And if we are made in the image of God and are called to do what God does, maybe we are a people who are meant to give others new names as well.
But God said, “No, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
Genesis 17:19 (NASB)
There is something so sneaky and subversive about the way Genesis talks about women, you miss it if you read it too quickly.
For starters, while Abraham is the “father of our faith,” the story about the miraculous birth is really Sarah’s story, not Abraham’s.
Sarai was unable to conceive; she did not have a child.
Genesis 11:30 (NASB)
Remember, the inability to have children wasn’t Abe’s problem. He was able to have a son with Hagar, which meant he was perfectly capable of having children.
But Sarah was barren, and there is a sense of grief and desperation that surrounds her.
Though she is abusive towards Hagar, she reacts from a place of hurt and shame. It isn’t excusable, but it is understandable. She feels diminished and small, but God elevates her and changes her name.
The thing is, the name change for Sarah seems a bit subtle. Some translations (the NASB, for example) say that the words Sarai and Sarah are the same, but just in different dialects. But most translation commentaries state that going from Sarai to Sarah is going from “my princess” to “princess,” so there’s at least a sense of enlargement or increase in scope of her princessly responsibilities, whatever those may be. But what is a “princess,” exactly?
As it turns out, it has nothing to do with being the “daughter of a king,” but it does have everything to do with royalty and authority.
Both versions of her name are the feminine version of a word that means ruler. Chief. The one in charge. The shot caller.
I. prince, ruler, leader, chief, chieftain, official, captain
1. chieftain, leader
2. vassal, noble, official (under king)
3. captain, general, commander (military)
4. chief, head, overseer (of other official classes)
5. heads, princes (of religious office)
6. elders (of representative leaders of people)
7. merchant-princes (of rank and dignity)
8. patron-angel
9. Ruler of rulers (of God)
10. warden
Strongs: H269 (שַׂר): sar
Now, if you have gender-roles and leadership expectations in your head that precondition you to place a man in higher authority than a woman, you might think that Abram was wrong for listening to his wife in Genesis 16:6, but consider Genesis 21:12. Who tells Abraham to listen and heed his wife? It is God.
But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and your slave woman; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac your descendants shall be named.
Genesis 21:12 (NASB)
And actually, any statement about the consequences of men “listening to women” fall rather flat when you realize that nothing Eve said was wrong back in the Garden of Eden. Look at Eve’s words!
The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
Genesis 3:2-3
Perhaps Adam should have listened more closely, actually.
Sarah is elevated from being royal leadership with Abram to being royal leadership with Abraham: the leadership and authority tied to the father of nations. She is, in a way, wisdom, personified.
By me kings reign,
And rulers decree justice.
By me princes rule, and nobles,
All who judge rightly.
Proverbs 8:15-16 (NASB)
(In Hebrew, “by me” can also be read “with me.” It’s a connective preposition.)
And to make it even more clear how much Sarah is elevated, God says it twice in one verse!
I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Genesis 17:16 (NASB)
So blessed!
And why not? God made it clear that the Son of the Promise will be through her. Yes, through Abraham, but *also* through Sarah. Because God does not view her lower than him, or higher than him, but with him.
And that’s how it is meant to be.
Abram means “exalted father.”
Abraham means “father of nations.”
Sarai means “my princess.”
Sarah means “princess,” without the confining “my” possessive.
But perhaps we are meant to look at the appearance of the names as well:
The name of God has two “hey” (ה) letters: YHWH (יהוה)
Abram (אַבְרָם) to Abraham (אַבְרָהָם)
Sarai (שָׂרָי) to Sarah (שָׂרָה)
God gives this portion of His name to the first of His people. Their names/identity come from His, as though He has set His own mark on them.
1. Exceedingly old people being told they’ll have babies: That’s rather weird.
2. God institutes a covenant through circumcision: That’s even weirder.
3. Abram gets his name changed to Abraham, and he is instructed to start calling his wife by a different name as well. That’s just completely bonkers.
Could you imagine if your spouse did that?!
With Adam, the Hebrew language descdribes his age as 900, and 30 years.
But for everyone else in the list of ages, the 10s and 100s are reversed: Seth lived 12, and 900 years. Enosh lived 5 and 900.
One rabbinical teaching is that when an age is written 100s and then 10s, it means the last years of their lives were good and productive. Perhaps closer to God. So we seem to be told that God has redeemed Adam.
That doesn’t mean the rest are not redeemed, but specifically that God has compassion on Adam, the first of the lineage to die from the curse (from dust, to dust).
The word is used again later in a story linked to something important: it’s the word used when Sarah drives out Hagar.
And she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
Genesis 21:10 (NIV)
While we wrestle with Sarah’s unkindness and Abe’s foolishness and Hagar’s slave-status, there’s something that Paul says later about this story that we have to understand. These characters represent something.
For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galations 4:22-23 (NIV)
There’s so much talk about “works” and “faith,” and Paul links these concepts to slavery and freedom as it relates to God’s promise to us.
When Sarah demands that Abe “get rid of” Hagar and the boy, she is using this same word of “banishing” as Genesis 3.
The link should be viewed through an eternal lens: God is banishing the slavery of works and our own attempts at attaining status and relationship from the garden. The Garden is Holy.
He’s not kicking US out. He’s kicking out the works of the flesh.
How do we know this?
Because if you read the text closely, God only banishes Adam from the garden, and not Eve, who represents Life. The spirit. The one through whom God promises to bring redemption. Not through through One born of the flesh, but born of the spirit.
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NIV)
If you look at Genesis 1, it’s clear that it really ends in the next chapter: Genesis 2:1-3. Go look!
Now if you read Genesis 50 (the last chapter of Genesis), it’s clear that it really ends in the next book: Exodus 1:1-7.
My theological takeaway?
The fulfillment of God’s promise may not happen in this lifetime. God told Abraham re: his descendants & the Promised Land, but it was a promise that wouldn’t be fulfilled until the book of Joshua.
God will make things right. Some now. Some later.