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Sarah, Nurse of the Nations, in the Ancient Rabbinic Imagination
3rd–9th Centuries
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In the following midrashim, the newly postpartum Sarah is depicted as nursing children of many nations, physically nourishing not only her own children but also those of others. Possibly based on the tradition that Abraham and Sarah gathered “converts” to their form of proto-Judaism, Pesikta Rabbati imagines that the children who suckled from Sarah converted. Genesis Rabbah shares this tradition but makes clear that some of these conversions were insincere, for when these converts later stood to receive the law at Sinai, they did not accept the Torah.
Related Primary Sources
Primary Source
Pesikta Rabbati on Sarah Nursing the Nations
And what does it mean, the happy mother of children (Psalm 113:9)? Rather, at the time that Sarah bore Isaac, the nations of the world were saying, He is the son of a maidservant and she pretends as…
Primary Source
Genesis Rabbah on Sarah Nursing the Nations
And she said, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would suckle children? (Genesis 21:7). Would suckle a child is not written here. Our mother Sarah was extremely modest. Our father Abraham said…