The Baal Haturim points out that the Torah writes a small "chof" in its description of Avraham's crying for Sara after her passing. He says it was written this way to show that Avraham only cried "a little bit." This would seem not to be what we would expect from a husband whose wife was not only his lifelong partner in marriage but his lifelong partner in spreading the word of G-d throughout the world.

Moreover, the Torah describes Avraham as arriving "to eulogize Sara and cry for her." Usually one cries immediately after the occurrence of a tragedy out of grief and only later offers a eulogy. It would seem that Avraham did not cry for Sara until after he had first eulogized her. Why is the order reversed?

The Kehillas Yaakov answers the question. Rashi comments that the death of Sara is juxtaposed to the Akeida in order to show that Sara died as a result of hearing that her husband was going to kill her son. She was told of what was happening by the Satan who succeeded in causing her to die of grief. But his goal was not only to affect Sara, but Avraham as well. The midrashim recount that the Satan unsuccessfully tried to prevent Avraham from carrying out G-d's command to sacrifice his son. But the Satan never gives up easily. If he cannot succeed in preventing a person from performing a mitzvah, at the very least he will later try to make that person regret his having done so.

Although he failed at convincing Avraham to forego the Akeida, the Satan hoped that by Sara's death being linked to that event, Avraham would regret having gone through with it. By making Avraham feel guilty for Sara's death, he hoped to stir up a feeling of regret on the part of Avraham for having obeyed G-d's command to sacrifice Isaac. If Avraham would have grieved excessively at the loss of Sara, people may have wrongly interpreted his sorrow. It would have appeared to others that indeed he regretted his involvement in the sacrifice of his son. That is why he only cried "a little bit." This also explains why he delayed his crying until after he first eulogized her. He wanted to make it absolutely clear that he was not crying tears of regret about having followed G-d's instructions regarding the Akeida.

In the Friday evening liturgy, this is the intent of our words in the prayer of Hashkiveinu - "And remove the Satan from before us and after us." We pray to G-d that He stops the Satan whether he is trying to stop us from fulfilling a mitzvah before we have done it or trying to cause us to regret over having performed it, after we have done it.