“They said to him: Where is Sarah your wife? He said: Behold, in the tent” (Genesis 18:9). “They said to him [elav]: Where is Sarah your wife?” The letters alef, yod, vav are dotted;42These three letters in the word elav have dots placed over them in the Torah. lamed is not dotted.
Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said: Wherever you find the number of undotted letters greater than the number of dotted letters, one expounds the undotted letters. If the number of dotted letters is greater than the number of undotted letters, one expounds the dotted letters. Here, where the number of dotted letters is greater than the number of undotted letters, one expounds the dotted letters, [which spell out]: ‘Where is he [ayo] – Abraham?’
Rabbi Azarya said: Just as they said [to Abraham]: “Where is Sarah?” so they said to Sarah: ‘Where is Abraham?’ “He said: Behold, in the tent” – that is what is written: “Blessed beyond women is Yael, wife of Ḥever the Kenite; beyond the women in the tent, she shall be blessed” (Judges 5:24). Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman, Rabbi Elazar said: Beyond the women of the generation of the wilderness, who dwelled in tents, as it is stated: “Each man at the entrance of his tent” (Numbers 11:10).
Why should she be more blessed than they were? They bore children and kept the world going, but what use would it have been? Were it not for her, they would have been eradicated. Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: Beyond the matriarchs.43Sarah (here), Rebecca (Genesis 24:67), and Leah and Rachel (Genesis 31:33), are all mentioned in connection with tents. They bore children, etc., but were it not for her, they would have been eradicated.