The first pasuk of the parasha says,
וַיִּהְיוּ֙ חַיֵּ֣י שָׂרָ֔ה מֵאָ֥ה שָׁנָ֛ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וְשֶׁ֣בַע
שָׁנִ֑ים שְׁנֵ֖י חַיֵּ֥י שָׂרָֽה׃
The years of Sarah were 100 years and 20 years and 7 years, and these were the years of
Sarah
The obvious question, which Rashi asks, is: if it starts off with “The years of Sara were 100, and 20, and 7” why end off with
“and these were the years of Sarah?
Rashi says it’s because כולן שנים לטובה.
-all her years were good.
She was a Sadeket throughout her years.
This is the simple explanation.
Others explain “her years
were good” on a more complex level, to means that she accepted everything that
happened in her lifetime equally, even situations that weren’t that good. She
went through the ten tests of Avraham too, and yet all her years were good.
Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky says that, as Rashi points out, the death of
Sarah was juxtaposed with Akedat Yitzhak. It is known that the news of the Akedah
killed Sarah. The Satan has the right to use different methods in killing
people. He is given that ability. He had to cause her to have a heart attack,
but he could have done so in any number
of ways, from the shock of a missile attack to clogged arteries,
or any which way in between. But he decided to have someone come tell Sarah
that her husband was seen taking a knife to her son, and she died of a heart
attack. Then, Avraham came home and
found her dead. Why did the Satan do it
this way? This is a lesson in itself.
The Satan is always out to get us. One of his tools is that even
when we do a good thing, he makes it
look like it backfired, to cause us to regret it. A man could close his store
on Shabbat, and then his business goes sour. That might cause him to regret his
deed.
When we overcome these tests, we
get bigger blessings. The Satan knows this. Therefore, no good deed goes unpunished. This
is one of the Satan’s tricks. We say הסר שטן מלפנינו
ומאחרינו
“Take away the Satan from in
front of us and behind.”
What does this mean? One explanation is that we want to remove the
Satan before we do the deed, and after as well.
The Satan was trying to mess with
Avraham Avinu, to say “Avraham, do you see what what you did? You took your
son to slaughter and it killed your wife.” If Avraham had come to regret the Akedah, we would have lost the merit
of it forever. That was the
Satan’s plan.
It’s one of the reasons that
if you look in the Torah it says:
וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ׃
and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and he cried for her.
In the Torah, and in many Humashim,
the chaf is smaller than the
other letters, which indicates that Avraham Avinu controlled his crying, because he was afraid that
if he cried too much, he would regret the Akedah. So he held himself
back. This was the Satan testing him.
How did Avraham Avinu overcome the
test? He told himself that Sarah Imenu was supposed to live
127 years. The Satan could
have used any means he wanted to kill her, but it’s not like she was supposed to live 180 years and
then, because of the sudden shock of bad
news, she died early. No. The Torah tells us
שני חיי שרה -these
were her designated years. This was the amount she was
supposed to live. It wasn’t the shock
Rav Yaakov Kaminetzsky brings
a beautiful proof for this from later on, when Yitzhak was blessing Yaakov and Eisav.
Rashi says that he gave them the blessings when he was “close to his death” at
123 years old. But Yitzhak lived to 180. So why was he blessing them so early?
He lived for many more years. Rashi explains that when someone comes to within
five years of the age of a parent’s passing, he should be concerned, because
genetically, he may be vulnerable at that time. He should pray a little
harder. Certain things are in the
system. But if, Lo Alenu, someone’s father was killed at 32 in a car accident,
does that person still have to be
concerned within those years? The answer is no, because that was a freak
accident.
So, if Sarah’s death was caused by a freak accident of shock,
Yitzhak would not have preparing for his death at that early point. He was
blessing them at this age because he knew, just like Avraham Avinu knew, that
she died because she was supposed to die. That was her time. It wasn’t a freak
accident. That’s the lesson: Everything
happens with “causes”, but as we know, it has nothing to do with the cause. It
was a gezera. Sarah didn’t die because of bad news and the
patient didn’t die because the doctor gave the wrong injection, or because
they got there too late. Those are all
excuses.
A cute joke illustrates this:
When the angels were getting their jobs from G-d, the Satan, the
angel of death didn’t want to take his
job. He said everyone would hate him.
G-d told him not to worry, that no one would ever believe it was him. They’d blame the doctor,
or any number of things, but they would never blame him.
We have to know:
שני חיי שרה
Those were the years of
Sarah. That’s how long she was supposed to live. That’s the rule.
Shabbat shalom
