Sarah died almost thirty years after Isaac was born
Sarah is one of the few women scripture tells us to follow
Sarah is one of the most unusual women in scripture. She was highly not perfect, a case study in passive aggressive behavior, full of wounds and capable of wounding others in the most vindicative way, meek in the wrong sense of humility, and capable of punishing anyone who threatened her beloved Isaac.
Faith
Despite all those flaws, Sarah was a woman full of faith, willing to believe God, willing to follow her man, and at peace with only seeing the smallest portion of all God promised to her.
Sarah died among the Hittite people, a nation interestingly enough which had a high respect for women. During the days of Abraham, the Hittite code of law was rather humane—peace was preferable to war, compromise was valued over conflict, and being a good neighbor was just thought of as the right thing to do.
Hittites
For centuries the Hittites lived peacably with Sarah’s children, Uriah, Bathsheba’s real husband, is the most famous Hittite found in scripture.
As it was, Abraham was a wealthy man living in a tent, most likely renting the land his animals grazed upon. God it seems, arranged things in such a way so as to have Abraham doing business in a way that did not make his neighbors nervous.
When Sarah died it was time to set down roots, and own a place to memorialize his wife.
The conversation with Ephron the Hittite is common among some middle easterns to this day.
- The buyer asks a few friends to convince the seller to sell.
- The seller first says to the buyer, it’s free, but in fact it’s not offered for free.
- The seller then asks for an outrageous price, expecting the buyer to talk him down a good bit.
- Buyer and seller haggle, maybe for hours, until they arrive at a good price.
Ephron asked for the moon, 400 shekels, an insane and weighty amount of real silver, and Abraham, too broken of heart to haggle, immediately paid the asking price.
