Abram to Abraham; Sarai to Sarah, Part Two

     The renaming of Abram and Sarai occurred during the time when God told Abram/Abraham that his beloved late life (very late life) son, Ishmael, the son of Sarai's Egyptian slave, Hagar (Genesis 16), would not be the promised heir.  The heir would be another, yet unborn, son with the infertile and aged Sarai as the mother.

     Light on the meaning of this may come post-biblical Jewish tradition.  In the midrash, Bereshit Rabbah (68, 11f), Rabbi Nehemiah said, "The Holy One, blessed be He, united His name with Abraham; with Isaac too he united His name."  

     One of the names of God is "Yahweh" (in biblical Hebrew this is represented as HWHY, read from right to left).  Remember that the ancients believed that names and even the letters of which the names were composed carried meaning and power.

     When God confirmed His covenant to Abram by declaring that Sarai's son would be the long-promised heir, He inserted himself (the "H") into their names, giving them new and suddenly different lives.

     Through their son, Isaac, Abraham and Sarah were made the ancestors of multitudes and the human ancestors of the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world.  God's name, inserted into their own, was the divine confirmation of this honor.