What Does Genesis 17:15 Mean?

God also said to Abraham: "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah." The covenant renaming extends to Sarah. She has not been present in the conversation up to this point; the covenant sign of circumcision is not applied to her. But the covenant's transformative reach extends to her through the change of her name. Sarai (meaning "princess" or "my princess", a personal, possessive name) becomes Sarah (meaning "princess" or "noblewoman", a more general and elevated title). The personal becomes the royal.

The name change enacted by God Himself for Sarah is as significant as the name change for Abraham. She is specifically the wife of the covenant patriarch who benefits indirectly from his covenant; she is specifically named and renamed by the covenant God. Her new name carries the promise attached to it (verse 16) in the same way Abraham's new name carries his promise. She is a covenant participant in her own right, specifically as Abraham's support structure. The covenant family's mother is as specifically identified and renamed by God as its father.

The renaming of both Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah in the same chapter is the covenant's declaration that both are fully within its transforming reach. Marriage in the covenant is not a covenant father and an uncovenant mother; it is a covenant couple, each named by the God who makes the promise. The New Testament picks up this bilateral covenant structure when Paul addresses instructions to husbands and wives as equally participants in the new covenant community, and when Peter calls Sarah the mother of holy women who follow her example without being paralyzed by fear.