Abraham Bargains for the Shofar and the News That Kills Sarah

"Abraham, Abraham" - because Abraham was hurrying to slaughter him. Abraham said to him: "Who are you?" He said: "An angel." He said: "When the Holy One, blessed be He, told me to offer him, He told me Himself; and now I ask that He Himself tell me." Immediately the Holy One, blessed be He, opened the firmament and said to him, "By Myself I have sworn" (Genesis 22:16). He said to Him: "I too have sworn that I will not come down from the altar until I say all that I need to say." He said: "Speak." He said: "You said to me, 'For in Isaac shall your seed be called' (Genesis 21:12). Just as I had reason to answer You back and did not answer You, so too, when the children of Isaac sin before You, remember for them the binding of Isaac their father and redeem them from their trouble." He said to him: "Your children are destined to sin before Me, and I am destined to judge them on Rosh Hashanah; and if they wish that I forgive them, let them sound the shofar before Me." Isaac said to Sarah: "Father took me and brought me up mountains and down hills and up to the top of one mountain, and he built an altar and arranged the wood-pile and laid out the wood and bound me upon the altar, and took the knife in his hand to slaughter me. Had the Holy One, blessed be He, not said to him, 'Do not stretch out your hand against the lad,' I would already have been slaughtered." She said to him: "Woe to you, son of a wretched mother! Had the Holy One, blessed be He, not said, 'Do not stretch out your hand,' you would have been slaughtered." She had not finished speaking the matter before her soul departed. This is what is written, "And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her." From where did he come? He came from Mount Moriah. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: "The righteous did not rejoice in My world, and you rejoice in My world? 'I said to the boastful, Do not boast, and to the wicked, Do not lift up the horn' (Psalms 75:5)."