Hank Smith:                      00:00:00             Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:00:04             A name change in the ancient world. This is something that happens in scriptures fairly frequently. It also is something that would happen in ancient ritual. Again, I’m gonna take us to the cultural context. In fact, a lot of times it would happen in what I would call coronation ritual, which is a ritual that makes a king a king, or a queen a queen. It marks a change of status. It marks a change of where you are, but I think here too, it marks a change in spiritual growth.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:38             Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my co-host, John Bytheway, whom God hath made to laugh. John, that is Genesis 20, verse six. Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh. Don’t you feel like that’s you, John? God made you to laugh.

John Bytheway:               00:00:59             Hey, people have laughed at me my whole life. That must be what it means.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:03             Laugh with me or at me. I’m okay either way. Yeah I wonder how many people out there have thought these two laugh too much. Well, we can quote Genesis 20. God hath made me to laugh. Now, John, I’m actually not sure it means what we think it means. We have an expert here to let us know if it actually does. Her name is Dr. Carli Anderson. Carli, Dr. Anderson, thank you for being here on followHIM.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:01:28             Thanks. I’m happy to be here. I’m really excited.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:31             This is gonna be really fun. John, Abraham, Isaac and Sarah, Lot, and his salty wife. What do you think? What comes to mind when you think of all these stories? All that’s gonna happen in these chapters today.

John Bytheway:               00:01:49             There just seem to be more women included in the stories in the Old Testament than some other places, and I really like that. I love that Sarai’s name gets changed to Sarah, along with Abram being changed to Abraham. I love stuff like that, that it’s, this is the two of them and that’s why I am, I’m really glad we’ve got Carli today ’cause I think she knows something about this.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:11             I’ve often thought we call it the Abrahamic Covenant, but maybe someday we ought to call it the Abrahamic Sarah Covenant because it really takes both of them. Carli, we’re so glad you’re here. What are we gonna do today? What are you looking forward to?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:02:26             Glad you brought up the idea of Abraham and Sarah and how they work together. That’s what I wanna look at mostly in these chapters. I wanna look actually at Abraham and Sarah and Hagar first. We’ll talk about how to read these stories ’cause they’re not immediately easy. They’re really old stories. Then I wanna take a minute to reframe Sarah and Hagar. I wanna look at them maybe with some different lenses than people have looked at them before. Couch it in what we know about what happened in the ancient world and the way the Hebrew is stylized at the end. What I hope to do is show how all three of them, Sarah Hagar and Abraham, actually have really parallel stories through these chapters and through some of the chapters that are earlier. I’ll bring some of that in too. You see that they’re really following a similar arc.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:13             I’ve noticed in these chapters life gets complicated and for our listeners, life gets complicated.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:03:20             Very complicated. These are really human figures like we’re reading about them and there’s a lot that’s pretty relatable. You know?

Hank Smith:                      00:03:29             You’re just going, wow, they have emotion. Wow. They are mortal. Now, John, we haven’t had Carli on the show before, which I feel badly. We’ve had so much fun before even hitting record, I thought we gotta have Carli back every two weeks. What do you know about her? Have we done a background check? Where did we even find Carli?

John Bytheway:               00:03:49             I think Hank that you have a better answer to that. Someone recommended her.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:54             Yep. A couple of people actually.

John Bytheway:               00:03:56             Yeah. Well, let me tell you about Carli. She’s an assistant professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University. She holds a master’s in Hebrew Bible and ancient near Eastern studies from BYU and a PhD in religious studies from Arizona State. Carli’s work examines biblical women at the intersection of text and culture, tracing their interpretations across time and traditions. Carli has presented nationally and internationally and spent many years living in and researching the Holy Land. She’s a contributing author for the book called Seeing Women in the Old Testament. She lives outside Flagstaff and she’s currently learning to play the ukulele. Maybe we can prevail upon her to do our closing hymn.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:04:46             I’m not that good.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:49             Well, John Bytheway plays any musical instrument you can hand him in about an hour. He’ll have it down.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:04:55             I know.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:55             So you can do a duet.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:04:56             I know in about three years I’ll do a duet with you John.

John Bytheway:               00:05:01             Carli, I was excited when I saw that book, Seeing Women in the Old Testament. When did that come out?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:05:07             It’s brand new. It just came out this Fall. It’s specifically for this year’s Come, Follow Me study.

Hank Smith:                      00:05:12             Oh, wonderful. Women in the Old Testament. Awesome. The lesson this week is a wonderful question. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Abraham and Sarah’s life filled with events both heartbreaking and heartwarming is evidence of a truth Abraham learned in a vision. That we are on earth to be proven to see if we will do all things whatsoever the Lord our God shall command. Would Abraham and Sarah prove faithful? Would they continue to have faith in God’s promise of a large posterity, even when they were still childless in their old age and once Isaac was born, would their faith endure the unthinkable, a command to sacrifice the very son through whom God had promised to fulfill that covenant? Abraham and Sarah trusted God and he trusted them. In these chapters, we find stories from the lives of Abraham, Sarah, and others that can prompt us to think about our own willingness to believe God’s promises, to flee wickedness and never look back and to trust God regardless of the sacrifice. In proving us, God also improves us. Wonderful. Alright, Carli, how do you wanna start? You said you wanted to go back a couple of chapters.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:06:27             Yeah, I do. I wanna look at the stories of Sarah and Hagar that are from chapters earlier. Then this week’s section, I also first wanna introduce the listeners on ways to think about how to read these stories. You can read them in the English and you still get a lot. You can hear the emotion, you can hear the trouble, you can hear the stuff they’re wrestling with, but it’s also a really ancient text, really old stories in Hebrew. This ancient language.

                                           00:06:58             This text is actually really, really stylized and that’s just a fancy word that means every phrase, every word is important. Things will repeat, they’ll be word plays, allusions to other things. It’s layered in antiquity. If you keep that in mind, then you can look for the ways that the ancient editors or authors or people putting these stories together, how they put them together to give them the meat and the meaning that they wanted them to have. I actually have a really great opening for some dad jokes. If you guys have any good dad jokes.

Hank Smith:                      00:07:35             Oh, okay. You have come to the right place.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:07:41             I thought that that might be true. One of the suggestions for why these stories are so stylized and why sometimes each word or certain words or phrases are gonna be repeated or have a really specific meaning might be because originally before they’re written down, they come from an oral tradition. Just imagine sitting down and listening to somebody tell a really great story. If you’re hearing it in the Hebrew, you’re, it’s easier to hear, but you can still see it in the English. It was organized around a skillful listening, if that makes any sense. When we sit down in the movie theater and we’re watching say, an action flick or like a chick flick, we kind of know where it’s gonna go and if it doesn’t go there, it goes there a different way we’re surprised, right? We’re like, oh, that was a cool twist.

                                           00:08:26             Similar things like that can happen in this text, and as a listener they might hear it, so there’ll be a lot of word plays that have, I don’t wanna call them like puns. Words will sound alike, and as a listener who is receiving this story, you’ll hear that and then it’ll cue you over to someplace else or it’ll remind you of a another idea from a different story and it pulls it all in together. The best part about Dad jokes is that there’s things sound the way you think there’s, and then it tips you off to something else, and that’s where it’s funny, this story can have humor, but it also can have really elegant connections to other ideas and other themes in the biblical text.

Hank Smith:                      00:09:09             Carli, we lose a lot of that when it goes to English, don’t we?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:09:12             We do.

Hank Smith:                      00:09:13             That’s probably hard for someone like you who can, you’re like, oh, it was there and you’re missing some good stuff.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:09:20             That’s what I wanna show you today. I wanna show you the stuff that you might miss if you’re reading it in English, when you know it’s there in the Hebrew and then you go back to the English, you can see it. It’s clearer.

John Bytheway:               00:09:29             For me, a classic example that was so interesting was Proverbs 31, which is, as we all know, an acrostic poem. What’s an a cross-stitch poem? No, an acrostic poem. It goes through the Hebrew alphabet and outlines these attributes of a virtuous woman, so it’d be like in English saying, oh, A is for her attitude, B is for her beauty, C is for her charity, D is for her delightfulness or something, but in Hebrew you would see that, but in English you don’t. We get to see with the Hebrew scholar here that we lose something in the English translation and Carli’s gonna fill it in for us.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:12             I am really excited.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:10:14             We talked about how it’s a stylized text and probably had an oral tradition, but I also wanna talk about Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, they’re stylized themselves. It’s not just a story. These are big figures for us, but also in the ancient context. Their stories are really culturally heavy. They have a lot of meat to it. The wild thing is that they’re really succinct as they’re telling us all these heavy things about these people. You can see that as we go through the verses. Let me give you a good example that you could probably relate to. For example, a mythic figure in our culture would be Santa Claus. I say Santa Claus. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?

Hank Smith:                      00:10:56             North Pole. Red coat, long white beard.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:10:59             Yeah. Good.

Hank Smith:                      00:11:00             Flying through the world in one night.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:11:04             A whole cloud of images that’ll come up when I just say Santa Claus. You might given some more thought, you might even go to like a fourth century Saint, Saint Nicholas, who was this real person, and then also red suit. You might even go to like adjacent characters like Rudolph. If you went to Rudolph, he’s part of that cloud, right? The elves, yeah, in the North Pole. Then you might even go to a bunch of movies that tell the story or that retell the story, so that’s all part of the cloud. You definitely probably think of a specific month. I don’t even have to say the name of the month. You know the one, right, and you probably even think of weather. It’s just intuitive. It just comes up. As soon as I say Santa Claus, when I say that these figures, Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar are culturally weighted. That’s what I mean. They just, I’ll say the name or the name shows up in the text and there’s this whole cloud of stuff that follows them as the story gets told, that cloud is there too for the ancient readers and for us.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:03             Okay, yeah, I can see that when I think Abraham a lot comes to mind. I can think of a lot stories. General Conference talks, the temple, a lot comes to mind.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:12:15             Yeah, he’s indispensable. Honestly so is Sarah and honestly, so is Hagar. We touched on this already, but I’ll say it anyway. The linguistic difference. It’s easy when you’re reading an English text to think in an English context. What I’m gonna try to do is wiggle that loose a little bit and and try to take us back as much as we can to the ancient world and put it in that context.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:39             Carli, I can tell your students in Flagstaff, they’re very blessed. You’re an excellent teacher.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:12:45             Oh, thank you. Thanks. I really love this stuff. It’s fun.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:50             And that’s part of being an excellent teacher I think. Enthusiasm. What did Elder Maxwell say? John? Part of what we might be missing in the good gospel teacher is a sense of enthusiasm about the gospel, which could prove highly contagious. Carli, you have it. Let’s keep going.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:13:09             Let’s start with Sarah. I wanna reframe her. To do it we have to go back a couple of chapters. Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. It’s a tricky story. I talk to friends who love the scriptures, but they read the story and they don’t always come away loving Sarah. She can come across in the story in the English, at least as kind of mean. Even my friends who are like, I really wanna love Sarah. They read it and they don’t quite know what to do with it. I wanna reframe her first and then I’ll reframe Hagar and you can see how they’re really, their stories are deeply intertwined and also Abraham is part of that, but there are people who are working on their place in the plan of salvation and they’re growing in all of the ways that we grow and their stories are really, really relatable.

                                           00:13:58             Sarah, I wanna reframe her because the way we read her, we don’t get to see how majestic she is. It’s not easy to see that in the English. I wanna show her as an equal to Abraham and the text really sets her up like that. We’ve been chapter after chapter about Abraham and God coming to Abraham and setting up the covenant with Abraham and really creating that relationship with Abraham. Sarah has that too, but we miss it sometimes. The place I wanna go first actually is to chapter 12 where Abraham and Sarah go to Egypt, and it’s kind of a weird story. A lot of commentators don’t know what to do with it, but in some of the research that I’ve looked at, when Sarah and Abraham get to border, they’re going be recognized in a really specific way. You remember this story where Abraham says, please say you’re my sister because that will save my life basically.

                                           00:14:58             This is gonna be a little bit complicated to get to the point, but stick with me and I’ll try to get us there together. The idea of Sarah and Abraham at the border, and Sarah being somebody that’s vulnerable because she’s beautiful, it reads that she’s beautiful also, reads in the Hebrew, and this is really, really stylized and poetic. It reads as though she is what I’m gonna call a sacred woman. A woman who is recognized by the people that are looking, the Egyptians, the princes of Pharaoh. They’re looking and she’s recognized as a woman who represents divinity. One of the things that would legitimize a king’s kingship would be to be basically married to the right woman. This is this idea of sacred marriage or hieros gamos, and those are fancy terms, but all I want you to hear from this is what makes a king a king in the ancient near east has a lot to do with who he’s married to.

                                           00:15:55             In these coronation ceremonies, there would be a female present in the sacred marriage part of the ritual. It’s cool in a lot of ways, but what I wanna highlight is what it means for Sarah, because the woman in those ceremonies was usually a princess or a priestess or some kind of woman that was connected to divinity really closely. Scholars, when they look at this story on the border, what they’re seeing is that Sarah is recognized immediately as one of those women. Now, this makes the story more interesting because yes, Sarah is beautiful. The verses definitely say she’s beautiful. The people who recognize Sarah, they’re given the name princes, and the Hebrew term for that is actually the term sar, but Sarah’s name is related to that same root, so you can hear sar is the masculine and sarah is the feminine, so the people at the border recognizing Sarah are sars, so the sars see sarah and they see, oh, we recognize something in this person, and that’s the word play. That’s part of the word play. You’re gonna see this word play through Sarah and Abraham’s story a lot, but it’s, it’s really is I think a highlight here because it points out Sarah’s being noticed by these princes from Pharaoh’s court putting her on equal territory with them, just by that word, Sar and Sarah. Then they praised Sarah. Let’s go to Genesis 12, verses 14 and 15. Hank, will you read, let’s do verse 14.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:29             I love it. Genesis 12, 14 and 15, and it came to pass that when Abram was coming to Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her and commended her before Pharaoh and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:17:48             So you can hear the princes in there. In the Hebrew, you’ll hear the princes and Sarah, we hear that she’s very fair and in fact Abraham says she’s very fair, and then there’s this word in verse 15 where they commended her before Pharaoh. The word in Hebrew is actually halal. It’s a word that means to praise or commend. It fits the context, but actually it’s very rarely used for anybody else but divinity. You can hear this in our hallelujah. Hallelujah. Is halal a hallelu praise and then yah is the Lord, so praise the Lord, but the princes are doing this halaling. They’re praising and commending Sarah with this idea of this beauty and these princes and the praising. It really is a poetic device to set up from Sarah to be this kind of sacred woman.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:41             This is hitting home to me because I am married to a Sara. I’m going, I know what this feels like for other men to go, wow, she’s beautiful. What’s she doing with that guy?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:18:52             Well, I’m gonna up the stakes even if Sarah is recognized as beautiful, but also a princess and the princes can see the princess, but then also they praise her using this word that’s usually associated with divinity. It really elevates her. Now, if we put it in the context of the ancient world, the ancient or east, suddenly, if Abraham is married to Sarah, then that makes Abraham in a pretty good position regarding kingship.

Hank Smith:                      00:19:21             I’m liking this.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:19:22             I know Sarah really ups the ante for Abraham, but then also remember this, Abraham and Sarah and whoever’s with him, they’re going in as foreigners. He’s walking in with a royal entourage. It might even be seen as a political threat to Pharaoh for Sarah to be in another person’s house. Then when Abraham says, please say you’re my sister, and in the Pearl of Great Price, God says, tell everybody she’s your sister. He’s protecting Sarah. He’s protecting Abraham because this is a really dicey political situation.

Hank Smith:                      00:19:58             Okay. I’ve never understood that before.

John Bytheway:               00:20:01             Great insight. Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:20:02             Yeah. In that context, it fills it out a little bit, and then actually we probably won’t spend much more time on this, but in chapter 20 with Abimelech, it’s a very similar story and that it happens twice for Sarah when both she and Abraham are foreigners or they’re not native or they’re entering territory that’s not theirs. It fits as a parallel both times. They’re going in and Sarah is in a way legitimizing the kingship of Abraham in a territory where he’s not the king. Does that make sense? It creates that tension naturally.

Hank Smith:                      00:20:38             Why would the sister, would the sister then, oh, okay. That’s not a threat.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:20:42             Yeah. Well, you’ll notice both times what happens is Pharaoh and Abimelech give Abraham lots of riches. What I think is happening what scholars when they’re looking at this, they see it’s a way of merging families or like creating diplomacy between these, but Sarah going into the house is meant to legitimize probably the kingship of Pharaoh or the kingship of Abimelech, but it doesn’t work because right away problems occur, the problems occur because that’s the tension. Sarah is legitimizing the kingship of Abraham, not the other person.

Hank Smith:                      00:21:18             So he really is a political threat.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:21:21             Yeah. That makes the story make a little bit more sense. It’s, and it’s less about Sarah just being beautiful, although she definitely is. What I see in that context is we can see from all of the experiences of the earlier chapters that Abraham is connected to the divine, that Abraham is talking to God, that Abraham is forming a relationship with God, but it’s small and it’s hidden in the Hebrew, but you can see in these verses that so has Sarah, she has established that relationship. She is actively recognized as a woman of the covenant, as a woman connected to the divine.

John Bytheway:               00:21:56             So Sarai and Abram perhaps perceived as a threat to the Pharaoh and his position.

Hank Smith:                      00:22:05             She’s connected to God in a big way.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:22:07             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:22:08             They don’t maybe know exactly what’s happened.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:22:11             But they can see it. They can. They can identify it, and the word play, the sar, sareem and the helel, the praising, the commending, it’s all to point to Sarah is special. Sarah is connected to the divine and people can see it.

Hank Smith:                      00:22:25             Yeah, you would miss that if you didn’t speak Hebrew.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:22:28             Yeah. It’s hidden. Now we’ve set her up as Abraham’s equal. I do also wanna just bring in the Pearl of Great Price. Abraham, in that very first chapter, talks about seeking after the blessings of the fathers. One of the things he says he wants to become or seeking after is to become a prince of peace. That word prince is, you guessed it, sar. It’s lovely to me that you can see them really being put on equal footing because Abraham is seeking to become a sar and his wife’s name is Sarah, the feminine equivalent.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:04             I’m gonna share all these things with my wife, Sara, this is great.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:23:06             I know, you should. Yeah, all Sarahs should know this.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:09             Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:23:11             Let’s just jump right to 16. Now that we have established Sarah as a spiritual equal to Abraham, then when we go into her story, we can appreciate more what she’s going through. We can appreciate this is a woman who knows God. This is a woman who is living in the world to serve God. Then let’s jump into Genesis 16. I know this is not what we’re studying this week, but I wanna go back. We have to really, to understand this week’s passages, we really have to understand what happens in 16. I guess I wanna set the stage because we know the story, right? The story is that Abraham’s been being promised over and over and over in the last couple of chapters by God that he’s gonna have a lot of kids. He’s not having any kids. Sarah is barren. That’s not happening for them, and then in 16, this is where Sarah actually actively makes a decision.

                                           00:24:06             It’s clearly her decision. You can see that in verse one. It says, now, Sarai, Abram’s wife, bear him no children. It just sets it all up. She had a handmaid, an Egyptian whose name was Hagar, and we’ll talk about those terms more in a little bit. Verse two, and Sarah says to Abraham, behold, now the Lord has restrained me from bearing. I pray thee go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children by her and Abraham hearkened to the voice of Sarah. You can see that Sarah’s leading this up. This is her idea. This is what she wants to do, and there’s a couple of cool phrases in this. We’re introduced to Hagar who is gonna be a major player in this whole thing. Sarah and Hagar’s relationship is gonna be something that we wanna keep an eye on. I wanna put this in a context.

                                           00:24:57             We have several extant law codes that talk about this exact situation. This is a surrogate pregnancy. They didn’t have a lot of tech back then. This is how a surrogate pregnancy would be set up because surrogate pregnancies, I mean, they’re tricky even today, but back then, also tricky, maybe even trickier. We have several, like I said, several law codes that establish how this operates and set up protections for all of the parties involved. When we look at those law codes, it really fits what’s happening with Sarah and Hagar. The idea is when scholars are reading this, they’re seeing that Sarah is taking an active role. It’s something she can do legally. It’s a possibility for her that she will use Hagar as a surrogate mother, but the child will belong to Sarah. Does that make sense? It’s not really necessarily in there, but when you look at the law codes and how it’s set up, it’s clear that there’s the surrogate mom and then the other mom.

                                           00:26:01             That child belongs to the other mom. The surrogate is just providing that service. It fits within that and it gives us, I guess, a step back in the story, but it also makes it more complicated, and as you’re gonna see how everything goes down, it gets pretty dicey on a lot of levels, but also really actually tricky and hard specifically for Sarah. I do wanna just point out in verse two when it says that I may obtain a child by her. You can see it setting up that surrogacy. The child will belong to Sarah, but she’ll obtain it through Hagar in the Hebrew it doesn’t read I’ll obtain a child. It actually reads, I will be built up. You can see that it’s Sarah understanding her role in this whole process and figuring a way to do it according to these law codes.

                                           00:26:51             Legally, this is a situation that is not just gonna have emotional ramifications or relational ramifications. It’s actually gonna have legal ramifications as well. There’s a structure for how this is all happening. She’s gonna be built up and be able to provide the heir for Abraham that God and everyone else is expecting, and I wanna put this in more of a tribal family setting, right? It’s not necessarily a nuclear family setting. This is like a tribal family setting. Lot’s part of this family. Abraham’s part of this family and Sarah, but Abraham and Sarah seem to be the leading couple. Sarah can mean princess. It can also mean chieftainess. They’re in the position of authority. There is a hierarchy. Hagar is listed as a handmaiden and she’s listed as a servant, but in the ancient east, the way they thought about servants in this context, it was a possibility for these people to be treated like family and have a lot of position and a lot of authority.

                                           00:27:51             Abraham has a servant like this. Think of Eliezar. Eliezar is so trusted that if Abraham doesn’t have an heir, Eliezar’s gonna get all of the stuff. He’s gonna become the heir apparent. When we think of Hagar as a maid servant, it’s very likely that it’s just the female counterpart to that. She’s close to the family. She is a good friend to Sarah. I guess the hierarchy is there, but it’s a warm connection probably and a lot of trust. Now, we’ll talk more about how Hagar’s status changes when I get to Hagar, I wanna reframe her too, but for Sarah, what’s gonna happen is Hagar gets pregnant. Then something changes. It says, if you wanna go to verse four, Genesis 16 verse four. John, do you wanna read this?

John Bytheway:               00:28:41             Genesis 16:4, and he went in unto Hagar and she conceived and when she saw that she had conceived her mistress was despised in her eyes.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:28:52             It’s this word despised. The Hebrew is a root qalal and it means to belittle. What you can see is it’s moving the hierarchical structure. We even get the title for Sarah. She’s a gebirah, she’s a great lady. I mean, I wanna just picture scales. There’s this sense that Hagar, where she stands in the family is moving the scales a little bit. The Gebirah, the great lady, is now becoming little in her eyes, it’s probably an idiom. It’s probably a phrase they would’ve recognized, and again, that same idea is right there in the law codes. If the surrogate mom breaks the structure of the hierarchy or loses respect or stops showing respect to the other mother, the receiving mother, then here’s what can happen. What happens is exactly what the law codes say could happen. This is a tricky situation anytime in history and then in this cultural context, especially tricky because Sarah probably picked Hagar because she trusted her, because they were friends, because they worked together really closely like Abraham and Eliezar. Then for this power dynamic to shift or to have Sarah feel disrespected in some way, this is the really interesting part. Then you get the family dynamics, but also it’s not just Hagar that’s involved in this. Hank will you read verse five, Genesis 16:5.

Hank Smith:                      00:30:14             Sarai said unto Abram, my wrong be upon thee. I have given my mate into thy bosom. When she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes, the Lord judge between me and thee.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:30:28             This can sound a little bit harsh, it can sound even a little bit mean. We’re dealing with family dynamics, but we’re also dealing with kinship dynamics and also power dynamics, but what’s really interesting in this, and I want you to see this so you can appreciate Sarah, the text is really sparse about what happens. All we know is that there’s a belittling happening for Sarah and it’s not okay. Now, it will be very human for her not to like it, but there’s this whole legal structure that protects everybody and Sarah’s getting the raw end of it. This last phrase in verse five is really important and it’s easy to read over, but it’s actually what’s called an oath formula. When she says the Lord judge between me and you, what she’s actually saying is, I’m calling in divinity to judge this situation. It’s a really serious phrase. She is not kidding around. It’s also probably got some legality to it, but she’s basically saying, this has not been just to me. Sarah understands herself to be in the right. Actually, so does Abraham, because if you see his response in verse six, he immediately says, and I’ll read that, Abram said to Sarai, behold, the handmaid is in thy hands do to her as it pleaseth thee. He basically backs off.

Hank Smith:                      00:31:48             Carli, this isn’t about Hagar getting pregnant. This is about Hagar getting pregnant then trying to shift the power dynamic, disrespecting Sarah as the chieftess looking with contempt on her or she’s lost stature, so it’s not about the pregnancy.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:32:09             I don’t think so at all. What I see in this text is that the pregnancy was expected, but the shift in power dynamics was not.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:16             Ah, okay, that helps.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:32:18             We’re on the verge of some real tragedy, especially if we presume that Hagar and Sarah are good friends.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:26             If you just read it in the English Cari, it almost makes Sarah look a little petty. Hey, well, we hired her to have a baby. She’s having a baby now you’re mad. That’s not what it says.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:32:36             I don’t think so. No, not in the ancient context.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:40             Thank you. This is, this is so helpful.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:32:43             It helps reframe Sarah. She knows what’s going on. She’s trying to stand up for the rights of everybody. You’ll see that through the story. When I read Sarah in this context and in the Hebrew, she’s so protective of everybody, which seems exactly like what the matriarch of Israel should do, right? The matriarch of the House of Israel should do, a covenant woman should do. She’s just taking care of it. She also needs things to be just, she doesn’t let them slide when they’re not. Most scholars, when they look at this verse and what they’re seeing is it is restitution where it will bring the balance back to the family, to the kin group. What one of the law codes says and what a few scholars who read this see almost demotes Hagar, so that she’s not in that high standing with Sarah, but she’s a regular servant. Not necessarily like Eliezar anymore, but more of a regular servant and she doesn’t like that, but also she’s thinking like, what do I do? This power dynamic, what have I broken something? I mean I’m putting psychology into Hagar, but you can appreciate where she’s coming from too. This isn’t comfortable for anybody. It’s emotional. It’s relational, but it’s legal too, and Sarah knows it.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:51             Carli, wouldn’t you say Hagar knows it too?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:33:54             Yes.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:55             I overstepped.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:33:56             Yeah, actually, Hagar’s gonna have an encounter with an angel who’s gonna also say, yep, go back. You did overstep. Hagar runs. You know the story she runs says she headed toward the wilderness of Shur. Most scholars are gonna see that as the border of Egypt. They assume she’s going back to Egypt, back to her home country, but she gets stopped at a well for the ancient reader, when you hear the word well or the ancient listener, when you hear well, you’re like, oh, something good’s gonna happen because wells are kind of special places, and I’m just go through, you’re in your mind. Scripture stories that happen at wells, cool things happen at wells. It says the messenger of the Lord appears, but here’s where things get heartbreaking, especially for Sarah. The first thing the angel says is, this is in verse eight. He says, where are you going?

                                           00:34:46             Identifying where she’s at, and she’s honest. I’m running away from my mistress, but in verse nine, the angel says, go back and he uses that elevated title, Gebirah, go back to your mistress, go back to the great lady he sets up, he reinforces the structure of how things need to be. A lot of scholars have read this as God responding to Sarah’s oath formula. God is gonna judge between you and me because I’ve been wronged here. An angel shows up and says, yep, go back and sets up the structure again, but this is the heartbreaking part, and this is the part nobody saw coming. The next thing the angel says is in verse 10, the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for the multitude. Verse 11, and the angel said of the Lord said unto her, behold thou art with child and shalt bear a son and shalt call his name Ishmael because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.

                                           00:35:46             We’re talking about Hagar’s baby, but remember in the context, this isn’t technically Hagar’s baby. This was Sarah’s baby. Suddenly, and we don’t really even get to hear the heartbreak behind it. Sarah, who has set up a system that’s gonna work for her, she’s doing everything right, she’s showing up in the way she needs to show up. She’s following the legal codes. This was supposed to be her baby, right? This was the baby that was gonna help create the lineage, both the spiritual lineage and also the literal lineage for her and Abraham. The angel comes up and says, go back. The power dynamics are right. He justifies Sarah, but at the very next sentence, he takes away Sarah’s baby. It’s not Sarah’s baby anymore. Now it’s Hagars. How heartbreaking Sarah now has to deal with the fact that God acknowledged, yeah, you’re right. This wasn’t just what happened, wasn’t just for you, but also that baby’s not yours anymore.

                                           00:36:48             That baby is gonna be Hagars, and if you notice that description of what’s gonna happen for that baby is very much like the promise to Abraham. Suddenly, Hagar is getting everything that Sarah was promised, and then the worst part about it is that it has a divine signature right at the bottom, right? I’m taking the baby away. Love, God. So heartbreaking. I hope that this humanizes Sarah a little bit and also you can appreciate the depth of her struggle, the depth of her trial. Something you’re gonna see as we look at all three of their stories is all three of them are gonna either lose or almost lose a son. This to me, opened up my heart for Sarah because we don’t hear very much about her response to this. Hagar goes back, has the baby, some of the ancient traditions, rabbinic traditions say that Sarah loved Ishmael, treated Ishmael like he was her own son, but everybody knew it was Hagars and that this line was going through Hagar, which means Sarah’s gotta figure out another way. Again, now we know the story, we know what happens, we know that God’s like I have an even better option for Sarah, but she doesn’t know that, she’s not gonna know that for almost 13 years. This is a weight that Sarah carries.

Hank Smith:                      00:38:09             Is the Lord or the angel saying, Sarah did something to deserve this, or he’s just saying, this is your baby, even though legally, lawfully, this was Sarah’s plan, she got what she wanted, she got her baby. This is Sarah’s baby, not anymore. Sarai’s baby, I should say.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:38:26             There’s not really a connection. It’s, Sarah’s right, you gotta go back. The way you’re being treated is legal and right and sound, but also just a complete turnaround.

Hank Smith:                      00:38:36             And it’s probably like you said, the Lord knows she’s gonna have her own child. She doesn’t know that. There’s so many times in the scriptures we think, oh, don’t worry. In the next page, things are really great.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:38:52             She doesn’t know.

John Bytheway:               00:38:53             I wanna make sure I’m getting this. It sounds like the pregnancy wasn’t regretted. What was regretted was the belittling of Sarah in Hagar’s eyes, and then that was what was regretted and that is bringing these other consequences, but now we’re getting to a place where the angel says, actually Hagar, contrary to the surrogate laws, whatever it was actually Hagar, that’s gonna be your son. Sarah doesn’t know this yet, doesn’t know she’s going to have her own yet. Wow.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:39:27             Yeah. She doesn’t.

Hank Smith:                      00:39:29             When Hagar is running away, is she kind of stealing the baby?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:39:35             You could read that. Yeah. Even ancient readers, maybe not the people in this story per se, but people maybe 2,500, 3000 years ago are gonna know that Hagars in the territory where her descendants are gonna live. The story marks the territory, setting that up. Sarah’s descendants are gonna be in a different place, and it’s also setting up a sense of their, the descendants relationality. You can see it’s very layered the way that they’re hearing it or the way that it’s written.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:06             If I’m the reader and I’m a descendant of Ishmael, I’m gonna read this different than if I’m a reader and I’m a descendant of Isaac.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:40:13             2,500 years in the future, you’re gonna appreciate that we know that there’s descendants from both mothers. These are two matriarchs of two very specific lines, but this is the moment where they’ve intertwined. I wanted to just spend a a second to make this real for a minute, and we don’t have to talk about maybe even surrogate pregnancies, although I know that there are many people who deal with infertility and the heartbreak that comes from that. This doesn’t have to be a story just about mothers or even families. I was thinking about people that I know that have had a similar structure, right, where they did everything right. Then things turned on a dime suddenly and it wasn’t what they were expecting at all, or the thing they were hoping for got taken away. The faith that that requires is a really unique kind of faith.

                                           00:40:59             You have to go deep, surrendering to the will of God, and maybe even just surrendering that hope and trusting you also have to rebuild trust. The being, God, who you put all that trust in seems to be the one that’s, by the way, not your baby, turns it around. I love hearing about people’s spiritual journeys, what goes on in people’s hearts and minds, and you know how they navigate things and their experiences, and it helps me appreciate how God is at work in everybody’s lives in such a unique way, can show up in these ways that sometimes can break our hearts or that can make us feel like we got turned around and then suddenly what we hoped for was gone.

Hank Smith:                      00:41:44             I think of Joseph of Egypt. That’s my main go-to when I think this isn’t fair. I’ve done everything you’ve told me to do. It seems that you are taking everything from me that you promised, and again, you and I have the benefit of knowing the next chapter. They don’t.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:42:03             Yep. They’re just in it. They’re just living it. That’s what’s so gorgeous, I think about being human and having this opportunity to grow and to be tested. I don’t want this every day or I don’t want this at all. The idea is what it pulls out of us is so transformative, but it’s really uniquely transformative and I see that in each of their three stories. Their trials are so specific and unique and the kind of faith that’s required is really specific, but very universal.

Hank Smith:                      00:42:32             Why send her back? I mean, she’s gonna sit there holding this baby. This is my baby. I’m its mother, right in front of the woman who it’s actually her baby the way it was, the whole thing was designed.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:42:44             It was supposed to be, yeah, the surrogate. There’s something, their connectivity, Hagar’s descendants. Traditionally, this is gonna be the Arab people. All of the Arab world identifies Hagar as a matriarchal figure for them. They see themselves as descendants of Abraham through her. It’s setting up this matriarchal line of the mother and her descendants, but there is something really important about Hagar being there in the family with Sarah and Abraham, that connectivity is really important and the way that they’re interacting with each other. At least at this point in the story. I just wanna tell this story. I got permission from my sister to help you appreciate the parallels between what’s going on with Sarah and also maybe just in real life. It doesn’t have to be about mothers or motherhood or surrogate pregnancies, like you’ve just done everything right and then out of nowhere God changes the terms or moves something out of the way.

                                           00:43:39             My sister had a similar experience when she went to serve a mission. We’re different in a lot of ways. Like sisters we’re very similar but also different. I was nervous to serve a mission. I was really scared, like I was shy. I didn’t really like talking to people. She was quieter than me, but so excited to go, like she couldn’t wait to go. She got called to St. Louis, Missouri. She went to the MTC, did her weeks in the MTC, got to St. Louis. She was there one week. One week she got sick out of nowhere, so sick, she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t get out of bed. They went to a couple of doctors, but nobody knew what was going on. She’d been there just a week and the mission president called her in and said, we need to send you home again. She was so excited.

                                           00:44:24             I cried every day for like the first two months of my mission, but she was like I came here, I’m so excited to do this, and then she gets sick, and so she came home and I remember my parents were taking her to doctors and nobody could figure out what was wrong. She couldn’t walk. Her legs were really unstable. She was just exhausted. Doctor after doctor couldn’t figure out what was going on, and then literally at 18 months, literally on the moment of 18 months from when she went to the MTC, they went to a doctor and the doctor was like, I think I know what this is, and they started treating it and it was immediately better, very quickly started getting better. She says, I did serve a mission. It just looked really different from a lot of peoples, grew a lot spiritually.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:13             Wow. I did everything right. This is a good thing that I want. I’m trying to get to the promises you have made.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:45:21             Yeah, exactly.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:22             Why would you take this from me? To me yeah it makes no sense. The Lord’s saying makes sense to me.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:45:29             Yeah, but the trust that takes it takes so much trust. You have to rebuild it and you have to go deep. In hindsight, we were talking about this just the other day. It changed everything for her. She’s a totally different person because of it and a better person.

John Bytheway:               00:45:46             I’m just thinking as is often the case, the Lord tells us about an outcome, but he doesn’t tell us how we’re gonna get there. Sometimes we have an idea of how we’re gonna get to that outcome, and it’s wildly different than what God knows. Yeah, so like Hank said, we know what’s on the next page, but they didn’t.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:09             Both of you know this story. Hugh B. Brown, May 31st, 1968, it was at a BYU graduation and it is still talked about to this day. I won’t quote the entire thing, but just some pieces. He says, could I tell you a quick story out of my own experience in life? 60 odd years ago, I was in a farm in Canada. I had purchased the farm from another who had been somewhat careless in keeping it up. I went out one morning and found a currant bush that was at least six feet high. I knew it was all going to wood. There was no sign of blossom or fruit. I had had some experience in pruning trees before we left Salt Lake to go to Canada as my father had a fruit farm, so I got my pruning shears and went to work on that currant bush. I clipped it and cut it and cut it down until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps.

                                           00:47:04             As I looked at them, I yielded to an impulse which I often have to talk with inanimate things and have them talk to me. It’s a ridiculous habit. It’s one I can’t overcome. As I looked at this little clump of stumps, there seemed to be a tear on each one, and I said, what’s the matter currant bush? What are you crying about? And I thought I heard that currant bush speak. It seemed to say, how could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree, and now you’ve cut me down. All in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here. I thought I heard that from that currant bush. I thought it so much that I answered it.

                                           00:47:54             I said, look, you little currant bush, I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you wanna go, you’ll never amount to anything, but someday when you’re laden with fruit, you’re going to think back and say, thank you, Mr. Gardener for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me. Then he goes on. He talks about 10 years past, he’s in the first world war. He was working his way up the ranks. He was ready to be appointed a general. He took the train to London. The man invites him in. The man who he thinks is gonna give him this promotion. The man says to him, Brown, you are entitled to this promotion, but I cannot make it. You have qualified and passed the regulations. Like you said, you did everything right. You have had the experience.

                                           00:48:52             You’re entitled to it in every way, but I cannot make this appointment. The man leaves to go enter a phone call and Hugh B. Brown takes a look over on his desk right at the bottom of this history sheet of Hugh B. Brown in large capital letters. This man is a Mormon. Now, he said, I knew why he couldn’t make the appointment. The man excuses him, and he gets back on the train and he goes all the way back to his space. He gets to his tent and he said, bitterness rose in my heart. I rather vigorously threw my cap on the cot. I clenched my fist and I shook it at heaven, and I said, how could you do this to me God? I’ve done everything. I know how to uphold the standards of the church, and I was making such wonderful growth. Now you’ve cut me down.

                                           00:49:50             How could you do it? Then I heard a voice. Sounded like my own voice. The voice said, I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you’ll never amount to anything, and someday when you’re ripened in life, you’re going to shout back across the time and say, thank you, Mr. Gardener for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me. He then goes on and gives the rest of this wonderful, wonderful message, and right at the very end, he says this, I say to you and to him in your presence, looking back over 60 years, thank you Mr. Gardener for cutting me down.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:50:42             It’s a beautiful story.

John Bytheway:               00:50:44             The Book of Mormon phrase comes to mind. He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world. We might not see it at first.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:52             I wonder Carli and John, if there’s angels who have our story in front of them, like we have these peoples and they’re like, oh, don’t worry. The next chapter, it goes really well.

John Bytheway:               00:51:03             Boy, like your sister, Carli, amazing.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:51:07             Yeah, we never know, but sometimes in hindsight, a lot of times in hindsight you think, oh, I wouldn’t change that ’cause of what we gained from it, doesn’t make it easy. Doesn’t make it fun.

John Bytheway:               00:51:20             What’s the country music song? Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:51:27             Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:51:28             Because he has a better way of bringing you.

Hank Smith:                      00:51:30             I think that was Elder Brooks in the 1990s.

John Bytheway:               00:51:33             So good, so good.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:51:37             So now that we’ve put Sarah in this really, really heartbreaking place, I wanna point out first she doesn’t lose it. She stays true. She stays solid. The way we know that, I think ancient listeners would’ve known that is what happens in chapter 17. She gets renamed. I’ve been calling her Sarah because that’s just how she is in my heart. She’s been Sarai for this whole thing, and Abraham has been Abram, but it’s in verse 17 that they’re gonna get renamed. They’re gonna have a name change. A name change in the ancient world, this is something that happens in scriptures fairly frequently. It also is something that would happen in ancient ritual. Again, I’m gonna take us to the cultural context. In fact, a lot of times it would happen in what I would call a coronation ritual, which is a ritual that makes a king a king or a queen a queen.

                                           00:52:33             It marks a change of status. It marks a change of where you are, but I think here too, it marks a change in spiritual growth. Abram becomes Abraham and you can hear the H in that, and then Sarai becomes Sarah, and if you look at the English, you can see that she’s an A-I at the end, and then the I drops off and it becomes an H. In Hebrew, that’s gonna be the letter heh. There’s this beautiful rabbinic tradition about this specific chapter in this story where their names change because in Hebrew, the letter, heh, or the letter H in English is an abbreviation for God’s name. The rabbis, when they read the story, they see that God inserted himself right into their names, which is a lovely tradition. It really is evocative of what’s happening in the chapter. We know already that God is very invested in their lives, that God’s very present, that they are walking examples, walking witnesses of God.

                                           00:53:29             People recognize them as that, especially after what Sarah has just gone through. I can see this as a leveling up for her. She becomes a new person. It’s God really inserting himself even more into our lives. If Sarah thought she was forgotten, she wasn’t, and this was a good way. There’s this moment in chapter 17, verse 16 where God says, Sarah’s gonna get a new name. She gets this beautiful promise. I’ll start with 15, and God said unto Abraham, as for Sarai thy wife. Thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah, with the H, shall her name be. Here’s this beautiful blessing promise. Verse 16, and I will bless her and give thee a son also of her. Yea I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations, kings of people shall be of her. In the Hebrew, it sets up this sense of belonging.

                                           00:54:26             The kings of people are gonna belong to her, sets up yet another matriarchal line, and it’s very similar to what happened for Hagar. She is gonna set up a royal line. Kings are gonna belong to her, and we know that she’s becoming the founding ancestress of the house of Israel. From her is gonna come Isaac and from Isaac, Isaac and Rebekah is gonna come Jacob and then from Jacob and Rachel and Leah and Bilhah and Zilpah are gonna come the 12 tribes. She’s becoming this founding ancestress, this founding mother, and it’s a royal line. We’ve seen her in her beauty recognized by the Egyptians, and now we’re seeing her, that being reinforced by God saying, this woman is queenly. This woman is a matriarch. Abraham actually responds to it. It’s in verse 17. It’s an interesting response, but it’s gonna set up another word play in verse 17.

                                           00:55:25             It says, then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed and said in his heart, shall a child be born of him that is a hundred years old and shall Sarah, that is 90 years old bear? I wanna just read a part of that phrase in Hebrew so you could hear it, and I want you to listen for the name Isaac, because the name Isaac is in here. (Hebrew) and there it is. Can you hear it? Abraham falls on his face and he laughs. There’s a couple of ways you can have this laugh be, but one of them is a joyful laugh. He’s falling on his face and he laughs. Now, this is gonna be similar to Sarah’s response because everything around Isaac is joyful laughter. His name means he laughs. Itzhak.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:10             Itzhak.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:56:12             Itzhak. And the second part of the syllable is like a guttural. So kind of like scratch your throat.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:20             That’s great. Which is what John does when he laughs.

John Bytheway:               00:56:28             I think that it’s,

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:56:30             So you’ll never forget it.

John Bytheway:               00:56:31             One of the things I love about these ancient cultures is how often a name indicated something like that or indicated a mission. You gotta be really careful what you do when your wife announces she’s expecting ’cause back then they just named the kid that if you stub your toe and your wife says, I’m expecting, and Stubby was born on, you know.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:56:54             Stubby. Well, what’s really beautiful is this idea of laughing is just gonna go all the way through the story, and then my friend and colleague, Matt Bowen, points to a way that Jesus actually uses it. Okay, so I think we’re finally to chapter 18. Chapter 18 starts with a little bit of what I’ll call like dramatic irony. This is a storytelling device where the listener or the audience will know something that maybe the actors in the story don’t know. In verse one, it says, the Lord appeared to him. This is gonna be Abraham on the plains of Mamre and Abraham is sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. As you read this story, we see Abraham trying to figure out what’s going on. Who are these visitors? We as the listeners or the readers know it’s the Lord. So something special is gonna happen.

                                           00:57:41             These messengers show up. They start talking to Abraham. In this story Abraham is outside and Sarah is in the tent. That might be stylized too. Just create almost like a sacred space for Sarah. Does that make sense? Abraham is out meeting the messengers. What’s interesting is in verse nine, the messengers ask for Sarah. This is especially cool. They basically call her by name. Where is Sarah thy wife? And Abraham says, behold in the tent. This can seem like a boring verse, but what I wanna point out is if we’re reading it carefully, there’s a couple of ways they could know her name. The first is they know the people in the area, they know Sarah. But these seem like they’re travelers coming through and Abraham is treating them with hospitality. So they may not know the area. Maybe Sarah and Abraham are really well known in the area. That’s also very possible. But it could also be a little hint that these are not ordinary visitors. They know Sarah’s name. Does that make sense? And they call her by that rename. Hey, is Sarah your wife? Where is she? We know that God is gonna be somehow part of this conversation. God is in this group. This is God asking for Sarah by name. So it’s a little bit like a suspense like, wait, how do they know my name? Right?

John Bytheway:               00:58:59             How do you know?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:59:01             Yeah. Wait a minute, because Sarah’s listening. Then in verse 10 we get this crazy promise. Hank, do you wanna read verse 10?

Hank Smith:                      00:59:10             Yeah. He said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life. And lo Sarah, thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:59:25             Sarah hears this prophecy. In 11 we get a little explanation. In case you forgot, Abraham and Sarah are pretty old, really old, stricken with age. Also, Sarah is not in the way of women. The Hebrew just is the course of women. She is in menopause. Doesn’t seem,

Hank Smith:                      00:59:43             Long past that phase.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:59:44             Yeah, long past childbearing. Then Sarah’s reaction in verse 12, it’s really fun. This is a very famous reaction. This is verse 12 and I wanna read it in Hebrew so you can hear. Listen for our special word, it’s gonna sound a little different ’cause it’s for Sarah. So (Hebrew) there it is. Can you hear the Itzhak in there?

John Bytheway:               01:00:05             Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:00:07             (Hebrew) Sarah. So it’s not Itzhak, it’s not his name, but it’s the same route. You can hear that (Hebrew) in it. Can you hear it? Abraham laughed in chapter 17 and now Sarah is gonna hear this prophecy that she’s gonna have a son. Her response will be the same, just like Abraham’s. Again, they’re always parallel, they’re always paralleling each other in action. And the really important, it’s translated as within herself. You can hear that it might be self-reflective, but it also might be internal. She didn’t say it out loud, she just said it within herself. This is fun just because in the same way that she lost the thing with a love, God, that she’s gonna receive the new thing with a love, God. Because the first tip off is the person in that group of people. That group of visitors knows her name, maybe unusually.

                                           01:01:05             And then she hears the prophecy and she laughs within herself. And she says, after I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure? My lord being old also? This is assumed to all just be maybe even in her mind. Then if you notice in verse 13, the Lord says to Abraham, so the conversation is happening with the Lord and Abraham and Sarah, but Sarah’s not quite part of it. Eavesdropping and having her own reactions internally. Verse 13, the Lord said to Abraham, wherefore did Sarah laugh? Saying, shall I of a surety bear a child when I’m old? And then he gives this gorgeous reiteration of the prophecy and then the gorgeous beautiful promise that God gives everybody who waits, is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return to thee according to the time of life and Sarah will have a son. And then in verse 15, Sarah denies, saying, I didn’t laugh for she was afraid. Then he, presuming meaning the Lord, said nay, but thou didst laugh.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:09             Yeah. Yeah, you did actually.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:02:15             And it’s a little, you can a little bit hear the humor in it. It’s funny because if we keep that, she’s saying it inside of herself. This makes it even more cool because first of all, the messenger knows her name. Wait, how does he know her name? And then in the next verse she’s saying, is that really even possible? And she laughs internally to herself. Then the Lord, this figure in this group of messengers or somehow part of this conversation can hear what Sarah’s even maybe thinking. Why did you laugh Sarah? And she’s like, I didn’t laugh. Nobody heard it. It was in my brain. But the Lord heard it. It’s kind of a fun way to read it. Now there’s other ways you can read that, but I like that way of reading it. This sweet interaction between the Lord and Sarah. That idea of being afraid. I wanna tell you the Hebrew on that one. It isn’t necessarily like she’s scared that God heard her laugh. Because I think that sometimes in Sunday school, that’s the explanation that is immediate. Oh no, I didn’t laugh. I didn’t laugh. But that Hebrew word is yare. It can be translated as to be afraid, but it really is more of like in awe. Sarah denied and everybody knows it’s not true, but she’s still gonna say, no, no.

                                           01:03:29             She’s like, backpedal a little bit. I didn’t laugh ’cause she’s kind of in awe about what’s happening right now. And then God says, no, you did laugh. lo ki tsachaqt. You can hear the tsachaqt in there. Isaac bookends the story and it’s a fun story. Like there’s a little bit of humor to it, which the listener, the hearer would laugh. As we’re thinking about Isaac and his birth announcement, it all goes back to verse 14. Is anything too hard for the Lord? That’s the story behind Isaac.

Hank Smith:                      01:04:02             It’s such a beautiful obvious question when we think that’s impossible, that would never happen. The Lord’s going, pretty good with the impossible. Have you read about me?

John Bytheway:               01:04:12             I specialize in the impossible.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:04:16             That’s right.

John Bytheway:               01:04:18             I’m just so intrigued with the idea that here’s the Lord with a couple of other guys and just looks like three men. Many have entertained angels unawares, that verse. That’s the Lord. I mean it’s the LORD in small caps. This is Jehovah. I didn’t laugh. Yes you did.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:04:39             I know. Turns out he knows your name also. He can hear what you’re thinking also.

John Bytheway:               01:04:45             I’m kind of in awe right now.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:04:49             Yeah. You can just see Sarah like what’s happening?

John Bytheway:               01:04:54             Yeah. Knows my name. He knows what I said in my heart. I am in awe right now.

Hank Smith:                      01:05:01             The woman at the well says, I perceive you are a prophet.

John Bytheway:               01:05:04             I perceive that you art a prophet.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:05:07             Yeah, I’m putting some things together. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               01:05:10             And that was a well. Where good things happen, at the well. Right?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:05:13             That’s right. Cool things are gonna happen at a well. Yep. That’s true.

Hank Smith:                      01:05:17             Carli, you’ve shown us so much. If we wouldn’t have gone back to see that original story, you wouldn’t feel about this part of the story, the heartbreak she had experienced earlier. Here he is showing up.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:05:32             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:05:33             Right in her life.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:05:36             Calling her by name.

Hank Smith:                      01:05:38             I thought you’d forgotten me. I thought you’d abandoned me. I thought you’d really betrayed me. And here you are at my house, making promises and then calling me out for laughing.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:05:50             Yeah. The joke. No, you did. There’s a sweetness to the story. The laughter is really hard earned, but it’s, it’s also funny. It’s a cute story between them, but also like you said, John, incredibly powerful because sometimes God will wink at us. Have you ever had a God wink? That was me.

John Bytheway:               01:06:13             I just think of this face-to-face encounter. Wow. And what goes on later in 18 where he has this negotiation and it’s face-to-face about Sodom.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:06:27             Abraham, in this next part, it’s a really powerful story. It becomes kind of an archetypal story for the Jewish people when they think about themselves as descendants of Abraham and descendants of Jacob who becomes Israel. They see themselves in this story. Abraham is talking to the Lord face to face and negotiating with the Lord.

John Bytheway:               01:06:49             He’s bargaining.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:06:51             Yeah. Okay. Can you find this many? No. Okay. All right. Let’s, how about this many? And there’s so many beautiful elements to behind what he’s arguing for. He’s understood to be a deeply compassionate person. He doesn’t want people destroyed. When I read Abraham, I see a man who just loves his family, all of them and loves humans. He’s deeply, deeply loving and compassionate, but he’s also not afraid to negotiate with God. The Jewish people, when they read this passage, depending on the different tradition within Judaism, they’ll wrestle with the Torah. They read the Torah and they try to, what could this be saying? What’s the meaning behind this? Is this ethical? Is this not ethical? They love to do that. They see this story and also the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel is kind of their ancestral birthright. Sometimes stuff happens or there’s a spiritual lesson and we can wrestle with it and try to figure it out or wrestle with God. Not be afraid to bring our questions. Maybe even our hard questions to God. Or things maybe we’ve been talking about impossibilities, but also please, please, maybe this way, instead of this way wrestle out difficult things.

Hank Smith:                      01:08:06             I think the Lord is giving Abraham an opportunity to show how compassionate he is, because the Lord could say, no, I don’t want to talk about this, it’s over. He’s like, what do you want? What are you thinking? Show me your heart.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:08:19             Yeah. What do you think about this?

John Bytheway:               01:08:21             I just love how at the end of verse 25, where Abraham is telling God how to be God, show me what the judge of all the earth do right? That’d be far from me to slay the righteous with the wicked. Don’t you know your job?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:08:39             Yeah. He really does.

Hank Smith:                      01:08:42             How often do I do that? This heavenly Father thing, I think you’re doing it wrong. This would be the right thing to do.

John Bytheway:               01:08:48             This is what you’re supposed to be like.

Hank Smith:                      01:08:50             Yeah, you’re supposed to do this for me.

Hank Smith:                                                  Carli doesn’t it seem also that the Lord doesn’t wanna do this? He’s going back and forth with Abraham going, give me a reason to not let these consequences play out. I don’t take pleasure in suffering. What would Elder Maxwell call it John? We’re getting to agency destroying mode here. How we send more spirits to this place.

John Bytheway:                                            I can’t send anybody here. He bargains him down to 10 people. If I find 10 people, then even makes a way to get those people out of there and tells them, get out, get out now, and don’t even look back.

Dr. Carli Anderson:                                      What I hear in the story too is never underestimate the power of what you bring to any given situation. That your covenants, the gift of the Holy Ghost sits with you and your prayers or your maybe even your reading of your scriptures. That can be a game changer. Even if there’s just 10 of you in any given situation. The light of a single prayer in darkness is really powerful. So powerful it can stave off destruction.

Hank Smith:                                                   Coming up in part two.

Dr. Carli Anderson:                                      You’re feeling the anguish. You’re feeling, this is the moment the miracle’s gotta come. I’m holding that faith and I’m keeping that in my heart. I want that to be true. He builds the altar. They lay the wood, they bind Isaac, slow, slow, slow, and lays him on the altar upon the wood. It’s just wild because you can hear momentum leading up to this verse 10, and Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.