“Chayei Sarah”… the life of Sarah...Genesis 23:1-25:18

Although titled “the life of Sarah,” this parasha opens with her death. “Sarah lived one hundred twenty-seven years; this was the length of Sarah's life. And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.” Genesis 23:1

It has often been speculated that Sarah died of a broken heart. While Abraham set off with her beloved son Isaac, to fufill God’s command, interpreters wondered if Sarah knew what he was up to. Did he tell her of the terrible chore to come? Did she guess? And remember that – ram as substitute sacrifice or not - Abraham descended from Mount Moriah without his son. “So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-sheba…” Genesis 22:19.

In her book of poetry A Cry Like A Bell (Harold Shaw Publishers, 1987), Madeline L’Engle speaks up on Sarah’s behalf:

Sarah: before Mount Moriah
Genesis 11-12, 16-22

Like a small mouse
I am being played with.
Pushed around, sent from home,
passed off as a sister,
free to be the sport of others
(nobody asked me).
Nobody asked if I wanted
to leave home and all my friends
(the cat never asks the mouse).
Would my womb have filled
if we had stayed where we were
instead of following strange promises?
My maid, giving my husband a child for me,
then made mock of me.
So when the angel came
announcing—promising—
a child in my womb long dry
what could I do but laugh?
And then warmth came again, and fullness,
and my child was born,
my laughter, my joy.
But do not play with me any more!

What kind of logic lurks in your promise
that the sky full of stars
is like the number of our descendents
and then demand the son's life who makes
that promise possible?
Can I trust a breaker of promises?
What kind of game is this?

Are you laughing at my pain
as I watch the child and his father
climb the mountain?
Am I no more than a mouse
to be played with?

I am a woman.
You—father-God—
have yet to learn
what it is to be a mother,

and so, perhaps, have I.
And if you give me back my laughter again,
then, together we can learn
and I will say—oh, I will sing!—
that you have regarded the lowliness
of your handmaiden.

I have always find that this parasha adds insult to injury by reporting Abraham’s marriage to Keturah (easily fertile, another slap in the face) before Sarah’s grave was cold. Although rabbinic scholars often sought to soften this hard reality with the contention that “Keturah” is another name for Hagar – who Abraham brought back home after Sarah’s death, this is not born out by the biblical text.

Genesis 25:1 Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. 2She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. 3Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan. The sons of Dedan were Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim. 4The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah. 5Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. 6But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastwards to the east country.

7 This is the length of Abraham’s life, one hundred and seventy-five years. 8Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. 9His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, 10the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with his wife Sarah. 11After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac. And Isaac settled at Beer-lahai-roi.

The other big – and happy! – news that Isaac has taken a wife. As Robert Alter has shown, this is not a simple report of an engagement, but the story of Abraham’s servant finding Rebecca and bringing her home for Isaac conforms to a literary convention of ancient Hebrew narrative he calls the Betrothal Type-Scene. (The Art of Biblical Literature, Basic Books: 1983)

Each literary culture has its own norms and conventions which assist the author and audience by providing a shared set of assumptions about how a given interaction will play out. The audience recognizes the conventions without necessarily being aware of them, much as one of us, watching movie previews in a darkened theater, can probably identify the genre of a given clip within the first 60 seconds of music and images. We know a Sci-Fi film from a Romance from a Comedy intuitively based on a myriad of cues. In much the same way, when flipping TV channels we can identify within seconds whether we are watching a commercial, infomercial, news program, or drama. We speak the language, we have internalized the genres. The challenge in dealing with ancient texts like those in the biblical corpus is that we do not have the same facility with genre that exists between ourselves and modern works of art. We must stretch ourselves to meet the biblical text in the fixed form that it remains – we must attempt to in-generate ourselves.

So here are the elements of a Betrothal Type-Scene, according to Alter:
A. The Bridegroom (or his surrogate) on Journey to a Foreign Land
B. Girl(s) at a Well
C. Someone Draws Water
D. Girl(s) Rush to Tell
E. Betrothal
F. Ceremonial Meal

Download and print out a document I have prepared with examples of this type-scene in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, accessible at this link: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddbxqpcb_4fcrqc4fb&hl=en

Try to identify every element in each story. Isaac and Rebecca’s betrothal is the most complete of the examples, but it also gives us tremendous information about its heroine – Rebecca is the mother of industry, drawing water for the servant and all the camels, too!)

Notice that the Jacob narrative lacks the final element – the ceremonial meal, a good hint that something with this betrothal is about to go terribly awry. (Does waking up after the wedding night with the wrong woman in your bed qualify as ‘terribly awry’?!)

Alter demonstrates some of the ways that an author can invoke a type or genre only to subvert it, creating tension in the audience who, recognizing the type and getting prepared to see it play out, are surprised when the formula doesn’t come together and forced to make meaning out of its lack of fruition. Look at the examples of 1 Samuel 19:11-12 (there is no wedding! this should be a clue that Saul will end up without a kingdom…) and Ruth 2:1-14.

Variations upon the type-scene give the audience cues about characterization: Laban’s avarice; Isaac’s passivity; Rebecca’s initiative; Jacob’s sensitivity; Rachel’s barrenness; Moses as liberator; Ruth’s heroism; Saul’s isolation.

Now look at John 4. It will be clear by now that we will be considering the story of the Samaritan woman at the well…let’s walk through it together.

A. Bridegroom (or his surrogate) on Journey to a Foreign Land:

John 4:4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

Audience expectations are being established. Is Jesus the bridegroom? His surrogate? Will he meet a marriageable young woman at a well?

B. Girl(s) at a Well

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’.

Great! Here’s the girl, there’s the well. The audience settles in for a good old fashioned betrothal. But wait – why is the bridegroom asking the maiden to draw the water? Is she going to be like Rebecca, that ultimate biblical woman of industry?

C. Someone Draws Water
9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ 16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.’ 27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’

Now the audience finds itself quite uncomfortable and thinking hard. Is somebody going to hurry up and get that water? Each of them keep asking the other for it! And what is this ‘living water’ business all about. In addition, it turns out that this is no young maiden at the well, but an unfortunate woman whose life has seen tragedy after tragedy – in the culture of the time, where unmarried women were extremely vulnerable, a woman whose husband died had to accept marriage to his brothers or other kin in order to survive. Clearly this woman lost multiple husbands and suffered great turmoil – and worse, is presently being forced to live without the small legal protections that official marriage provided. The audience is moved by her plight, and by Jesus’ recognition of her social poverty. The betrothal scene – invoked by all this marriage talk and yet subverted by its content – has truly run off the rails.

D. Girl(s) Rush to Tell

28Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ 30They left the city and were on their way to him.

This is just one example of the many ways the New Testament repeats renews and pays homage to the literary convention of the Hebrew Bible.