“God struck Pharaoh with severe plagues, and his household, at the word of Sarai, Abram’s wife.”
When God commands Abraham to journey to the land that He will show him, He promises him that he will be wealthy. But God does not tell him how he will become wealthy. After he arrives in the Land of Israel, Abraham is forced by a famine to leave for Egypt. The commentaries say that Abraham thought that perhaps the reason for this exile was that God was planning to fulfill His promise of wealth in Egypt.
The lesson from this is that whenever we are forced to move from one location to another, or from one circumstance to another, we should know that God is thinking good thought about us. There is a type of wealth that God wants to give us and it depends on our location. Indeed, that is what happened. By going to Egypt, Abraham became wealthy. When he left Egypt, he had indeed become very wealthy.
All a person’s wealth is dependent on his wife. There is a verse in Proverbs that states this, “Property and wealth are bequeathed by one’s fathers, but from God comes an intelligent wife” (נחלת אבות הון ועושר ומה' אשה משכלת). All the wealth that Abraham received from Egypt was in merit of his wife, Sarah. The Torah tells us that Abraham asked Sarah to say that she was his sister. He even explicitly tied it to his wellbeing: “If you say that you are my sister, so that it will go well with me for your sake; my soul will be enlivened thanks to you.” Is this a proper thing for Abraham to say to his wife?
The Zohar answers that Abraham saw that Sarah had an angel accompanying her and that nobody would be able to harm her. But what Abraham did not see is that he too had an angel accompanying him, so that he was not going to be in danger either. The first thing we learn from this Zohar is that the angel of the wife is not necessarily the same as the angel her husband has. What Abraham meant was that if he and Sarah were considered siblings—a brother and sister—because they are closer to being the same body, there is more of a chance that the wife’s angel (which Abraham was aware of ) will protect both of them. Abraham was asking her to say that she was his sister so that her angel would protect them both. This also explains why the outcome he described is stated in the singular (למען ייטב לי)—i.e., that the angel will protect me—and not in the plural (למען ייטב לנו)—i.e., that the Egyptians will benefit me.
In fact, not only one’s success in this present reality is dependent on one’s wife, but also his success in the World to Come. This is alluded to by Abraham describing a double outcome: “it will go well with me for your sake” refers to the benefit he will receive in this World and “my soul will be enlivened thanks to you” refers to the benefit he will receive in the World to Come.
SARAH’S ANGEL
Indeed, the Torah tells us that no harm came to Sarah, “God struck Pharaoh with severe plagues and his household at the word of Sarai, the wife of Abram” (וינגע ה' את פרעה נגעים גדולים ואת ביתו על דבר שרי אשת אברם). Rashi on the verse adds that this was because of the angel that protected her. The Zohar adds another piece of information: Sarah had her angel strike the Egyptians ten times. These were the forerunners of the Ten Plagues that God would bring upon Egypt through Moses and Aharon. In fact, the word Rashi uses for “strike” (נגע), when calculated using complete numbering equals 505, the value of “Sarah” (שרה).
(Excerpted from a lecture given on the 24th of Nissan 5772)
