SARAH, MOTHER of the COVENANT
[All things are possible in the Lord]

   Sarah was of royal lineage, that is the daughter of Tarah, the in-line ancestral 'prince' of the linage of Noah and Shem. Her name itself, 'Sarai', meant princes. She married who I would consider to have been her cousin and half brother (Gensis 20:12). It was common for men to have more than one wife in that day and often each wife and wife's children would have their own separate tent or dwell so dedicated to her particular immediate family unit. So when Abram married Sarai, he was not marrying within his own house, but of a separate house of his father's children. Since the days of Noah, there were only Noah's three sons and their families, and thus such close family marriages would have not only been common but likely often necessary. And for such 'men' who would have lived for hundreds of years, certainly their gene pools were quite unique and strong and not so seceptible to such intermarriage weaknesses as have later creap in. And that law of 'health' of Moses was yet long off from being so established in the House of Israel.

Abram had already received of the priesthood through his family associations with the fathers and even before being called by the Lord to depart from the land of Ur, he had obtained favor in the sighte of God. It would not be until Abram and Sarai moved to the land of Canaan that the Lord would give Abram and Sarai their further priesthood blessing of being they who were chosen worthy to bear the responsibility of the covenant (See Genesis 12-1).

It was at that time that the Lord changed both their names, Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah in connection to being now of the covenant with God. That covenant not only brought many priesthood blessings, blessing of posterity of a great nation and that the nations of the earth would be blessed through his seed (Gensis 12:2; 15:5), and also blessings of a promised land of inheritence. And even further, it brought the greatest of blessings, and that would be to be the ancestors of the promised and blessed 'seed' of God to come in the flesh.

Decades would pass and Sarah would prove to be baren. What a heart break for Sarah who would have look to the greatest of blessings of being the ancestor to the Messiah. But Sarah was a righteous woman and she did not desire that her husband Abraham forgo the greatest blessings of the covenant, so she contrive a way by which the covenant could still come in and of the seed of Abraham. Sarah determined that she would provide a surogate to Abraham, by whom the covenant might still be fulfilled. So faithful Sarah offered her husband Abraham to take her own handmaiden to stand in her stead as surogate mother to provide Abrham posterity(Genesis 16:2), particularly a son, whereby the priesthood covenant might continue in Abraham as had been blessed upon him by the hand of God. And this is that which has been called the 'law of Sarah' in our own modern scriptures where in D&C section 132 it does so speak of plural marriage (see Section 132, particularly verse 65).

Now the Lord fulfills His promises in his good way and his good time, for He knows that which is best for us, and it was decades before this promise of posterity was realized. So even after Abraham had a son by Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, the desire and intent of the Lord was that the covenant come through Sarah with Abraham. Sarah was old as to the age of bearing children. She was age 90.

So again, the Lord changed Sarai’s and Abram’s names to Sarah and Abraham when He confirmed His covenant with Abraham, stating that the patriarch would be “a father of many nations” (see Genesis 17:4–5, 15). And the Lord himself came and promised that 90-year-old Sarah would have a son (see Genesis 17:16; 18:10), which made Sarah laugh, perhaps half for joy and half out of the irony of it. Both Abraham and Sarah rejoiced at this news, perhaps evidencing a bit of joyful disbelief (see Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 17:23–24 [in the Bible appendix]; 18:12). The Lord assured them, “Is any thing too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14). Their son, Isaac, became the father of Jacob, later known as Israel, whose descendants became the twelve tribes of Israel. And the name of Sarah was preserved in that linage of the Messiah which we know today.

---