Sarah and the Sacrifice of Isaac RIVKAH LUBITCH

Dirshuni (HBI Series on Jewish Women) (p. 32). Brandeis University Press. Kindle Edition.

And it came to pass after those matters (Gen 22:1).

Those matters, the matters with Sarah. And God tested Sarah. And the angel said to her: Take your son, your only one, whom you have loved, Isaac, and take him to the land of Moriah, and offer him up (Gen 22:2).

And Sarah said: No. Because a mother does not slaughter her child.

And early in the morning, Sarah awoke, stunned to see that neither Isaac nor Abraham was there. She lifted her arms to God in heaven and said: Master of the Universe, I know that one who slaughters his son in the name of God will in the end be left without a son or God. Forgive Abraham, who was mistaken about this. Please remember that it did not occur to a mother to offer her son up to God, and save the boy from him.

At that moment Abraham stretched out his hand to the knife to slay his son (Gen 22:10). And the angel of God called out to him and said: Do not lay your hand on the boy, and do not do anything to him, for now I know that you are God-fearing (Gen 22:12), even though you did not withhold your son. And this is why it was said whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice (Gen 21:12) and as a result for in Isaac your seed will have a name (Gen 21:12).

Commentary

The story of the binding of Isaac begins with the words, And it came to pass after those matters. The Hebrew word for “matters,” dvarim, can also mean discussions. The midrash in Genesis Rabbah (55:4) asks about the nature of the discussions that preceded and precipitated the trial of the binding of Isaac. Various answers are proposed: There was a dialogue between Abraham and God, or between Ishmael and Isaac. Rivkah Lubitch provides her own answer to this question, and it is one that involves Sarah in the biblical narrative. According to Lubitch, the exchange of words that preceded the binding of Isaac took place between Sarah and God. God tested Sarah, commanding her exactly as He then commanded Abraham: Take your son, your only one, whom you have loved, Isaac, and take him to the land of Moriah, and offer him up. Sarah, reacting immediately and decisively out of a clear maternal instinct, refused to accede to the divine command. As Lubitch sees it, Sarah passed the divine test.

The next morning, Sarah is horrified to discover that Abraham and Isaac are nowhere to be found. She understands that God must have given the same command to Abraham and that Abraham thought that in order to fulfill the divine command, he had to overcome his own emotions and sacrifice his son. Sarah takes immediate action. She lifts her arms to God in prayer, insisting that Abraham has acted wrongly, and that in the end, he will lose both his son and his faith. As Sarah sees it, people attribute cruel instincts to God in order to justify their own terrible behavior, which in fact contradicts the true will of God. According to this theological stance, God furnished us with parental responsibility and with a love for our children, which also serve as the basis for God’s relationship with His believers. Thus, the paternal and maternal instincts are also deep religious instincts that should guide our behavior in relation to God. For a father to sacrifice his son is religiously problematic because it destroys the relationships within a family and the connection with God. Sarah is so certain of the rightness of her perspective that she pleads with God to forgive Abraham and spare Isaac by the merit of her own refusal.

At that very instant, God stops Abraham from sacrificing his son. The angel explains to Abraham that even though he did not withhold his son, He still knows that Abraham is God-fearing. But Sarah was in the right, and thus God reminds Abraham Whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice (Gen 21:12). By the merit of Sarah’s intervention, Isaac was saved, and Abraham’s seed would endure.

Lubitch’s midrash incorporates women into the foundational tales of our tradition. According to the theological stance that underlies her version of the binding of Isaac, the maternal instinct and the sober, clear-eyed perspective of women are fundamental elements of Jewish existence and of the religious experience more generally.

And Where Was Sarah? TAMAR BIALA

Dirshuni (HBI Series on Jewish Women) (p. 40). Brandeis University Press. Kindle Edition.

And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took his two lads with him, and Isaac his son, and he split wood for the offering, and rose and went to the place that God had said to him (Gen 22:3).

And where was Sarah at the time that Abraham gathered the donkey, the lads, and their son Isaac, and split the wood, when the only thing he did not take with them was a sheep?

Jezebel said: Sarah was of one mind with Abraham and she too sought not to withhold her only son, whom she loved. For Abraham and Sarah both worshipped the same God, and would convert people to Him; he the men, and she, the women.

Dinah said: Sarah was in the tent and didn’t know of their departure, for ever since she had returned from the palace of Avimelekh, her husband had told her, All the princess’s treasure is inward (Ps 45:14). She would hide within the tent and no longer took notice of other people.

The Great Woman of Shunam said: Sarah hurried after Abraham to stop him from slaughtering their son, but judges and officers at the gates prevented her, as is written, Then the watchmen found me as they went about the city; they beat me, they bruised me, they tore the shawl off my shoulders, those watchmen of the walls (Song 5:7) until she returned to her tent and buried herself in it.

Hagar came and said: Sarah did not go looking for her husband Abraham or her son Isaac at all, and God knew it would be like that. When the Holy Blessed One saw that she sought to send away Abraham’s first son to the desert, mercilessly, He feared that she wouldn’t have mercy on her own son either, her only one, and so He spoke to Abraham with precision: take your son, yours, and not hers, for through Isaac, seed will be called by your name (Gen 21:12). By your name, yours and not by hers.

And Tanot, Jephthah’s daughter, said: That’s not how it was. Sarah was a prophetess, for she foresaw by the Holy Spirit that fathers would in the future sacrifice their children, and that High Priests in the future would look from afar and not undo those vows and beliefs, and she saw how between the two of them those sad ones would be lost to the world and she didn’t know how to protect those children, and was silent. And this was her mistake. For the Holy Blessed One had told Abraham Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice (Gen 21:12), but He had not said those words to her.

Commentary

Sarah is not mentioned in the biblical story of the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, and this midrash seeks to fill in the gaps. The midrash opens with a question: Where was Sarah when Abraham and Isaac left the house? According to the biblical account, it took a while to get organized for the trip: Abraham saddled his donkey, split the wood, and took along Isaac and his lads. It’s hard to believe that Sarah was oblivious to it all. In Biala’s midrash, five women attempt to answer this question: Jezebel, Dinah, the Great Woman of Shunam, Hagar, and Tanot.

The first answer is suggested by Queen Jezebel, the wife of Ahab king of Israel, who incited her husband to join her in worshipping Ba’al and in building idolatrous altars (see 2 Kgs 16:31). She proposes that Abraham and Sarah were essentially of one mind. The midrash in Genesis Rabbah (39:14) explains how Abraham and Sarah worked together to convert the people who joined them. Jezebel notes that here, too, Abraham and Sarah saw eye to eye, and Sarah agreed to sacrifice Isaac in accordance with the divine command. Child sacrifice is regarded in the Torah as a form of forbidden idolatrous worship (Deut 18:1), but Jezebel viewed it as a deep expression of the desire to give of oneself to God.

The second response is suggested by Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, who was kidnapped and raped by Shechem, the son of Hamor (Gen 34). Dinah identifies with Sarah, who was also forcibly taken to the castle of a foreign king (Gen 20). She attributes a sort of posttraumatic response to Sarah, similar to her own response to her experience with Shechem. Both women seek to hide inside their tents and do not want to have to look at men. Abraham encourages this behavior in Sarah, quoting a verse from Psalms: All the princess’s treasure is inward (Ps 45:14). Sarah’s confinement in the tent left her depressed and indifferent to everything that was taking place in the world outside, and so she did not object when Abraham left with Isaac on that fateful morning.

The third answer is proposed by the Great Woman of Shunam, who, like Sarah, experienced a prolonged period of barrenness before ultimately meriting to birth a son (2 Kgs 4:14). But one day her son fell ill and died suddenly, and the Great Woman of Shunam went to cry out to the prophet for help and was repulsed by his assistant (27). When the Great Woman of Shunam offers her account of the binding of Isaac, she envisions Sarah recreated in her own image, running after Abraham in an attempt to save her son’s life. But Sarah does not manage to reach Abraham in time because she is stopped by judges and officers at the gates. Unlike the Great Woman of Shunam, who was ultimately able to save her son, Sarah returned empty-handed and sank into a deep depression.

The fourth answer is offered by Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant. Hagar questions Sarah’s maternal instincts and her love for her son Isaac, since, after all, she banished Abraham and Hagar’s son Ishmael to the wilderness and showed him no mercy (Gen 21). According to Hagar, God deliberately directed the commandment to Abraham alone because He did not trust that Sarah would protect her son. It is for this reason that when God promised Abraham that his descendants would be from Isaac’s line, God used the second-person singular rather than the plural, which would have implied Sarah: For through Isaac, seed will be called in your [singular] name (Gen 21:12).

The fifth and final answer is offered by Tanot, the daughter of Jephthah, who first appears in Lubitch’s midrash about Jephthah’s daughter (see page 89). Tanot argues that Sarah was a prophetess, a claim advanced in the Talmud as well (b.Megillah 14a). In her prophecy, Sarah foresaw the fate of Jephthah’s daughter, whose father would take a vow to sacrifice the first creature to exit his house when he returned victorious from battle. She knew that, tragically, it would be Jephthah’s daughter who would be the first to emerge. She also foresaw what the sages would describe in the midrash (Tanhuma Behukotai 7), namely, that there was in fact a halakhic way in which to invalidate the vow. Jephthah could have sought out the assistance of Pinchas, who was the High Priest at the time, but he was too proud to turn to him for help and instead waited for Pinchas to come to him. Pinchas, in turn, waited for Jephthah to seek his aid, and “between the two of them, that poor woman perished from the world.” The Tanhuma describes a situation in which neither the parents nor the rabbis were able to find a way to put a stop to child sacrifice, a tragedy that drove Sarah to despair and rendered her unable to act. But the midrash concludes that Sarah was in fact unaware of her own power to change reality. Biala blames God for telling Abraham alone that “whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice” (Gen 21:12). God did not ensure that Sarah, too, overheard this charge.

This conclusion cries out against a patriarchal reality in which women truly do have the power to intervene and avert catastrophe, in both the domestic and the political spheres, and yet they fail to do so because they are so convinced of their existential oppression that they are unaware of their own strength.