next step depends on you. You must create a future that I will fill with My spirit. That is how Abraham survived the shock and grief. God forbid that we experience any of this, but if we do, this is how to survive.

God enters our lives as a call from the future. Yeshua is beckoning to us from the far horizon of time, urging us to take a journey and undertake a task that, in ways we cannot fully understand, we were created for. Discovering what that is, is not easy, and often takes many years and false starts. But for each of us there is something God is calling on us to do, a future not yet made that awaits our making.

So much of the anger, hatred and resentments of this world are brought about by people obsessed by the past and who, like Lot’s wife, are unable to move on. There is no good ending to this kind of story, only more tears and more tragedy. The way of Abraham in Chayei Sarah is different. Again I make the point – First build the future. Only then can you mourn the past.

Abraham was propelled forwards, driven by his complete trust in the One who never disappoints! (“Forgetting was is behind, I press forwards…”) The measure we trust God in all things will determine the measure of our future inheritance. Sometimes, people’s lives are depleted or filled with forfeit simply because one is not willing to trust God for His perfect timings.

There are close parallels between this period of Abraham’s life and the parable Yeshua told of the Rich man and Lazarus. When we understand the parable in its proper context, the interpretation becomes clear and it has all to do with being good custodians of our inheritance. Luke 16:19-31

Yeshua had just given His teaching about the unjust steward who had mishandled his master’s money (Lk.16:11-16) to illustrate good and bad stewardship:

Yeshua told the Pharisees: “So if you haven’t been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who is going to trust you with the real thing? And if you haven’t been trustworthy with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what ought to belong to you? No servant can be slave to two masters, for he will either hate the first and love the second, or scorn the second and be loyal to the first. You can’t be a slave to both God and money.”

In the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man Yeshua continues with His theme of stewardship as a warning against the Jewish religious hierarchy – stewardship in its widest sense, meaning all of the resources which God has bestowed to us. (For a fuller commentary on the parable, please refer to Bagels & Cream Cheese Vol.1. – Raphael ben Levi, Ch.5C)

This is the only time where a person’s name is used in Yeshua’s parables. The name “Lazarus” is a transliteration of the Hebrew “Eli-ezer” (which means “God has helped”). So who was Eleazar? He was the very same Eleazar mentioned in this parasha, who was the servant of Abraham. Eliezar was a Gentile who was also the chief steward of Abraham. The phrase, “desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table” (as Yeshua described Lazarus in the parable) was a common phrase used to describe Gentiles. And the phrase in the parable where Lazarus was ‘laid at the gate’ of the Rich Man was a Jewish expression describing the”Proselyte of the Gate” who were Gentiles living amongst Jews but maintaining their Gentile identity.

A few chapters earlier in Gen.15, Abraham complained to God about having no heir to his inheritance. It would all go to Lazarus (Eliezar of Damascus). Abraham replied, “Adonai, God, what good will your gifts be to me if I continue childless; and Eli‘ezer from Dammesek (“The one born to Masek”) inherits my possessions? (NB. The Hebrew is challenging as apparently there is an attempt at play on the sound ben meshek (meseq) with dam mesek, or more likely a parallel between the terms ben and dam. However, the two mean the same thing: the one born to Masek. You haven’t given me a child,” Avram continued, “so someone born in my house will be my heir.” Gen.15:2–3)

Up to this point Lazarus (Eleazar) had been the legal heir to all of Abraham’s possessions and Abraham was disturbed by this. (Gen.15:3)

Eliezer, as the firstborn of one of Abraham’s concubines, (NB: “Sons were born to Abraham by concubine servants as well. Ishmael, was born of Hagar and, according to the Septuagint, Eliezar of Damascus was born of Masek. In the New Jerusalem Bible (following the Vulgate) Abraham says to the Lord: “Since you have given me no offspring… a member of my household will be my heir.” The Septuagint offers this: “What will you give me, seeing I go childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus, the son of Masek, my domestic maidservant.” Eliezar as a son of Abraham by a maidservant, parallels the story of Hagar. This means that Abraham had 9 sons: Ishmael, Eliezer, Isaac, Joktan, Zimram, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. There were also daughters. Clearly, God fulfilled His sovereign will concerning Abraham that he should be the “Father of a multitude”.)

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.co.za/2010/08/abrahams-two-concubines.html

Before the birth of Isaac, Eliezar was considered Abraham’s rightful heir (Abraham said, “O my Lord, what would you give me seeing that I am going to die accursed and the one to inherit my household is Dam-Mesek.” (Gen.15:2)

Here is an amazing thing. Abraham gave Lazarus an assignment which resulted in his own disinheritance which he did willingly and without complaint. Indeed, he carried out Abraham’s orders precisely. “…swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife unto my son [Isaac] of the daughters of the Canaanites.’” Gen. 24:3 (NB: Among the early Hebrews, as well as among many other nations of antiquity, custom decided that the next of kin should enter upon the possession of the estate of a deceased person. The first-born son usually assumed the headship of the family, and succeeded to the control of the family property (see Primogeniture). When there were no sons, the dying man would appoint a trusted friend as his heir, sometimes to the exclusion of a near relative. Thus, Abraham, when he despaired of having children himself, was about to appoint his slave Eliezer as his heir, although his nephew Lot was living (Gen. xv. 3). Even when there were children, it was within the right of the father to prefer one child to another in the disposition of his property. Sarah, not wishing Ishmael to share in the inheritance with her son Isaac, prevailed upon Abraham to drive Hagar and her son out of her house (Gen. xxi. 10); and Abraham later sent away his children by concubines, with presents, so that they should not interfere in the inheritance of Isaac (Gen. 25:6).” http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8114-inheritance.)

Lazarus (Eleazar) forfeited all claim to Abraham’s inheritance and even shared this fact with Laban, Rebecca’s brother. All of what had been Eleazar’s inheritance had now been given to Isaac and his descendants: wealth, prestige, power, kingship, priesthood, and the land of Canaan as an “everlasting” possession. Lazarus had been “cast out” and would inherit nothing. This is why the parable calls Lazarus a “beggar” who possessed nothing of earthly worth.

Though Eleazar [Lazarus], Abraham’s trusted steward, had disinherited himself from earthly rewards by his faithful obedience to Abraham’s wishes, he was later to find himself (after death, when true inheritance comes) with the eternal reward of dwelling in Abraham’s bosom.

Judah (the Jewish nation) who represented Abraham’s sons Judah, inherited all the physical blessings while in the flesh, but stubbornly refused the message of salvation offered by Yeshua who said: ”Neither will they he persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Lk.16:31). Yeshua taught through this parable that the Gentiles could now inherit the promises of Abraham provided they were faithful as Eleazar had been: “But some of the branches (who are the Jews) were broken off. You who are not Jews were put in the place where the branches had been broken off. Now you are sharing the rich root of the olive tree. 18 Do not be proud. Do not think you are better than the branches that were broken off. If you are proud, remember that you do not hold the root. It is the root that holds you. 19 You may say, “Branches were broken off to make room for me.” 20 It is true. They were broken off because they did not put their trust in Christ. And you are there only because of your faith. Do not be proud. Instead, be afraid. 21 God did not keep the first branches (who are the Jews) on the tree. Then watch, or He will not keep you on the tree. 22 We see how kind God is. It shows how hard He is also. He is hard on those who fall away. But He is kind to you if you keep on trusting Him. If you do not, He will cut you off. 23 If the Jews would put their trust in Christ, God would put them back into the tree. He has power to do that. 24 You people who are not Jews were cut off from a wild olive tree. Instead of being there, you were put into a garden olive tree which is not the right place for you to grow. It would be easy for God to put the Jews back onto their own olive tree because they are the branches that belong there.

25 Christian brothers, I want you to understand this truth which is no longer a secret. It will keep you from thinking you are so wise. Some Jews have become hard until the right amount of people who are not Jews come to God. 26 Then all the Jews will be saved, as the Holy Writings say, “The One Who saves from the punishment of sin will come out of Jerusalem. He will turn the Jews from doing sinful things.” 27 “And this is My promise to them when I take away their sins.” (Rom.11:17-27)

But there is something more here. Now Abraham is worried, and he sent Eliezer to travel all the way to Aleppo, Haran, in Syria, to look for a wife for Isaac. The old Eliezer was wise, and did a good job looking for a wife for Isaac. He found Rebecca, who was less than half the age of Isaac. This is why, according to the Hebrew text, when she saw Isaac the first time she literally fell off the camel differently translated in the English where it states that she “dismounted from her camel”.

Abraham had not told Eliezer to look for any specific traits of character for selecting Isaac’s new wife. He simply told him to find someone from his own extended family. Eliezer, however, devised a test that he brought before God in prayer:

“Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one You have chosen for Your servant Isaac. By this I will know that You have shown kindness [chesed] to my master.” Gen.24:12-14

His use of the word chesed was the primary characteristic he was looking for in the future wife of the first Jewish child, Isaac, and he found it in Rebecca, a word in Hebrew. In 1535 Myles Coverdale published the first-ever translation of the Hebrew Bible into English (begun by William Tyndale). It was when he came to the word chesed that he realised that it was untranslatable and so he translated it coining the word “loving-kindness.”

The theme of chesed similarly runs through the book of Ruth. It was Ruth’s kindness to Naomi, and Boaz’s to Ruth, that the Tanakh emphasises. The Sages stated that the three characteristics most important to Jewish character are modesty, compassion, and (chesed). They based it on the character and acts of God Himself. In the Talmud (Bavli, South 14a) we read that, “The Torah begins with an act of kindness and ends with an act of kindness. It begins with God clothing the naked – “The Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them,” (Gen. 3:21) – and it ends with Him caring for the dead: “And He [God] buried [Moses] in the Valley.” (Deut. 34:6).

Chesed was what led Eliezar to choose Rebecca to become Isaac’s wife who became the first Jewish bride. And it was the “chesed” of God which brought redemption to the world through Yeshua our Messiah.

This parable is all about being a good custodian of the spiritual riches lavished upon us through Yeshua. This means we are to follow the Lord and place Him first in our lives wholeheartedly and consistently irrespective of our circumstances. The parable demonstrates in accordance with Scripture that a godly person whether Jew or Gentile will experience much suffering but will receive an eternal inheritance. In contrast to an evil person who will be rewarded accordingly in this earthly life but receive the eternal recompense of an eternity in hell.

The question is whether we are willing to live consistently and wholeheartedly as good custodians of His precious riches? We must ask ourselves who was the truly rich person in the parable?

SOME QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

Sarah is the first woman whose age and funeral is recorded in the Bible. Wherever there are first mentions in the Bible, it is something of special significance. What do you think might have been this significance?