Another miraculous birth to consider in this season
Let's make sense of this Sarah-giving-birth-at-90 thing. And speaking of big numbers, thank you for being one of 2,130+ wonderful souls who subscribes to this publication!
Sarah’s story revolves around her miraculous first pregnancy at age 90.
Buying that requires either blind faith, or an impressive ability to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good tale.
Or, we can simply acknowledge that the understanding of numbers some four thousand years ago, wasn’t what it is today. This is good news for me, as a poet who is more skillful with letters and word definitions than I am with digits.
To get a sense of what numbers indicate in this context, consider this:
Sarah’s story was composed for an audience who couldn’t read, because reading, not to mention the alphabet, wasn’t a thing yet. So numbers were rounded and modified to help people remember them.
Thus, multiples of 10 were popular: There were 10 generations from Noah to Abraham, who was 100 years old when Isaac was born, spent 100 years in Canaan, and was 175 when he died.Sevens were also in vogue: Abraham was 76 when Ishmael was born. Sarah died at 127 and Abraham died when he was 175.1
God was believed to be the ultimate mathematician and guarded the secrets of numbers. Imbued with an air of mystery, numbers weren’t just used to calculate sums. They were also said to reveal the inner nature of things.
In the Bible, advanced ages indicated divinity. Note the impressive longevity of Noah (950) and Methuselah (969). Sarah and Abraham’s 100+ years were modest by comparison — perhaps communicating something about their humanity, rather than the number of birthdays2 accrued.
Time was tracked in moons or seasons, and people observed more than one new year. As Dara Horn writes in her novel “Eternal Life:”
“Hillel the Elder was rumored to be almost a hundred and twenty years old, but that only made sense if you counted two new years, the one in the spring and the one in the fall.”
I imagine that Sarah becoming a mother at 90 might have been the equivalent of a 50-year-old, giving birth today. Surprising and unusual, yes. Impossible? No.
Calling Sarah’s pregnancy and birth miraculous wouldn’t be a stretch, either. A healthy delivery on the cusp of menopause, given the dangers of childbirth even in the best of circumstances at that time, would have been extraordinary, to say the least.
This Week’s Poem
I wrote this week’s poem after reading about a contemporary woman in India who gave birth in her 70s, thanks to the best that modern medicine had to offer her.3
Listen to “May Be Oldest Ever to Conceive.”
“May Be Oldest Ever to Conceive,” Copyright Tzivia Gover, Third House Moon LLC, all rights reserved, was a Narrative Poetry Contest Semi-Finalist, in the Winter/Spring 2021 Edition of the Naugatuck Review.
Speaking of numbers:
Thank you for being one in 2,130!
Year’s end is a good time to take stock and tabulate. So here are some statistics about The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined.
Since this online publication launched in March:
I’ve shared upwards of 41 posts with you
Including 23 voice-recorded poems
(4 which have been published!)
And I’ve been encouraged in all of this thanks to YOU and more than 2,130 other subscribers.
Start the New Year with a commitment to creativity
Stay (Cozy) at Home and Write: A Weekend Retreat Online, Friday-Sunday Jan. 19-21 2024
In this low-cost Write-at-Home retreat, you’ll receive optional writing prompts, structured writing time, virtual check-ins, and the opportunity to write and share your work with an online community. Accessible pricing: Standard $55; Low/Fixed Income $25; Angel Price $75. Learn more or Join Stay (Cozy) at Home and Write.
If you’ve been enjoying The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined, you’ll love these NEW classes:
The Golden Shovel: Digging in Text for New Meaning
Thursday, February 1, 2024, 12-1:30 p.m. EST. FREE
To receive the spiritual impact of our traditional texts, sometimes we need to turn the words upside down and inside out. In this workshop, we will use poetic forms and techniques to bypass the logical brain and discover new levels of meaning and insight in verses from the Torah.
Finding Our Place in the Stories of the Hebrew Matriarch: Sarah
Thursdays, February 29 and March 7, 14, 21, 2024, 12-1:30 p.m. EST, $180
In this 4-week course, we will learn how reclaiming the stories of Sarah and the Hebrew matriarchs through poetic writing can empower us to know ourselves more fully—and access the gifts of wisdom, healing, and joy that are our universal birthright.
The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined is a free newsletter. There is also a paid version that includes bonus content. Upgrade to a paid annual subscription and get a FREE signed copy of Dreaming on the Page (mailed to US addresses only).
If a paid subscription is out of your price range, but you’d like the benefits of being a paid subscriber, use this link to “pay what you can.”
I’m wishing you a season filled with miracles and light.
There are many beliefs and theories about numbers in the Bible. I’ve drawn on a few sources for the facts I quote in this post including W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, and the writings of Savina J. Teubal.
Birthdays weren’t a thing until about 1,000 years after Sarah’s time. And even then only the ultra-powerful, such as Pharaohs, would have celebrated them.
“Daljinder Kaur, who’s believed to be at least 70 years old, gave birth to a son named Arman (meaning “wish” in Hindi) on April 19.” May 12 2016, CBS News