Pressing Forward in Zion to the End: Rejoicing, Weeping, Testifying, and Departing
Chapter 11, part 1 of The Blessings of Abraham:  Becoming a Zion People
By E. Douglas Clark

Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ,and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.

—2 Nephi 31:20

The Loss of Beloved Sarah

At the conclusion of the great trial wherein Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, according to the Qur’an, a heavenly voice pronounced: “Peace be upon Abraham!” ^[1] The ancient book of Jubilees similarly reports God’s last words to Abraham on Mount Moriah as “Go in peace.” ^[2]

“Peace is a precious thing,” explains the Midrash Rabbah, “since for all the deeds and meritorious acts which our father Abraham accomplished the only reward given to him was peace.” ^[3] It seems but an expression of the truth revealed to Latter-day Saints that while the ultimate reward for righteousness is life eternal, the interim reward in this life is peace (D&C 59:23).

One modern writer imagined, and it may have been so, that as Abraham walked back down the mountain, his face “shone like the face of an angel of God,” ^[4] a phenomenon that would recur repeatedly among his righteous descendants after the Spirit rested mightily upon them. Back in Beersheba, Abraham lived “joyfully” ^[5] for many years, “spreading blessings for his fellow men.” ^[6]

One modern writer imagined that upon his return from Moriah, Sarah “noted his hair of silver and his beard as white as washed lamb’s wool — but more, a certain whiteness of his soul ... shining in his face and looking out of eyes grown deep with suffering turned to joy.” ^[7]

Abraham had indeed been transformed, and although God’s revelation on Mount Moriah constitutes the last recorded revelation of Abraham’s life, yet in a very important sense it was not the end but the beginning of the kind of divine fellowship not seen on the earth since the days of Enoch’s Zion. For according to Joseph Smith, when a man obtains his calling and election made sure, as did Abraham on Mount Moriah, “he will have the personage of Jesus Christ to attend him, or appear unto him, from time to time, and even He will manifest the Father unto him, and they will take up their abode with him, and the visions of the heavens will be opened unto him, and the Lord will teach him face to face, and he may have a perfect knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.” ^[8]

While this description obviously includes some things that had also happened earlier in Abraham’s life, yet it is clear that he was now closer to God than ever before. It may well be that the greatest revelations of Abraham’s long life came during these closing years, revelations of which we currently have no record. And not since Enoch’s day in his city of Zion had the Lord taken up His abode with men in the flesh. ^[9]

Earlier in Abraham’s life, the Lord had commanded Abraham to be perfect and walk with him, to live in his presence. Only by obediently walking to Moriah had Abraham qualified to have God walk with him and live in his presence for the rest of his mortal life. Zion in her glory was again on the earth; again the God of heaven dwelt with men on earth. “Like Enoch,” one writer noted of Abraham, “he walked with God” and “lived on terms of fellowship with God such as had not been seen” for many generations. ^[10]

Thus had Abraham entered into what Book of Mormon writers call the “rest of the Lord” by a lifetime of service that would qualify anyone, it would seem, for a peaceful and reflective retirement. But the exemplary nature of Abraham’s very long life — he would live another five decades after the trial on Mount Moriah, to the ripe age of 175 years — extends to the very finish line of mortality, as he demonstrated how his descendants must press forward with hope and faith and endure in their efforts to the end of mortality.

The Testament of Abraham, the document relating Abraham’s death, attests to his loving service to mankind to the very end of his days. There was no “quiet retirement” period, no waning commitment or diminished service, but a perfect example of what Nephi says about enduring to the end (see 2 Ne. 31:20). Abraham’s pattern of persistence to the end is remarkably repeated in the lives of latter-day prophets — descendants of Abraham and heirs to his authority — like that model of selfless endurance, President Gordon B. Hinckley.

Following his years in Beersheba, Abraham moved his family back to Hebron, where, according to Muslim tradition, he was directed to build yet another sanctuary, or temple. ^[11] At Hebron he experienced the last major recorded trial of his life, the death of Sarah at the age of 127 years, as recorded by Genesis, which will also tell the place of her burial.

“Of no other woman are the days and years of her life and the place of her burial recorded” in scripture, notes an ancient Jewish text, demonstrating the uniqueness of this woman. ^[12] “What kind of person was this regal woman, and what constituted the uniqueness of her personality?” ^[13]

Jewish tradition answers in terms of her loyalty and love for her husband, whom she “had followed ... in all his ways and had joined ... in life’s path and purpose.” ^[14] In her own words once spoken to Abraham, as reported in the Fragmentary Targum, “I forsook my land, and my childhood, and the house of my father, and I went with you in the faith of the heavens.” ^[15]

And what a journey it had been! She had been, observes Philo, continually at his side as his dearly beloved “life-long partner,” accepting in stride both the good and ill, “show[ing] her wifely love by numberless proofs, by sharing with him the severance from his kinsfolk, by bearing without hesitation the departure from her homeland, the continual and unceasing wanderings on a foreign soil and privation in famine, and by the campaigns in which she accompanied him.” ^[16]

She could have traded it all in for the dazzling wealth and power that the mighty king of Egypt, and later the king of Gerar, had offered her on a silver platter to become their favorite wife and queen of their realm. But she chose to be faithful to her covenants and her husband, whose revelations she believed and to whose counsel she hearkened.

She had grown old believing, faithful still in her undying love and service, and when her childbearing capacity had long passed, angels from on high brought a miraculous blessing of renewal, granting her the inexpressible joy of the son she had long awaited.

And such had the Lord arranged her life that the fulfillment of his promises to her of a son pointed ahead with clarity to the greater fulfillment of her Descendant who would also be born by miraculous means, born to bring joy to the world and the blessing of eternal life to her and her husband and their righteous posterity.

In the end, it will ever be remembered that she refused the queenship of this world to attain her celestial queenship, and therefore became the paradigm of what the Lord instructed Emma Smith: “Thou shalt lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better” (D&C 25:10).

The nineteenth-century British clergyman Henry Blunt observed:

“Greatness,” observed Elder Neal A. Maxwell, “is not measured by coverage in column inches, either in newspapers or in the scriptures. The story of the women of God ... is, for now, an untold drama within a drama,” to remain so until “the real history of mankind is fully disclosed.” ^[18] Only in time will the faithful daughters — and sons — of Sarah know the fuller story of her quiet selflessness that built Zion in her home and made possible the rest of the Abraham story that we have.

But even in the small part of the story we have, we have seen her reach out with her husband to lovingly welcome the hungry and the needy and provide for their needs; to encourage the discouraged and downtrodden; to preach the gospel and teach the way of the Lord — in short, to be a full partner with Abraham in building Zion.

Jewish tradition remembers that “Sarah was perfect. In wisdom, in beauty, in innocence, in accomplishment, in consistency, her life was a tapestry of perfection,” being “without blemish, and of complete faith.” ^[19] Of such great faith, in fact, that she, like her husband, had foreseen the history of her descendants, and had petitioned God to aid them in their tribulation. ^[20]

If her spiritual vision at times exceeded even that of Abraham, ^[21] yet she was always his ardent support, sharing her unique insight but ever faithful in hearkening to his counsel thereby keeping her covenants and maintaining that precious unity of heart found only in Zion.

No wonder Abraham wept (Gen. 23:2) at the loss of his sweetheart, she whose heart had constantly been knit together with his in love ^[22] in this Zion marriage. Now “his beloved Sarah was gone,” ^[23] she with whom he had “toiled, planned, hoped, suffered, [and] rejoiced together during a long life. Now she was silent in death,” ^[24] and “no one could share his personal pain.” ^[25]

But even in this loss, says Jubilees, “he was found to be faithful (and) patient in spirit” and “was recorded on the heavenly tablets as the friend of the Lord.” ^[26] In fact, Jewish tradition tells of him reaching out and offering consolation to others, for the death of Sarah was a loss not only for Abraham but for the whole country, ^[27] as the goodness of her life had left “an indelible mark” on the world. ^[28]

It is said that the widows and the numerous children “to whom Sarah had done so much good ... came to weep for her, and there was a very great mourning for her,” ^[29] such that Abraham was greeted by throngs of people grieving over her passing. ^[30] These Abraham comforted, eulogizing Sarah for her unparalleled goodness and kindness, and particularly “prais[ing] her preeminence as a mother.” ^[31]

One midrash maintains that although Genesis omits the actual words of Abraham’s eulogy at Sarah’s funeral, that eulogy is actually preserved in chapter 31 of Proverbs which speaks of the “woman of virtue” or “woman of valor.” ^[32] Her memory is constantly kept alive in Jewish homes, where in the traditional service welcoming the weekly Sabbath, parents pronounce the blessing on their daughters that “God should establish you as he did Sarah.” ^[33]

As Abraham did not complain at Sarah’s death, neither did he murmur at the irony of having to purchase the burial plot from the then-owner (Gen. 23). Abraham was over-generous in the transaction, paying more than what the land was worth. “He never drove a hard bargain,” notes Hugh Nibley, “not even with ... the generous Ephron the Hittite, who would have given him the burial cave for nothing.” ^[34]

“A stranger in a strange land!” marvels one modern writer. “Owning no foot of earth in a country that had been given to him by the Almighty, [Abraham] must buy a burial place for his dead!” ^[35] As Jewish texts say, “Come and see the humility of Abraham our father!” ^[36] For “he said nothing about the promise of the land which said that the Lord would give it to him and his descendants after him,” ^[37] but simply purchased the plot of ground, called the cave of Machpelah.

God would later tell Moses, according to the Midrash Rabbah: “I said unto Abraham: ‘Arise, walk through the land … for unto thee will I give it’ — [afterwards] he sought to bury Sarah and did not find where, until he purchased a place with money — yet he did not question my ways.” ^[38]

For some four decades in the spirit world, Sarah would await the arrival of her beloved husband, whose body would finally be laid to rest alongside hers in the cave of Machpelah. Over their graves a mosque would eventually be erected, which, in the words of one writer, “stands even unto our day as a monument to that divine injunction — What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” ^[39]

In fact, the word Machpelah itself was understood by early translations to mean “double,” referring, according to some rabbinic sources, to the fact that Abraham and Sarah were eventually laid to rest as a couple, as would be Isaac and Jacob and their wives. ^[40]

Centuries later, after their descendants had erected the Jerusalem temple, the temple service was not begun until the priestly lookout saw the sun’s rays shining on the graves of the patriarchs. ^[41]

But Jewish kabbalistic sources interpret the word Machpelah to mean a doubling of the Hebrew letter heh, and thereby a veiled reference to the Lord’s own name, Yahweh, which contains two such letters. ^[42] It was the Lord himself who had changed Abram’s name by adding the letter heh, resulting in “Abraham,” or “Father of a Multitude” — the name that God urgently spoke twice to stay Abraham’s hand on Mount Moriah and to place upon him the divine seal of his exaltation.

In this sense the word Machpelah seems particularly fitting to memorialize the temporary resting place of Abraham and Sarah, who, because of the Lord’s priesthood power that had joined and sealed them as an eternal couple, would be inseparable not only in mortality but also in the future world.

As God is not the god of the dead but of the living, so Abraham and Sarah would rise together in the resurrection, for “the righteous will be joined by their wives in the world to come,” ^[43] says a midrash. Then shall they become “gods,” declares latter-day revelation, enjoying “a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (D&C 132:19–20). ^[44] And then would the noble Sarah, she who for so many years longed for posterity in mortality, become indeed a mother of a multitude as her posterity would increase like the stars of heaven.