The Ten-Year Rule for Childlessness Learned from Abram in Canaan

Our Rabbis taught: if a man married a woman and stayed with her ten years and she did not bear, he is not permitted to remain idle. He must divorce her and give the marriage settlement, for perhaps he was not granted the merit to have children from her. And although there is no proof of the matter, there is a hint of it, as it says, "at the end of ten years of Abram's dwelling in the land of Canaan" (Genesis 16:3). This teaches you that dwelling outside the Land does not count in the reckoning. Therefore, if he was sick, or she was sick, or both were imprisoned in confinement, those years do not count for them in the reckoning. Rava said to Rav Nachman: let us learn instead from Isaac, of whom it is written, "And Isaac was forty years old" and "Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them" (Genesis 25:20, 26). He said to him: Isaac was sterile [and could not father earlier]. If so, Abraham too was sterile? Rather, that verse is needed for the teaching of Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: why were the years of Ishmael counted? In order to reckon by them the years of Jacob.