SARA (Heb. Šārah = princess « Septuagint Σέ222 »). — 1. Wife of Abraham; she was his sister on his father’s side, but the daughter of another mother (Gen. 20:12): she is Iescha (v.), daughter of Haran and sister of Lot (ibid. 11:27-31), as Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Iud., I, 6, 9) and St Jerome (PL 22, 956) hold.
Abraham (v.) from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan. Famine drove them into Egypt, where S. was abducted and brought to Pharaoh, to whom Abraham had presented her as his sister rather than as his wife; but Pharaoh soon returned her to Abraham, having been punished by God (Gen. 12). A similar episode occurs later in Abraham’Abimelech (v.), king of the Philistines (ibid. 20). Afflicted by prolonged barrenness, and as the fulfilment of the divine promises was delayed, S. gave her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abraham as a wife, in accordance with the law then in force; Ismael (v.) thereby legally belonged to him. But the Lord reaffirmed that the son who would inherit the promises would be born from S. (Gen. 17:15 ff.); and on that occasion he ordered Abraham to change his own name and that of his wife, who had previously been called Šāraj (probably an archaic and less clear form of the name Šārah). The promise was not long in being fulfilled: S. gave birth to a son, Isaac (v.); she was then approximately 90 years old (Gen. 21:1-8). Later, because of jealous disagreements with Hagar, S. induced her husband to send Ismael and his mother away (ibid. 21:9-21): St Paul, recounting the episode, sees the two covenants symbolized in the two mothers—the ancient one in the slave Hagar and the new one in free S., who gives birth to children in freedom (Gal. 4:22 ff.). She died in Hebron at the age of 127 and was buried in the cave of Makhpēlāh (v.), which Abraham acquired on that occasion from the Hittites (Gen. 23).
2. Among the other women of this name in the Old Testament, S., daughter of Raguel and wife of young Tobias, should be mentioned (Tob. 6-11). At first tormented by the evil spirit Asmodius (v.), who had killed her first seven husbands (ibid. 3:8), she was later freed through the intervention of the angel Raphael (v.), who arranged her marriage to Tobias, her cousin, when he went to Ecbatana in Media (Vulg. Rages, today Hamadán in Iran) to collect the longstanding debt. The liturgy has adopted for the Nuptial Mass the beautiful formula of good wishes and blessing pronounced by Raguel at the marriage of his daughter S. to Tobias: «May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with you, and may he unite you and fulfil his blessing in you» (Tob. 7:15). The wedding celebrations held at Ecbatana were then repeated at Nineveh in Tobias’s parents’ house (ibid. 11:15 ff.). The two spouses spent their final years at Ecbatana in Raguel’s house (ibid. 14:21 ff.).