Torah Posting: חיי שרה
The last parashah ends with Avraham glorying in all his patriarchal blessings and vast holdings and lineages, and then, abruptly, Sarah dies at the venerable age of 127. The text makes explicit that Avraham has to go to Hevron, where she was, in order to mourn for her. So we return to the story of what happens to Yitzhaq in the wake of his father’s madness through the lens of how Avraham was not there for Yitzhaq’s mother when she died.
Avraham makes arrangements via another land transaction.
Avraham asks the locals if he can buy a burial plot for Sarah. They say “nooooo haha we love you, Avraham! Just take one!” But Avraham is a big macher, and he insists on buying it fair and square, and thus the cave of Makhpelah becomes one of the holiest sites in the Jewish world, making Hevron a particularly troubled place for ever after.
With his holdings amongst the locals secure, Avraham now sets about securing his genetic lineage, specifically against local wives for Yitzhaq.
This is a fairly shocking transition. He goes right from dealing nicely with the locals in buying the burial property to ensuring they can’t get too close by marrying into the main lineage of his family.
And he’s quite serious about this. He instructs his manservant to cup his covenantal genitals and swear he will go find Yitzhaq a wife from his own ancestral lands with whom Yitzhaq will populate this land with his divinely appointed descendants.
The servant swears and departs forthwith.
The servant stops to water the camels around sunset — an astrological moment that is significant throughout Yitzhaq’s story, as we will see — and prays fervently to God on behalf of his master, Avraham. He prays for a sign that a woman is destined to wed Yitzhaq: not only will she offer him her pitcher to drink, she will offer to water his camels as well. That’s how he will know she is the one.
Before he is even done with this prayer, Rivkah appears.
She is of radiant appearance, of the right stock, and she makes such an impression upon the servant that he prostrates himself in thanks when she leaves.
Rivkah’s brother, Lavan (the word for the color white, associated with the eye and the Moon), comes out to meet the servant, they sit and discuss the story of this miraculous union (the entire thing is recounted again), and all agree that God has ordained all this to happen.
Rivkah’s family agree to send her off, and they party all night.
In the morning, some of the relatives have second thoughts about letting him take her to Avraham right away. They conclude to ask Rivkah herself if she will go, and she says she will, so they go.
Before she leaves, her family bestow a powerful protective blessing on her and her progeny.
Rivkah and her maids mount the camel train, and the train departs.
And now, as someone who bears the name of Yitzhaq, come some of the my favorite psukim in the entire Torah: Yitzhaq’s first appearance as an adult.
Yitzhaq is not simply waiting at home to let his father broker this meeting. He is traveling out to meet them from the other direction. Yitzhaq takes after his father in at least one way: He is spiritually restless and inclined to meet God on the road.
The next pasuk (24:63) I quote in full because it’s a mantra to me and I want to preserve it in my writing:
וַיֵּצֵ֥א יִצְחָ֛ק לָשׂ֥וּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶ֖ה לִפְנ֣וֹת עָ֑רֶב וַיִּשָּׂ֤א עֵינָיו֙ וַיַּ֔רְא וְהִנֵּ֥ה גְמַלִּ֖ים בָּאִֽים׃
And Yitzhaq went out לשוח in the field at sunset, and he lifted up his eyes and saw, and here were camels coming.
I don’t translate לשוח because I’m not sure I can. Some say “walking.” My Koren chumish says “to meditate.” You see why I hesitate.
The moment cited as Avraham’s morning prayer is not one of the many moments when he verbally prays, interestingly enough. It is just after the destruction of Sedom (19:27), when Lot’s family is going out, and the narrative cuts to Avraham rising in the morning and rushing to the place where he had “stood” (עמד) facing יהוה, and it only describes him looking out over the plain and seeing the smoke rising.
It is not words but embodiment — standing — that creates this prayer.
Yitzhaq, in his very first appearance in the Torah as an adult — and also the first time we’ve seen him since his father tried to human-sacrifice him as a child — carries forward this family tradition of embodying prayer in ways that will be transmitted eternally down this lineage, but he does so in ways that individuate him from his father.
Avraham stands on the mountain at sunrise to witness divine wrath.
Yitzhaq walks in the fields at sunset to witness his beloved for the first time.
Then Rivkah lifts up her eyes and sees, and there is Yitzhaq.
Nice translations make it sound like she descends gracefully from the camel when she sees him. There is sufficient reason to read it as though she falls (תפל) off the camel, though, which is the kind of love-at-first-sight scene I would prefer to imagine.
She asks the servant who that man is walking in the fields to meet them. When he replies that it is his master, she covers herself with her veil.
After they are all acquainted, the text says that Yitzhaq brings Rivkah into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and they became married, and he loved her, and וינחם יצחק אחרי אמו, and Yitzhaq was consoled after the death of his mother.
As if this is not already stark enough of a contrast with how Sarah’s death affected Avraham, the next paragraph is Avraham marrying someone else and fathering a bunch more kids, giving the bulk of his stuff to Yitzhaq but saving a little for the others, and dying.
Yishmael comes back for this, and Yitzhaq and Yishmael bury Avraham together in the cave of Makhpelah, right next to Sarah. And it came to pass after the death of Avraham that God blessed his son, Yitzhaq, and Yitzhaq dwelt where his mother dwelt.
The parashah ends with the lineages of Yishmael, concluding with the commemoration of his own death.
It’s Yitzhaq’s story now.
🐪
