What does the Torah mean when it tells Avraham to “listen to her voice”?

Rabbi Landau explains Hashem’s words to Avraham, “Kol asher tomar elecha Sarah, shma b’kolah,” as a lesson for every husband: listen to her voice, “not necessarily the words, because beneath the words there’s always a signal.”

The words may be about something small. But when she is cold, sharp, or explodes over a little thing, he teaches, her emotion is a signal. “She feels instability long before a man consciously sees it”: distance, weakness, lack of direction.

So listening to her voice means looking past the surface. When a fire alarm goes off at three in the morning, “you don’t argue with the alarm, you look for the fire.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Listening to her voice means hearing the signal beneath her words.

What may be behind it

Her reaction often points to distance, weakness, or lack of direction that she senses first.

Deepest human truth

Beneath the words there is always a signal; the wise husband looks for the fire instead of arguing with the alarm.

More questions from this teaching

• What is my wife’s sharp or cold reaction really telling me?