HEBREW WORD STUDY – BEAUTIFUL SARAH – שרי יפה   Shin Resh Yod   Yod Pei Hei

Genesis 12:14:  “And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she [was] very fair.”

Many years ago when I was attending a secular college I was in sociology class and the discussion of beauty came up.  There was one female student who did almost nothing to take care of her appearance. She dressed as if she were some old fish wife, wore horned rimmed classes that was not at all flattery to her facial features and probably had not shampooed her hair in a month, if she ever did.  She even gave off a slight offensive odor. Well, at one point in a class discussion of male and female attraction this young co-ed raised her hand and said: “Well, I believe men today are more interested in a woman’s intellect than her appearance.”  The guy sitting behind me, the football, ladies’ man type who never spoke up in class suddenly, without the protocol of lifting his hand, blurted out: “Let me tell ya like it is baby.”  

If this young woman were to spend a little time on her appearance, take some tips from a beautician there is no question should would have looked quite beautiful for a woman of that culture and time period.  I have seen 55 year old women who like a short grey haired, wired rimmed, douty old grandma woman.  Then I recently saw a 68 year old woman who took good care of herself, her health, her hair, her skin and dressed quite fashionably. Need I say more? 

I remember I had a student whose wife just had a new baby and he came to class proudly bearing a photograph of his little daughter taken moments after she was born.  As this proud papa flashed this picture of this little scrunched up wrinkly thing and asked that dreaded question; “Ain’t she beautiful?”  I had to pull out my Hebrew lexicon and look up the word yaphah  to see if there were any possible way I could say she was beautiful without lying. Beauty could probably be one of the most subjective words in the English language, right up there with love and happiness.

We understand that about the time that Abram and Sarah came into Egypt Abram was 75 years old and Sarah was 65.  We learn that she was very fair.  She was yaphah moed, very beautiful.  I heard this story all the time I was growing up and like everyone else I wondered how a woman could be beautiful at 65 years of age. Well as Margaret Wolfe Hungerford wrote, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  Now that I am 69 I know how a woman can be beautiful at 65. 

But unless this Pharaoh who also found her beautiful was himself an old geezer who would find Gravel Gurtie beautiful there must be more to this word yaphah beautiful than meets the eye. Culturally, foreign women were prized as beautiful simply for their unique facial features.  Dark skinned women were prized as beautiful.  Sarah would likely have had darker skin than Egyptian women and distinctive facial features different from that of the Egyptian women.  But keep in mind we are dealing with an ancient Hebrew word that we have attached the English word fair or beautiful to and interpret that within our own cultural context. 

The word yaphah simply means beautiful, goodly, and pleasant. Rabbi Samson Hirsch the 18^th Century linguist and Hebrew master relates this word yaphah to yapha’ which means to radiate or to burst forth, to emerge from darkness to project beauty. He also relates it to the word yaphat which means to create a sense of awe and wonder, to be something special.  When we trace this word yapah to its Semitic roots we find it has the idea of a specialness or a uniqueness.  

No doubt Sarah projected a Helen Mirren type of beauty but I think there was more to it that which attracted the Pharaoh to her and caused his court to start whispering.  Classic Judaism teaches that the body and soul interact and when the soul takes the driver’s seat, so to speak, it over shadows the body.  Try it sometime, sit down with someone that you may not consider to be physically beautiful but has a very sweet spirit.  Just let that person talk about the Jesus she or he  loves and suddenly their whole appearance will change and you begin to see something very beautiful. The Bible not only speaks of Sarah’s physical beauty but her flawless character and these two great qualities juxtaposed.  When the beauty without is joined with the beauty within, she stood out, she radiated something that caught everyone’s attention even that of the Pharaoh’s.  Most of us live with our bodies in the driver’s seat and we rarely let people see our soul.  But if we let our soul take control, I mean a soul that is radiating the love of Jesus,  maybe we  discover the secret to Sarah’s beauty and if we could bottle it we would make a fortune.