#26 SARAH (14-15TH CENTURY BC): THE LATEST OF BLOOMERS

Sarah was the barren wife of the biblical patriarch, Abraham who, at God’s intervention, became at ninety, the mother of Isaac. Born in Mesopotamia, today’s Northern Iraq, Sarah may have been her husband’s niece or even his half-sister. Twice it seems she was sold or traded by Abraham as a wife to powerful rulers.

Because Sarah was infertile she gave her serving maid or slave Hagar to Abraham who fathered Ishmael with her. He is reputedly the father of all Arabs. The birth of Israel was promised by God and predicted by three strangers who visited their tent. Sarah at ninety laughed at the possibility of becoming pregnant. Sarah died in Hebron at age one hundred and twenty-seven and is buried in the cave of Machpelah, the second most holy site for the Jewish people after Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Conversation with the Gatekeeper:

“Who is Sarah, Gatekeeper?”

I’d just read the story of Sarah and her husband Abraham in Thomas Cahill’s The Gifts of the Jews and commenced a conversation with the Gatekeeper about Sarah’s struggle to mastery.

“Sarah is Miriam, whom you call Mary, the mother of Jeshua.”

“Well, despite her mastery, Abraham didn’t seem to respect her very much. I think he was a calculating man who passed her off as his sister which, in fact, she probably was, and sold her to the Pharaoh of Egypt as a concubine. Abraham received a bride price of a barnyard full of animals, some camels, and plenty of servants. His behaviour was selfish and self-absorbed because he was prepared to trade his own wife like an animal for his own prosperity.”

The Gatekeeper took a deep breath and responded soberly, with some reservation: “Well, you don’t seem to like Abraham, do you! Abraham is the first historical king in the Torah. He had gone into Egypt because of a drought at the time of the 15th Dynasty of Hyksos kings [c1671-1657BC]. The Pharaoh’s name was Meruserre Yaqub-Har, an acquaintance of Abraham. Abraham was one of the shepherd kings who ruled the fertile planes for four hundred years and he was not the easiest bloke to live with. Sarah was his half-sister; they had the same father but different mothers. He counted his wealth in his livestock. He didn’t like independence in women very much. The Hebrew word for ‘wife’ would eventually mean ‘property’”.

“Are you saying Abraham punished Sarah for her independence by selling her to a Pharaoh?”

“It was her path to sanctity,” the Gatekeeper replied enigmatically.

“After her sale, great plagues attack Egypt,” I continued. “Maybe God had a different idea of her real worth.”

“God has her in training to be the mother of His Son. Great plagues did come. Enormous illnesses struck the animals, which were the wealth of their community. The plague, probably caused by the Tse fly, made inroads into flocks of sheep, camels and goats. First dozens, then hundreds, then thousands died so Egypt was bleeding financially. The time when the first sickness arrived coincided with Sarah joining the Pharaoh’s harem and perhaps Abraham’s flocks did carry the plague or so the Pharaoh thought. She was a Jonah and the Pharaoh had reached the point where he nearly had her put to death until Abraham intervened, offering: ‘I’ll take her back’”.

“The Bible says that when the Pharaoh identified Sarah as the cause of his grief he gave her back to Abraham, quick smart, and his palace guard escort them off his property and out of Egypt. She is no more than his pawn.” [Litchfield, 2008]

My sense of grievance ended that discussion. It would be some time before we returned to Sarah and this time I asked if Mary could be present to ensure that we were able to capture her views exactly about one of her most challenging lives. I began with one of my perennial questions about love: “Did Abraham love Sarah?”

“Although Abraham loved her before he traded her to the Pharaoh, Sarah did exasperate him; she wouldn’t be submissive. He couldn’t win an argument with her and she didn’t want his children because she didn’t trust him. Abraham had a madness about him; his grip on reality was not as firm as it could be. So she used a natural contraceptive, a root used in the Middle East.”

“What was it?” I interrupted.

“The plant is called pennyroyal. She made a tincture by boiling the root for long hours until, concentrated to one tenth of its original volume, she added alcohol spirit made from the lees of wine (it was similar to grappa) to preserve it. She took it continuously. It’s also an abortio fascent, and could abort a foetus up to three months. Now I will return to my narrative. Sarah was furious to be sold as a concubine.”

“Then why did she go back to Abraham?”

“Because she loved him very deeply. She was an independent, liberated woman and her spirit was unbroken by the experience. “

“Did Abraham put her aside because she had been with the Pharaoh?”

“She had sex with the Pharaoh a couple of times but this made Abraham want her even more. Being a queen of Egypt simply made her more desirable. She was also an outstandingly beautiful woman. She was extremely intelligent, far brighter than Abraham, with a native intelligence unschooled in writing and reading. But Sarah had a screamer of a temper, when she let fly, everyone scattered. Abraham, well, he was very wary of her.”

“Can you look at her? You say she was outstandingly beautiful. Could you describe her?”

“The first thing that strikes you about Sarah is that she is tall. She is five foot six or seven with very fair skin, deep black hair, aquiline features and light grey eyes which were not uncommon among the Medes or the Kurds. Sarah was not a Kurd, but she had some Balkan ancestry somewhere. She had even white teeth, very unusual at the time because teeth were constantly broken from chewing bread with fine stones in it. Sarah had extremely long, graceful hands and feet because, like Abraham, she was descended from Krishna. She was a graceful and mesmerising dancer, dance being an essential part of their culture and, like Abraham; she was very musical with a good singing voice. She was extremely intelligent and although Abraham had an innate wit and cunning, he lost every argument to her.”

“I want to return to Sarah’s fertility. The Bible is quite clear in saying Sarah could not conceive. Was Sarah infertile or not?”

“As I said, she controlled her fertility, she was not infertile. She was past her menopause in her fifties when she had Isaac.”

“Why did she change?”

“She was overcome by an enormous maternal urge. She was at an age when she could deal with Abraham who was a psychologically violent tyrant. She watched him, knew his moods and managed him. He’d already had at least thirty children and was not pining for any more. She made a medicine of wild yam. Now don’t ask me which wild yam or I’ll use up all the available energy finding out. It was a wild yam which raised her oestrogen levels. She was in a stuttering menopause when she got pregnant with Isaac.”

“How did she react to Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac?”

“She was furious. She screamed at him, ‘you bloodthirsty savage. Anyone who wants to kill a child, or even an animal, to make a god happy, is crazy. There is no point in spilling blood to praise God.’ Sarah started the evolution of Judaic practice away from animal sacrifice. It was the revulsion of Jewish women, which led to its eventual demise. But, there is more here. Abraham had been having one of what you would euphemistically call his ‘episodes’, straight from the schizophrenic manual, page one, and was quite mentally unbalanced at the time. He was in this phase of maniacal obedience to God and if God told him to cut his own throat he would have done it. When he took Isaac, Sarah had followed him anxiously. He said he was going to sacrifice only he did not have an animal with him, just Isaac. Sarah knew when he took Isaac away he was up to something dangerous so she took a ram and followed him to protect her only child.

When Abraham was readying to sacrifice Isaac she pricked her ram with a thorn to make it bleat. It distracted him and Abraham believed God had sent the ram to him although it was Sarah who did it to distract him...”

“And this was the man whom God chose to represent the Jews when he formed a covenant with them!”

“Maybe God had a different idea of his real worth that you do!”

“How did Sarah react when Abraham told her about this covenant with God?”

“Initially it was disbelief but after many questions and answers, she accepted it. Being of a more practical bent that Abraham she knew it meant trouble and the revelation convinced her of the continuing mental instability of her husband.”

“So what did she do about it?”

“When women fall in love they put on a pair of spectacles which changes their view of reality. They spend enormous time defending the indefensible and believing the unbelievable. So what does she do? She said to herself if this is nonsense I can help him get over it and if it’s true, which seems unlikely, he’s going to need me all the more. Her female urge to please and serve blinded her to the reality of what all this meant.”

“Well, God obviously chose her well! Did Sarah have any particular accomplishments?”

“Sarah’s greatest accomplishment was staying married to Abraham and raising her son Isaac to admire civilised behaviour. She raised the standard of these wandering flock masters and started their march to settlement.”

“Why did Mary choose to incarnate as Sarah?”

“To experience a life of unbelievable abuse…strong emotional abuse regardless of the social mores of the time…to pander your own wife to not one ruler but two to gain his favour is appalling and is the greatest betrayal. Because Abraham didn’t do it once, he did it twice!”

“What qualities of Mary did she bring into this incarnation?”

“Amazing endurance, almost indestructible. Sarah ruled his household and his followers’ households with a rod of iron in a velvet glove. She brought in Mary’s capability, her intelligence, her feminism, her love of music. Sarah was a player of the lyre and a talented dancer so she had Mary’s musical and dancing capabilities. She also had Mary’s skills as an herbalist from her love of gardens and plants and her extreme beauty.”

“What was her life’s purpose?”

“Very simple really. Largely to found Middle East culture and civilisation, it was Sarah who made Abraham’s mission possible; she taught all the young females, eventually over two hundred of them, either Abraham’s daughters or his concubines, how to teach their children culture, values and civilisation. Abraham started the Canaanites, the Midianites, the Syrians and the Armalites and Sarah would influence them all.”

“Who taught Sarah what she taught others?”

“Sarah was educated, but not literate. As a young woman in Mesopotamia she had a wondrous teacher. Sarah met the great priest Melchizedek when he was very old – eighty-six – she loved him very much and she learned a great deal from him. He taught her traditional tunes and songs and how to compose new ones. He taught her the rules of successful family life, how to be adventurous with her mind and to look and think as good teachers do. He disappeared frequently, too often for her to be able to get close to him, but then he didn’t encourage closeness. She looked after him whenever he was around.”

“It sounds like a classic life of the hermit, the wise man of Kuthumi.”

“That it is. He would return to her as her child, Isaac, and look after her as Mary when he was St John, but before then he would be Plato’s teacher Socrates. Although as Melchizedek he was not Jewish, as the Kuthumi energy he was teaching Abraham, an aspect of El Moyra, about the beginnings of the priesthood.”

“Sarah’s treatment of Abraham’s concubine Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, comes across as vengeful jealousy when she manoeuvres to have her cast out of their tent.”

“Sarah said “I won’t have a bastard sharing my son’s inheritance! And good old Abraham gave Hagar a loaf of bread … How could he do that? To his own son? Sarah had been annoyed and concerned at Abraham’s allowable equality between these two of his sons. He was allowing, she believed, the idea to grow that they were equals with Ishmael being the first born and therefore, although illegitimate, the son who would inherit. Here is Mary revealing herself to you warts and all. It makes Sarah more human but she was not so much jealous as furiously defensive of her son’s inheritance.”

“Was Ishmael, Hagar’s son with Abraham, the father of the Arabs?”

“Yes, the Arabs are descended from him.”

“And her spiritual challenge?”

“It was coping with Abraham’s unblinking fanaticism. Where she came from children were not brutally circumcised with a sharpened flint, which gave rise to damaged penises and testicles. Sarah came from a family with household gods who you couldn’t see in the flesh and you didn’t talk to. She visualised Abraham’s God and added to her picture of his one God: kindness, love and caring, all the yin values but it was the yang God that Abraham saw with a vengeful sword.”

“What was Sarah’s gift to the Jewish people?”

“It was largely Sarah’s influence which led them to settle. She wanted a house, a field, to change Abraham’s concept of wealth from the size of his flock to the size of his land. While it wouldn’t change until Jacob’s sons, the practise was set in motion by Sarah. And there was something else. Sarah gave to the Jewish people her argumentativeness, a great gift, I am sure you’ll agree.”

“Gatekeeper, could you ask Mother Mary to tell us a vignette from her life as Sarah?”

“Yes, one moment. Here is her story. On one occasion she found her son Isaac practicing with a sling. As a shepherd he needed to be skilful to drive off bears and wolves from taking their flocks. She lectured him for he was practising on rabbits, taking their lives indiscriminately and leaving others wounded. Abraham interrupted her, complaining it was not her role to discipline Isaac about the management of the flocks that was man’s work. ‘Silence’, he yelled at her argument. She dutifully covered her head, bowed it and said no more. That night when she served the evening meal, which was the main meal of the day, she served up lentil porridge and spinach in oil made from wild plants. The men, who had worked hard, were dusty and tired. ‘Is this all?’ Abraham demanded. ‘It is not a woman’s job to kill a rabbit. Until one of you gets to be a better shot with your sling, there is no meat from wounded rabbits which are not cleanly killed.’ ‘From this time, Isaac,’ Abraham replied, ‘practice with sling shots against targets on trees until you have built up the skill to kill animals.’ Sarah covered her face and laughed quietly. She had made her point.”

“Sarah is recorded in the Bible as one who laughed when she found out she was pregnant…”

“And now you know why. She laughed when Abraham, ignorant of women’s control of their fertility, attributed her conception to his God. This is the first example we see of Mary’s feminism. She laughs when she has made a point!”

“Sarah has many similarities to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Did she go on straight away to be Mary?”

“No. We’ve already seen her as Maya, Buddha’s mother, and there are a few more lives to explore, Leah and Ruth for example, before she returns as Miriam, Jeshua’s mother.”

“You said to me once in an earlier conversation, ‘the remorse of Abraham was great, he mourned Sarah’s death.’”

“At her death Abraham realised how badly he’d treated her; his schizophrenia had abated somewhat and there had been this lovely woman with a lovely nature and he felt bitter remorse. It was a tad late when after seventy-five years of her joyousness he felt despair when she died. Now, let’s look at the Trickster Jacob and his unloved wife, Leah.”

Jacob and Leah

Jacob was the third Biblical patriarch following after his grandfather, Abraham, and his father, Isaac. The second of twins, born minutes after his brother Esau, Jacob tricked his father, Isaac, to give him his blessing and therefore the inheritance which technically should have gone to his brother. Isaac, despite his doubts, blessed him and in doing so gave him the eldest rank in the family, a double portion of inheritance and the priestly office of the family.

His irate brother denounced his trickery and vowed to revenge himself after his father’s death.

Jacob fled immediately on the long journey back to Northern Mesopotamia to his mother’s brother’s house. His uncle, Laban, had two daughters and there Rebecca had hoped her son would find a wife.

On his journey he had a strange dream of angels ascending and descending a heavenly ladder and God spoke to him and blessed him.

On reaching his mother’s birthplace, he was captivated by the beauty of his uncle’s daughter, Rachel. Laban told him he could marry Rachel on the condition he worked for him for seven years, and Genesis (29:20) says the seven years seemed unto him “but a few days, for the love he had of her” (Gen. 29:20).

Jacob finally married Rachel. Or he thought he did! In the morning light, he realised he had been swindled and married her elder sister Leah. Leah is described as “tender eyed” which could imply she was either plain or had weak eyesight, or both. When he protested Laban claimed that the older sister must be married first, but he would allow Jacob to marry Rachel, in a further seven days, if he agreed to another seven years of servitude. Jacob agreed and eventually married Rachel.

Leah had four sons to Jacob seemingly in four years, Rueben, Simeon, Levi and Judah and after every son she prayed for her husband to love her. Unfortunately Jacob’s indifference to her continued unabated. Rachel, on the other hand, watched her sister’s fertility, and envied her and offered her serving maid Bilpah to Jacob so she could claim Bilpah’s offspring, Gad and Asher, as her own.

Leah conceived another two sons, Issachar and Zelbulun, and one daughter, Dinah.

Finally, Rachel gave birth to a son, Joseph. Then Jacob decided to return to Israel and brokered a new deal with Laban to leave with his wages in sheep and goats to his going back to Canaan. A mysterious being appears to Jacob in his prayers and Jacob wrestled with him until dawn. When Jacob asks for his blessing - the being says that Jacob will now be called Israel meaning ‘one who has struggled with God.’”

Rachel will die giving birth to her second son Benjamin and Jacob’s twelfth son. Benjamin, we are told, was the son who was overshadowed by the radiance of his older brother Joseph, and the love Jacob had for him.

Leah’s sons were jealous of their father’s love for Joseph, felt alienated by Jacob’s neglect of them and sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Eventually, a drought would draw Jacob’s tribe to Egypt and he would be reunited with his son Joseph, now the Prime Minister.

When Jacob was nearing his death, he called his sons together and made predictions about their futures. ‘Benjamin,’ he said, ‘is like a vicious wolf, in the morning he devours his prey, in the evening, he divides up the spoils.’ The picture of the bellicose Benjamin is born out by his tribe’s later history (Genesis 49:270) as the breeding ground of warriors. It was from Benjamin’s tribe that Samuel would choose King Saul, the first king of Israel, and it is from that tribe Saul’s namesake would persecute the first Christians until his experience on the road to Damascus prompted him to change his name from Saul to Paul.

Both Jacob and his son Benjamin are from the talented trickster line of St Germain while Mary herself incarnated as Leah and Lord Sananda, her future son, incarnated as Joseph.”