Understanding humanity requires engaging with all of life’s facets: from the reckless behavior of the young (e.g. Joseph) to the mental fragility of the old (e.g. Jacob). And as we track each featured life, we also have the opportunity to try to understand how they grew and changed through their relationships and experiences.
Our forefathers did not have easy lives; choosing a different path than everyone else in the world is very difficult, indeed. Following a non-corporeal deity whose existence nobody else even recognizes could easily have been perceived as “hearing voices,” a clear sign of madness.
The interpersonal challenges, though perhaps self-imposed, were no picnic, either. Consider Avraham, Sarah, and Isaac. G-d tells Avraham to sacrifice Isaac. The next morning Avraham sets out with Isaac to the Binding. That evening he presumably did not mention G-d’s instruction to his wife. Perhaps he considered that he did not need to? Or perhaps he did not mention it because Sarah was not there?
We know that Sarah died in Hebron, miles away from where Avraham set out for the Binding – and to where he returned. Which means that, at some point between the expulsion of Hagar and Sarah’s death (a period of at least 25-30 years as she gave birth at 90, and died at 127), Sarah left her husband, and her son. That could easily have been before the Binding.
Which also might explain Isaac’s state of mind when his father goes to sacrifice his son. How does a child react to a parent (especially a mother) abandoning them? They might think that they are unloved. They might even blame themselves. They might be willing to go to desperate lengths to try to be or do better in the future. Might this partially explain why Isaac is willing to be bound by his father?
It does not get any easier for Isaac. Can you imagine the mental trauma of your father standing over you with a knife, ready to cut your throat?
And then, once G-d changes His mind and tells Avraham not to sacrifice Isaac after all, Isaac leaves his father, and strikes out on his own.
It seems that Isaac does not want to interact with Avraham again. Can we blame him? In addition to trying to sacrifice Isaac, it is entirely plausible that Isaac quite reasonably blamed his father, Avraham, for his mother leaving the family!
We don’t hear of Avraham and Isaac in the same place again until Avraham’s death. Isaac is not in the story when Avraham instructs a servant to find Isaac a wife. Isaac does not even go to Hebron to help bury his mother, or to mourn her passing.
Instead of being with his father, Isaac goes to Behar-Leharoi, a place mentioned earlier in the text. It is where Hagar fled after Sarah treated her harshly. At Behar-Leharoi, Hagar encountered an angel, who sent her back. Hagar was thus reunified with Avraham and Sarah.
Did Isaac choose this place because he hoped it would accomplish a similar outcome for himself – a way to bring the family back together?
After Isaac left, Avraham, from miles away, arranges for a wife to be found for his lonely son. Rivka is found, and she comes willingly. But she was not prepared for what she found: when she first saw Isaac, she fell off her camel. Isaac, for his part, acts just as a young man would who was not raised with a loving mother in the home: he first takes Rivka, then he makes her his wife, and then he loved her. It is, put mildly, the opposite of what we might consider to be an ideal order of operations for either a husband or a wife.
When Isaac loves Rivka, the text tells us: וַיִּנָּחֵ֥ם יִצְחָ֖ק אַחֲרֵ֥י אִמּֽוֹ, The text does not say that Isaac was comforted following Sarah’s death – it merely tells us that Isaac was comforted after his mother. After all, it seems that Sarah abandoned her son. Rivka may have comforted Isaac after the loss of Sarah in his life, from when she chose to leave the family.
It is perhaps not surprising that the marriage itself is clearly dysfunctional. Rivka and Isaac seemingly do not speak to one another very much, if at all. Instead, they talk to their sons. Rivka eavesdrops on her husband’s conversations in order to understand what is going on. And then she tries to manipulate the outcome with Isaac without directly speaking to him or confronting him. Even the last (and first!) thing Rivka says to her husband:
Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries a Hittite woman like these, from among the native women, what good will life be to me?”
is a roundabout attempt to achieve a result (getting Yaakov to leave). She avoids any direct confrontation, and she does not directly ask for what she wanted.
It all seems like Rivka lives on eggshells, from the first camel-drop to her last statement. Her husband might be compared to someone suffering from PTSD, and his wife is trying – desperately – to do the right thing, but is simply unwilling to engage directly and risk a very negative result. The outcome is nevertheless not great: Rivka loses Jacob, the son she loves, for many years of her life. Her death goes unmentioned. Rivka is an unnecessarily tragic figure, perhaps in part because of the traumatic results of the Binding, but also perhaps because men raised without mothers have a hard time relating to women.
When Did Sarah Leave?
Before her death, Sarah is last mentioned when Hagar is expelled. So we cannot know precisely when she left her husband and son. But we can identify two possible triggers for her departure.
The first is when Sarah told Avraham to evict Hagar. Avraham, who had not shown Sarah an enormous amount of respect to date (he snapped orders at her when the angels visited, he let her be taken by two different powerful men in the past, etc.), does not listen to his wife at first. Instead, he consults with G-d, trying to get a confirmation.
How do we think Sarah would have felt about that? After all, she had listened to Avraham, without complaint or openly expressing doubt, for years. But the one time Sarah asks for something, Avraham gets a second opinion before listening to her.
The second possible trigger seems even more likely: Avimelech, the king of Gerar, much earlier in their lives (Chapter 20), took possession of Sarah, as he understood that she was Avraham’s sister. Avraham stood by and let it happen. Sarah was only saved when G-d intervened. Her husband did not stand up for her.
And then, after Isaac is born but before we are told of the Binding, Avraham makes a peace treaty that with that very same Avimelech – after which Avraham sojourns in Avimelech’s land for an extended period.
How do we think that must have made Sarah feel? Her husband let her be taken in the first place, and then he ends up making a treaty with Avimelech, and then living under Avimelech’s very nose! It is entirely plausible that in that situation, Sarah would not have felt comfortable, and may even have felt threatened by Avimelech (knowing her husband would not defend her), or betrayed by Avraham for putting her in that position yet again.
So it seems most likely that Sarah left in response to one of these two events.