According to chapters 11-23 in the book of Genesis, Abraham and his wife Sarah are the progenitors of the Hebrew people. Sarah, along with Rebecca, Rachel and Leah are considered the “four Matriarchs” of the Jewish people. When Abram was 75 (God later changed his name to “Abraham”), God instructed him to travel to Canaan with Sarai (who later became “Sarah”).

To the couple’s great dismay, Sarai was barren; a fact that weighed on the couple more heavily in light of God’s promise that Abram and his children would found a great nation. After ten years of unsuccessfully trying to conceive, Sarai gave Abram her maidservand Hagar to take as his concubine.

Hagar soon conceived, and bore a son named Ishmael. However, when Abram was 99 years old, God appeared before Abram and blessed the couple (and symbolically changed Abram’s name to “Abraham” and Sarai’s name to “Sarah”). God promised Abraham that Sarah would conceive a child despite her advanced age (she was 90!) and that he would maintain his covenant with their son, Isaac. True to his promise, their son Isaac was born a year later, beginning the biblical line of God’s promised “great nation” of Israel.

Isaac and Ishmael were initially raised side by side as brothers, but Sarah eventually asked Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away for reasons that are still debated by Biblical scholars today. Some claim that Sarah was horrified after discovering that Ishmael was secretly worshipping other gods, some say that it was motivated by Hagar’s uppity attitude and still others claim that Sarah was afraid that Ishmael would receive a greater inheritance as Abraham’s firstborn. In any event, Abraham ordered Hagar and Ishmael to leave his house the next morning (according to Muslim religious texts, Hagar went on to become one of the matriarchs of Islamic). It is alleged that Sarah died peacefully, at the ripe old age of 127.

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