“Sarah lived to be one hundred years and twenty years and seven years old. These were the years of the life of Sarah.” (Genesis 23:1)
Rashi (ibid.) explains: “The numbers of years are written separately—one hundred years and twenty years and seven years—for a reason. They are set out in this way to tell us that just as a person younger than twenty years of age is legally considered a minor, and hence without sin, so Sarah, when she was one hundred years old, was also without sin. The verse ends with the words ‘These were the years of the life of Sarah’ because Sarah’s years at all these ages were equally virtuous.”
What is this chapter teaching us? Of all the great saints and righteous women mentioned in the Torah, none are spoken of as highly as is Sarah. The puzzle becomes even greater when considered in light of what is written of Abraham upon his death. When Abraham our father dies, the Torah also says, “He lived a total of one hundred years and seventy years and five years,” (Genesis 25:7) and Rashi there explains that this also was because Abraham lived without sin. And yet, at the end of this verse we do not find the words “These were the years of the life of Abraham,” which might tell us, as with Sarah, that all the sets of years were considered equal in virtue.
In the holy book Ma’ or V’Shemesh, we find a quote from R. Menachem Mendel of Rymanov, taken from his commentary on the beginning of chapter 6 in Exodus. It concerns a teaching found in the Talmud (Berachoth 5a). R. Simeon b. Lakish said, “The Torah uses the word ‘covenant’ in its description of salt (Leviticus 2:13). It also uses the word ‘covenant’ in its description of suffering (Deut. 28:69). This teaches us that just as salt purges meat, so does suffering purify a person.”
R. Menachem Mendel of Rymanov adds the following: “And similarly, just as meat is ruined when overly salted, so can a person be damaged by unbearable suffering. For a person to be properly seasoned by suffering, the suffering must be administered with mercy and properly offset against the person’s ability to cope.”
Rashi asks, “Why does the Torah recount the death of Sarah directly after the account of the binding of Isaac?” Is the text suggesting some connection between these two events? Rashi answers, “When Sarah was told of the binding of Isaac—of how he was prepared for slaughter, of how the knife was laid at his throat—her soul fled, and she died.”
So Moses our teacher, the trusted shepherd, deliberately edited the Torah. He placed these two events—the death of Sarah and the binding of Isaac—side by side in the text in order to advocate on our behalf. By doing this, Moses is suggesting that if the anguish is, God forbid, unbearable, then death can result. He is showing us something important: that if this could happen even to Sarah—who was of such stature that the Torah goes to great lengths to tell us how when she was a hundred years old she was as virtuous as a girl of twenty, and when she was twenty years she was as innocent as a child of seven; that in fact all her life she was equally virtuous—if she, Sarah, was unable to bear such pain, how much less so can we.
The Torah may also be telling us that our mother Sarah, who took the binding of Isaac so much to heart that her soul flew out of her, died for the good of the Jewish people. She died in order to show God that a Jew should not be expected to suffer unlimited levels of anguish. Even though a person, with the mercy of God, survives and escapes death, nevertheless elements of his capability, his mind, and his spirit are forever broken and, as a result of his ordeal, lost to him. In the final analysis, what difference does it make, whether all of me or part of me is killed?
Perhaps the text itself is answering the question by saying, “These were the years of the life of Sarah.” One might tend to judge Sarah as having sinned against the remainder of her years, because if she had not taken the binding of Isaac so much to heart, she would have lived longer. However, since this taking to heart was done for the good of the Jewish people, the verse hints that the years Sarah might have lived beyond her 127 years were not wasted, and so she did not really sin against those years. Therefore let God quickly send us spiritual and physical salvation, with revealed kindness.