“And Abraham came with days.” This statement is more than just a biblical way of saying that Abraham reached old age; if it were just a poetic way to tell us that he became a senior citizen, then the Torah would not have repeated itself a second time—especially thirty-six years after the first time!
The commentators point out that the first mention was before Abraham fathered a child, and when he became a father, he felt young again. The Torah teaches us that he then aged a second time.
However, on a deeper level, we must say that the Torah teaches us a meaningful lesson here.
People sometimes go through life – let it be when they are young or when they get old, and even in their prime years of life – without paying attention to what is going around them. Or worse yet, some do not allow the events in their lives to influence them. For them, they, and the world that they live in, have nothing to do with each other. They exist in the same universe, but that is about it. Neither one has an effect on the other. When we are children, it may be difficult for us to grasp how events in our lives could shape us, but when we are old, already set in our ways, and in our prime years of life, that is when our understanding of the relationship would most naturally occur.
Yet, G-d expects a “living” person to take every experience in our life and “live” with it. There is no such thing as getting old. There is no such thing as being set in our ways—a living being is always growing, always learning, and always open to new experiences.
So when the Torah says that Abraham came with days, it is telling us that he learned from every experience in his life. Each one influenced him, shaped him, made him into who he became. Thirty-six years later, he was not the same person! He had changed again. We are not talking about a young man here. This is a one-hundred-thirty-six-year-old man! This is an age when we might expect him to be set in his ways, too old to teach an old man some new tricks. The Torah teaches us, no! Abraham never rested! He was always ready to learn from every experience in his life, always looking to learn how to serve G-d by asking, “How can I be a better Jew? Today I might have been good, but how can I be better tomorrow?” This is why the verse repeats itself the second time.
The same applies to his beloved wife, Sarah. The Torah says that she died at the age of “one-hundred years and twenty years and seven years.” Why the repetition of years three times? Because the Torah teaches us that she didn’t age—just like Abraham, she, too, lived every day to its fullest.
We, too, should live every day of our lives looking for how we can learn from our experiences to serve G-d in more meaningful ways. We, too, should never say that we are too old to learn something new. We have to be open to learn from life’s experiences and to listen to G-d’s messages: to allow the weekly Torah portion to have an effect on our lives.