Keturah was a concubine and wife of the Biblical patriarchAbraham. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham married Keturah after the death of his first wife, Sarah. Abraham and Keturah had six sons. One modern commentator on the Hebrew Bible has called Keturah "the most ignored significant person in the Torah". The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi, and some previous rabbinical commentators, related a traditional belief that Keturah was the same person as Hagar, although this idea cannot be found in the biblical text. The biblical traditions concerning Abraham and related characters are generally regarded as non-historical by scholars.
Keturah is referred to in Genesis as "another wife" of Abraham. In First Chronicles, she is called Abraham's "concubine".
Keturah and Hagar
There is disagreement amongst Jewish scholars as to whether Keturah was, or was not, the same person as Hagar —a handmaid of Abraham's wife Sarah, and Abraham's concubine —who, together with her son Ishmael, was sent away by Abraham at the insistence of Sarah. The discussion of in the Genesis Rabbah includes statements by Rabbi Judah the Princearguing that Hagar returned to Abraham and was renamed Keturah. Her new name is said to refer to the pleasant aroma of incense—symbolic of her having turned from misdeeds committed during her time away from Abraham. Since Keturah is referred to in First Chronicles as Abraham's concubine, some scholars concluded that this was why Keturah was identified with Hagar in the Midrash and the Palestinian Targumim. An alternative interpretation of the name Keturah is also cited in the Genesis Rabbah to suggest that Hagar did not have sexual relations with anyone else from the time she left Abraham until her return. The theory that Keturah was Hagar was also supported by the 11th-century scholar Rashi. Biblical scholarRichard Elliott Friedman dismisses the identification of Keturah with Hagar as "an old rabbinic idea" for which "there is no basis... in the text", and also notes that the idea was rejected by traditional commentators such as Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, and Rashbam. The Book of Jubilees also supports the conclusion that Keturah and Hagar were two different people, by stating that Abraham waited until after Hagar's death before marrying Keturah.
Descendants
Keturah bore Abraham six sons: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Genesis and First Chronicles also list seven of her grandsons. Keturah's sons were said to have represented the Arab tribes who lived south and east of Israel. According to the African writer Olaudah Equiano, the 18th-century English theologian John Gill believed the African people were descended from Abraham and Keturah. According to the Bahá'í author John Able, Bahá'ís consider their founder, Bahá'u'lláh, to have been "descended doubly, from both Abraham and Sarah, and separately from Abraham and Keturah."
