Chayei Sarah: The death of Sarah

Rav Johnny's original thoughts on the weekly parsha

Parshat Chayei Sarah situates Sarah in Hebron when she dies. However, it doesn’t explain why Sarah was in Hebron. Given this, various commentaries offer a range of suggestions as to why Sarah would have been in Hebron when she died.

One suggestion, which I touched upon in my essay on Parshat Lech Lecha, is that Sarah came to Hebron as part of the deal-signing to acquire Ephron’s field which included the Cave of Machpelah. This cave was already of great significance as it was the burial location of Adam & Chavah. Accordingly it seems, as affirmed by the words of Eishet Chayil (Mishlei 31:16), that Sarah felt an affinity to this field, and this could be a reason why Sarah was in Hebron.

A different suggestion, offered by the Chizkuni, is that Avraham sent Sarah to Hebron which was a distance from Mount Moriah so that she wouldn’t stop him from taking Yitzchak to be sacrificed.

Another suggestion, and arguably a much simpler one, is that at this point, Avraham and Sarah were actually living in Hebron.

A different suggestion, offered by Rabbi Mordechai HaCohen in his Siftei Cohen commentary (to Bereishit 23:2), emerges from Rashi’s commentary who explains that a reason why Hebron is referred to as Kiryat Arba is because four giants lived there. On this basis, Rabbi HaCohen explains that when Avraham took Yitzchak to offer him as a sacrifice, the Satan told Sarah that this was happening and that her son was about to be killed. Sarah did not believe the Satan. However, in order to confirm that the Satan was not telling the truth, she went to Kiryat Arba where she asked the giants, who were very tall and who could see things from afar, to tell her whether what the Satan had said was correct. They answered her that they could see an old man standing over a younger man who had been bound to an altar, and that the old man was holding a knife above the younger man and was about to slaughter him. Having heard this description Sarah then died.

However, there is one further suggestion which answers this question which Rabbi Avraham Rivlin offers in his Iyunei Parasha. There he points out that Avraham’s friend and confidant, whom Avraham consulted with before having his Brit Milah (see Midrash Tanchuma, Parshat Vayera), was Mamre. And so, when Sarah wasn’t sure where Avraham and Yitzchak had gone to, she then went to the home of Mamre to find out if Avraham had told him where he’d gone.

The question then is: did Avraham consult with Mamre before talking Yitzchak to be bound as slaughtered in the same way that he consulted with Mamre before he had his Brit Milah?

This question is addressed by Rabbi Shmuel Geffen in his Shemu’ah Tovah Torah commentary who, on the basis of the above-mentioned Midrash Tanchuma, claims that Avraham did not. But why?

He asserts, on the basis of what Mamre said the last time Avraham consulted with him, that Avraham suspected that his friend Mamre would oppose him taking Yitzchak to be sacrificed. Given this, Avraham chose not to seek Mamre’s advice.

From here we learn a powerful lesson that sometimes a test involves doing something that even your best friend of close family member would tell you not to do.

Given all this, when Sarah asked Mamre if Avraham had spoken with him, and he responded by saying no, she already realized what was happening, and at that point, Sarah died.

Shabbat Shalom!

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