In Genesis 20:13, Abraham reveals that when he and his wife left their father’s house, he asked Sarah to call him her brother, not her husband. Abraham looked ahead to the land before them, a land full of violence, and he didn’t trust men there. He believed they would see Sarah, decide to take her as their own, and kill him. So he asked Sarah to do this “kindness” for him to save his life. Sarah agreed.

The word for Sarah’s “kindness” here is hesed, a word usually reserved for God’s faithfulness and mercy. Even when not used in reference to God, there’s a particular strength to it, like when Rahab uses it to describe her kindness to the spies and their kindness back to her to save her life (Joshua 2:12). This is weighty; Sarah’s hesed is a life-saving faithfulness to her husband, Abraham.

Sarah shows this kindness in two places—Genesis 12:10–20 and Genesis 20—and in both cases we’re left with ambiguity. Both Pharaoh and Abimelech defend themselves: “How could you do such a wicked deed? Lying to us? Leaving us to innocently take this woman into our house?” God sides with Abraham and Sarah, protecting them with plagues, but is that in spite of their behavior, not because of it?¹ Should Abraham have trusted God instead of endangering his wife and leaving her vulnerable to the whims of kings? Was this a good plan, or was Sarah submitting to her husband’s cowardice?

Sarah is in a similar situation with her relationship to Hagar. In Genesis 16, Sarah convinces Abraham to have a child by Hagar, and afterward Sarah treats Hagar so badly she flees to the desert. In Genesis 21, Ishmael renews the conflict, and Sarah appeals to Abraham to kick them out.

In both cases, God in some way bolsters Sarah’s position, but she still comes out morally suspect at best. She seems to lack faith in God’s promise, turning to her own devices to get a son. Once again, we’re left not knowing how to read the story. How harshly should we judge Sarah? What are we meant to take from this?

I’d like to propose here that in these stories, Sarah and Abraham are maturing through a set of trials as husband and wife. We’re meant to read them as a sort of foundational example of marriage. They are a new Adam and Eve, setting a pattern for how to endure under the curse. Sarah is not only the barren mother who endures until the miraculous promised birth of her son; she is also the faithful helper who saves her husband’s life through deception, and she is the wise wife and mother, steering her husband to protect her son, the promised seed.

Sarah and the Curse

First, a bit of context-setting. In the curse of Genesis 3, each curse focuses on a different relationship. The curse on the serpent forms an enmity between the woman and the serpent and between their seed. The curse on Eve corrupts the relationship between wife and husband, and the curse on Adam affects the relationship between man and the soil.

Genesis 4 extends this further, revealing that the conflict between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed is a conflict between brothers—the serpent leads the woman’s seed astray and turns them to violence against her other children. The woman will struggle to bring forth sons, and even when she does, she’ll have to keep them from killing each other.

The story of Noah focuses on fixing one relationship corrupted by the fall: man’s relationship with the soil. Noah was born to bring comfort from the curse on the soil (Genesis 5:29), and in the end, he does (8:21–22). Before the flood, the cursed ground brought forth thorns and thistles (3:17-19). After the flood, God rewards Noah for his obedience by making the ground fruitful again (9:20).

Because of this, we never hear anything about Noah’s wife. She’s never named, and she’s not a significant character. It doesn’t mean she lacked faith or did anything wrong—it’s just not the focus of Noah’s story. The violence between woman and serpent, the barrenness of the woman, her tension with her husband, and the brotherly violence between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed—all these problems remain.

Abraham’s story addresses all these themes. In Genesis 11, we’re not introduced to just Abraham, but Abraham and barren Sarah who are Shemites traveling into a land full of Canaanites. This brings the rest of the curse into view: husband and wife, woman and serpent, brother and brother. It’s no accident, then, that Sarah is so central to the story; she is the woman traveling with her husband into the land of the serpent to bear the promised seed.

Sarah’s hesed

With this background, I don’t think we can easily dismiss Abraham’s request to Sarah as cowardly. I’ve argued previously that Abraham’s story is meant to call attention to the violence filling the land as he travels through it.² He’s expecting to find a land full of violent men, and he’s right. These men are like the men of Noah’s day, filling the earth with bloodshed. And what else did the men of Noah’s day do? They took women, whatever women they wanted. Genesis 12 uses the same language to describe Pharoah:

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose (Genesis 6:2).
And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house (Genesis 12:14–15) [emphasis mine].

When powerful, violent men see what they want, they take it. Abraham’s concern is not only justified; it’s the driving point of the narrative. Abraham and Sarah know what’s coming, they prepare for it, and their plan works. God defends Sarah, she returns to Abraham safely, and they emerge wealthier than they began.

Their plan may have worked, but were Abraham and Sarah wrong to lie? Both Pharaoh and Abimelech accuse Abraham of wrong-doing. Are they right? For this, take a look at how Abraham defends himself to Abimelech. After accusing Abraham of wrong-doing (20:9), Abimelech demands an explanation. Why did he do this? Abraham explains: “Because she’s a beautiful woman, and the kings here take beautiful women and kill men. She did it for me as hesed. Besides, she is my sister.” He doesn’t back down. He doubles down on why he did it.

In response, Abimelech stops defending himself. He gives Abraham gifts and lets him stay in the land. He also gives a separate gift specifically for Sarah “as a covering for the eyes for all who are with you.”³ He even acknowledges them as brother and sister when he says to Sarah, “I have given a thousand pieces of silver to your brother”.

Everything Abimelech does here vindicates Abraham and Sarah, and there is no reason to think Abraham’s explanation isn’t compelling to Abimelech. Presumably he agrees—some of the nations around him are violent, and they were wise to be careful. In fact, Abraham says they have been following this approach “in every place, wherever we go” (20:13). They have been doing this everywhere, not just in Egypt and Gerar.⁴

After all these years of sojourning among these nations, they still feel compelled to follow through with their plan. If the nations around them had been peaceful—if Pharaoh’s behavior proved them wrong—why didn’t they stop? Instead, based on their experiences, they continued. It’s telling that the Abimelech story follows immediately after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the men of Sodom tried to take guests, rape them, and kill them—a heightened form of what Abraham fears in Gerar. If anything, some of the nations are worse than Abraham feared, not better.

Remember the wider narrative. God has sent Abraham and Sarah to sojourn through a dangerous land. As is made clear in Genesis 17, the promise is to Abraham and to Sarah. Sarah, the new Eve, is Abraham’s partner, his helper, or “battle-mate” if you prefer.⁵ God has sent them both, as a couple, on a dangerous mission, and Sarah is meant to help. After many years among the sons of Ham and Canaan, Abraham and Sarah stick with their plan; they counter violence with deception.

It feels more natural to have Abraham stand up to Pharoah, to guard his wife from danger, for him to save her, but the Bible is full of examples where faithful women endure danger to save men, often through deception. Rahab deceives the king of Jericho. Jael kills Sisera. The Egyptian midwives save the sons of Israel. Moses is saved by his mother, his sister, and later, his wife. Michal saves David. Abigail saves the men of her husband’s household, and seeing this, David takes her as a wife after Nabal dies. Jehosheba saved Joash. Esther risks her life to save Israel. Sarah’s hesed establishes a pattern; the woman saves her son or her husband through deception.⁶

Sarah, mother of the promised seed

Our other pair of stories deal with Sarah’s relationship with Hagar. In Genesis 16, after God has renewed his covenant with Abraham, Sarah approaches him with an idea of her own. “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her” (v. 2). Abraham listens to Sarah, Hagar conceives, and conflict erupts between Sarah and Hagar.

The text makes it clear that Sarah is in the wrong here. Commentators have pointed out the parallels between Genesis 3 and Genesis 16.⁷ Sarah is Eve, Abraham is Adam, and Hagar is the forbidden fruit. Sarah’s suggestion was wrong, Abraham was wrong to listen to it, and it immediately causes problems.

Commentators have shown a parallel between this story and ancient laws surrounding surrogacy.⁸ Sarah isn’t coming up with this on her own; it’s a common enough practice that there are laws regulating this specific scenario. Sarah is barren, yet God has promised to give them children. God did give them a maidservant from their time in Egypt, so Sarah thinks, perhaps this is how they were meant to produce an heir? After all, it’s how barren wives of wealthy lords did things. This doesn’t make it right, as the parallel with Genesis 3 makes clear, but it explains where she got the idea.

After Hagar conceives, Sarah “was despised in her eyes”. The word for “despised” here is qalal, and it is the same word as in Genesis 12:3, where God says “I will curse/arur him who curses/qalal you”. It’s also the same word used in Genesis 8 to describe the flood waters abating. The idea here is that Sarah has become lesser or lighter in Hagar’s eyes. Hagar is in some way disrespecting Sarah, perhaps considering herself equal to her now that she’s conceived, a situation that’s also called out in ancient laws.⁹

Hagar has “cursed” Sarah, and so Sarah appeals to Abraham. She is asking him to step in and rule on the dispute, to reinforce her authority over Hagar. Abraham’s response “your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please” is a declaration of Sarah’s status. He is not being passive; he is passing judgment. Hagar is not equal to Sarah—she is still her maid—and so Hagar must obey her. Abraham is judging on the side of Sarah.

Sarah then “deals harshly” with Hagar—the word here is ‘anah. Hagar flees, and when the angel of the Lord finds her, he says “return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand.” Here, the word for “submit” is the same word, ‘anah. God also promises to bless Hagar’s descendants, and she is to name her child Ishmael (God hears), because God has heard her affliction. Again, that same word shows up with “affliction,” which is the noun form, ‘ani.

The word ‘anah can be used in both positive and negative circumstances. It’s used in Exodus when Egypt afflicts/’anah Israel (Exodus 1:12), but also when Moses tells Pharaoh to humble/’anah himself before God (10:3). It’s used to describe God humbling Israel in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2), and it’s used in Psalms to describe humility before God (Psalm 35:13; 88:7) and of the wicked’s affliction of the psalmist (89:22). It’s a strong word, representing an assertion of or submission to power. If that power is legitimate, ‘anah represents a humbling. If not, it represents oppression.

To make the connection clearer, read the verses with ‘anah translated with “subjection” in each case:¹⁰

So Abram said to Sarai, “indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please.” And when Sarai subjectedher, she fled from her presence (Genesis 16:6).

The Angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and subject yourself under her hand” (Genesis 16:9).

And the Angel of the Lord said to her: “Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your subjection” (Genesis 16:11).

The Hebrew word choice here highlights how complex this situation has become. On the one hand, the angel’s “subject yourself under her hand” in 16:9 intentionally echoes Sarah and Abraham. Sarah subjected Hagar, and Abraham had said, “your maid is in your hand.” The angel is reinforcing Abraham’s judgment and Sarah’s action. Hagar is under Sarah’s authority; by conceiving Ishmael, she has not usurped Sarah.

On the other hand, the angel also gives Hagar an Abraham-like blessing because He has heard her subjection. How do we make sense of this—God simultaneously telling Hagar to submit but also hearing her submission and blessing her for enduring it? This is especially curious if we remember that Hagar cursed Sarah. Hasn’t God promised to curse those who curse them? Why would He bless Hagar after cursing Sarah?

The issue is that both Hagar and Sarah have done something wrong. Sarah tried to use Hagar to give Abraham an heir, and Hagar responded by cursing Sarah. They are both in the wrong, and God is stepping in mercifully to make things right. He reinforces Sarah’s authority, in a sense undoing Hagar’s curse, but He also acknowledges Hagar’s plight in having to submit to one who abused her authority, and so He promises Hagar a blessing for enduring it.¹¹

Notice also that, because Abraham names his son Ishmael, we know Hagar told Abraham and Sarah about her meeting with God. Picture this scene. Hagar returns and speaks to Abraham and Sarah. She says she’ll submit to Sarah’s authority. But she continues: “The Angel of the Lord visited me in the desert. He spoke to me. He told me to subject myself to you, Sarah. But He also told me He’s heard my subjection, and He will bless Ishmael for it.”

Hagar is being humbled before Sarah, but at the same time, Sarah is humbled, because Hagar is now one who has seen God; she is one to whom God Himself has spoken. And what did God say? That He has heard her plight in having to submit to Sarah. Hagar is simultaneously lowered and raised up. We can read this positively—perhaps both Sarah and Hagar fully repent and are restored to one another, accepting what has happened. But based on what follows, I suspect there’s more to it than that. Sarah is her authority, but Hagar has seen and heard God. The situation is tense. And both will have to endure under this arrangement a while longer until Isaac comes, when both will be delivered—Sarah from her barrenness, and Hagar from her subjection.

The second conflict between Sarah and Hagar brings this tension to resolution. At the great feast of celebration for Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael “laughing” (21:9). She immediately goes to Abraham: “cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son”. This seems like overreaction, but God Himself steps in to support Sarah: “Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac your seed shall be called” (21:12).

Many commentators point out that the word “laughing” can carry a negative connotation (see Judges 16:25, where Samson is mocked at his death), and it’s often translated “mocking” or “scoffing” in this passage. Ishmael is mocking, or laughing at, Isaac, and the passage is meant to contrast with the joyful laughter of Isaac’s birth in 21:6. Galatians 4:29 confirms this reading, saying that Ishmael was persecuting Isaac. The word for laughter is also Isaac’s name—Ishmael is “Isaac-ing”. The idea here is that Ishmael is not only mocking Isaac; he is also trying to usurp him.

Sarah sees this, and just like in Genesis 16, she appeals to Abraham, asking him to protect Isaac’s inheritance by casting out Ishmael. If Ishmael stays, the dispute will continue. Tensions will rise. Ishmael will despise Isaac, like Hagar once despised her, and he will lay claim to Isaac’s inheritance. If Isaac is to be the son of promise, Ishmael has to go.

This seems harsh, but step back and consider that very recently, everyone thought Ishmael was the promised heir. We know this because in Genesis 17:15–16, when God tells Abraham his heir will be Sarah’s son, Abraham laughs and appeals to God to reconsider Ishmael. Abraham clearly thought Ishmael would be his heir. This was thirteen years after Ishmael was born (17:25). Ishmael, Hagar, Abraham, and Sarah went thirteen years thinking Ishmael would be the heir. Ishmael spent his entire life up to that point thinking he would inherit Abraham’s promise, that God’s promise made to his mother in the desert was the same promise made to his father.

But no, in Genesis 17, God tells Abraham that Ishmael will be replaced by Sarah’s son. And to seal this promise, Ishmael is circumcised. Ishmael receives the seal of a promise that removes his inheritance and gives it to a son to be born to his mother’s rival. This isn’t just an act of faith for Abraham, trusting that God will give Sarah a son. It’s a devastating reversal for Hagar and Ishmael.

This tension is still in the background when we reach Genesis 21. Isaac was born just one year after they discovered Ishmael would not be the heir (compare 17:1 and 21:5), and the great feast is at Isaac’s weaning. Ishmael is there, at a feast for Isaac, celebrating the son who has taken away what seemed to be his just a few years ago.

Ishmael lashes out at Isaac in some way—we’re not sure how—and Sarah sees trouble brewing. She’s right. After all, what happened before when God favored a younger son over an older son? The older son found his brother in a field and murdered him. This will get much worse if no one intervenes.

So Sarah appeals to Abraham to stop the conflict by removing Ishmael. Abraham objects—he loves his son—but God makes it clear that Abraham needs to do what Sarah says. In fact, the language in 21:12—“listen to her voice”—intentionally echoes Genesis 16:2, and it’s also the same language used over and over again in the Bible when God commands Israel to “hearken” to Him or “obey” Him (e.g., Genesis 22:18; 26:5). Earlier, Sarah was like Eve in the garden, a wife whose voice should not be obeyed. But now, God Himself echoes her voice, and Abraham should obey his wife’s voice. Sarah is reversing the fall of Eve. She now has a voice that should be obeyed, a voice of wisdom.

In fact, Abraham seems to keep this wisdom in mind even after Sarah’s passing. In Genesis 25:6 it says he also sent his later sons away from Isaac, so Isaac would be his undisputed heir. This leaves Isaac as the only son in Genesis that doesn’t have to endure a major brotherly conflict as an adult. Esau tries to kill Jacob. Joseph’s brothers almost do the same before selling him into slavery. Isaac? None of his brothers try to kill him. Remarkable, by Genesis’ standards, and it’s because of Sarah’s intervention.

Sarah, a second Eve

In the end, Sarah has addressed all the major points in the fall of Genesis 3–4. She endures decades of barrenness faithfully and gives birth to the promised seed. The serpent deceived Eve, but Sarah deceives the serpent. Adam should not have listened to Eve’s voice, but Abraham rightly listens to Sarah. Eve’s son is murdered by his brother, but Sarah protects her son. She is a new Eve, a prototypical wife and mother.

We should not read Sarah in Genesis 21 as a vindictive wife and mother, trying to manipulate her husband into exacting revenge on her rival. And in Genesis 20, she is not passively submitting to some cowardly scheme from Abraham so he can avoid danger while she faces it. Instead, we should turn to Abraham and Sarah to get a picture of marriage as it’s meant to operate under the curse. The woman saves her husband’s life through deception. She protects her son from violence through a wise appeal to her husband, who heeds her and learns from her. Sarah is Abraham’s helper, an active partner to Abraham in bringing about the promises of God.

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Donald Linnemeyer is a software engineer living in Galveston, TX.

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NOTES

1. See Allen Ross, Creation and Blessing (Baker Academic, 1998), 270–278; G. J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, Volume 2 (Zondervan, 2000), 65–75;  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan, 2001), 210–215. All of these read the story’s theme as God’s mercy and faithfulness in spite of Abraham’s fear and lack of faith. ↩︎
2. https://theopolisinstitute.com/brother-abraham/ ↩︎
3. Everett Fox’s translation on 20:16. The Five Books of Moses (Schocken Books, 1983), 87. ↩︎
4. This also may imply that the plan worked better in other nations. Everywhere else they traveled, the local rulers didn’t take Sarah, perhaps because Abraham was able to refuse offers of marriage as Sarah’s brother. This potentially puts Sarah and Abraham’s plan in an even better light. Their plan worked throughout Canaan without endangering Sarah, and it was only in these two cases where the situation got out of hand, and God had to intervene. ↩︎
5. https://x.com/PLeithart/status/1704854743674458516 ↩︎
6. James Jordan makes a similar argument in Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 87–88. ↩︎
7. See, for example, Wenham, 7–8. ↩︎
8. Wenham, 7; Waltke, 252. ↩︎
9. See Code of Hammurabi 146: “If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid-servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants.” From https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp. ↩︎
10. Credit to my wife for the suggestion here. Most other English terms have a clear negative or positive connotation; “subjection” can be used in both ways. ↩︎
11. Peter Leithart and Alastair Roberts point out that God is filling a husbandly role here. Hagar has been abused, and He is protecting her. See https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/hagar-the-stranger/ and https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/true-hospitality-and-the-immigration-debate/. ↩︎