Ishmael and Isaac
Rev. Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org
November 8, 2009
Readings Genesis 16, 17 & 21, 25:9, excerpts
“Who Do You Identify with in this Story – Sarah or Hagar?” Karen Armstrong
The story of Ishmael and Isaac, the two elder sons of Abraham, is recounted early in the book of Genesis. While we tell a somewhat sanitized version of the story when we recount it to our children, it’s actually a bit scandalous. As Bill Moyers says in introducing this story in his PBS series Genesis: A Living Conversation:
Sometimes the details of the stories we are discussing from Genesis sound like pulp fiction. In this one we come to the first triangle: Two women share the bed of the same man. The squabbling gets mean. Everybody gets hurt. The stuff of a cheap novel and a fast read. But peel back the layers and the Bible is Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and Faulkner. The themes in this story are deep and painful—a woman’s infertility, surrogate motherhood, class differences, and the price human beings pay for God’s will to be done. And something else: This triangle does set off fireworks, and by the dawn’s early light Judaism and Islam go their separate ways.[1]
R. Crumb, well-known as a somewhat risqué cartoonist, recently released The Book of Genesis Illustrated, noting on the cover in breathless prose, “The first book of the Bible graphically depicted! Nothing Left Out!” Seeing the words set to cartoons is in fact a bit shocking, and it is not without reason that the cover also contains a warning: “Adult supervision recommended for minors.” The Bible is indeed mature reading material.
The story of Abraham is of course foundational for Judaism, Islam and also Christianity, all three of which claim Abraham as progenitor. For Muslims, and in particular for Arab Muslims, Ishmael is regarded as their progenitor in the same way Isaac is the father of the people who become the Israelites, known later as the Jews. Christians, too, claim Abraham as their ancestor. Jesus undermines the claim of the Jews to exclusiveness of their heritage when he says: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” [NRS Matthew 3:9] The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians lays claim to Abraham as ancestor of all Christians when he says: “Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ so, you see, those who believe [in Jesus as the Messiah] are the descendants of Abraham.” [NRS Galatians 3:6-7]
So the tent of Abraham is claimed by all three faiths, which are themselves all too often caught up in incomprehension of each other. It is therefore useful to go back to the founding story of this family to understand better that difficult but ultimately inspiring story.
David Bumbaugh, formerly minister to the congregation in Summit, NJ, and now professor of history at Meadville/Lombard Seminary in Chicago summarizes the story of Abraham’s call and disappointment in The Education of God, a tongue-in-cheek account which also gives voice to Sarah’s concerns:
"One lousy dream," said Sarah. "One lousy dream, you change our names as if we were common criminals and pack up everything we own. You abandon our lovely little Cape Cod right in the middle of a nice residential neighborhood; you bundle us off to this desolate place. The nearest neighbor is twenty-five miles away. God knows where the nearest temple is—we have to settle for that crummy stone altar you built on the hilltop over there. ‘Milk and honey,’ you said. ‘You’ll never regret it,’ you said. I’ve got news for you, husband, I regret it!"
Late that night Abraham looked up at the starry heavens.
"God," he said, "this isn’t working out. You promised me a lovely view—milk and honey you said—a great opportunity, you said. All I got is a lousy tent, a wife who thinks I’m crazy, servants who think she’s too generous in her opinion, and for companionship, flocks of bleating sheep and goats. I trusted you, but this isn’t what you promised."
"Well," said God, "perhaps I did exaggerate just a bit. It’s an occupational hazard for real-estate people. Maybe it isn’t flowing with milk and honey. But you have to admit it’s uncrowded, a real fixer-upper, lots for a father and son to do together, a marvelous place to raise kids."
"Ah, that’s another thing," said Abraham. "You keep talking about kids. We don’t have any kids; we’re well past the age for producing kids; whenever I mention the subject Sarah laughs at me. Sarah wants to move back to town, says this is no place for a couple of senior citizens to spend their declining years. I’m beginning to think she may be right."
"Declining years?" said God. "Abraham, you’re only as old as you feel," said God, who had begun to take refuge in clichés when he found himself in a tight spot. "It’s going to work out; you’re going to be a father. When Sarah stops laughing, she’ll discover she’s pregnant. Trust me, Abraham; it will be just as I promised," said God.
And it came about as God had promised. In her old age, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, and loved her son more than life itself. Abraham delighted in his son, in his growth and development. As God had promised, the land prospered; Abraham and Sarah’s flocks multiplied, prosperity drew new settlers, and Abraham made room for newcomers in the valleys around him. Abraham and Sarah lived in peace and piety, and age sat lightly upon them.[2]
This idyllic report of the outcome of Abraham’s faithfulness to the call of God omits a few of the key intervening events. As our reading of this story from the Bible this morning told us, Sarah decides at a certain point that she is unlikely to bear children and so offers her personal slave-girl, Hagar, as a surrogate mother for herself. Apparently this sort of arrangement was not uncommon in the area, and we can find case-law validating surrogate mother arrangements of this sort. The child will be counted as the child of the mother who is unable to have children of her own; as Sarah puts it, “it may be that I shall obtain children by her." On the other hand, the text says that Sarah “gave [Hagar] to her husband Abram as a wife,” so in the context of the times Hagar should have come to have the same legal status as Sarah. Older translations sometimes use the word “concubine” to distinguish Hagar’s status from Sarah’s, and indeed Hagar remains Sarah’s property, but nevertheless the term “wife” is what’s in the original text. There are other complications. In attempting to explain this story, the Jewish Sages told stories to provide the back story for this among many other incidents recorded in the Bible. Hagar comes from Egypt, so one midrash – an explanatory story the Sages told to elucidate the story behind the story – says that she was in fact Pharaoh’s own daughter, given as a gift to Sarah after their earlier trip to Egypt to escape the famine in their own land. In any case, Hagar does in fact conceive and “looked with contempt on her mistress.” Sarah gets furious at her uppity slave and oppresses her – the term used is the same term used in Exodus for the way the Pharaoh oppresses Sarah and Abraham’s descendents when they themselves are made slaves in the land of Egypt, the land from which Hagar comes. Hagar runs away to the desert in despair, and there receives a revelation of a glorious future, a promise from God that “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude ….” On the other hand, she is also told that her son, who is to be named ‘Ishmael,’ “shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” Finally, she is told to return to the household of Sarah and Abraham despite the oppression so that her son can begin to grow up in their household.
Ishmael does indeed come of age under Abraham’s care, and it’s clear that his father loves him very much. Indeed, when he has finally despaired of having a child with Sarah despite God’s promise, he begs God, saying, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight!” God insists that Abraham and Sarah will have their own son, Isaac, despite the fact that he is 100 years old and Sarah is 90, but goes on the bless Ishmael as well, saying “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. . . .”
Isaac is born at last, much to the delight of both his parents, and once again Sarah becomes jealous on the day a great party is held for Isaac:
Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac."
Exactly what is wrong with “playing with her son Isaac” is not clear from the text. One suggestion is that it means Ishmael was “playing at being Isaac” – pretending to be the favored heir, in other words. Whatever it was, it was clearly an offense to Sarah, and she again insists that Abraham “Cast out this slave woman and her son” – she can’t even bring herself to say their names, referring to them only by their status. Hagar again flees to the desert in despair, expecting that both she and her son will die there when their water runs out, and once again she receives a visitation from God, who reveals a well for water and again promises a great future for Ishmael.
Could we have a more dramatic and wrenching tale of dysfunction in a family? No one comes off particularly well in this story; Sarah appears to be jealous and vindictive, Hagar lords it over Sarah because of her age and barrenness, Abraham is willing to do whatever he’s told to do, even though it means exposing Ishmael, whom he loves, to near certain death from exposure; even Ishmael is portrayed as somehow in the wrong for whatever he did to provoke Sarah’s wrath at the party. Here in the good book we find lots of people behaving badly, even scandalously. This story is not a very good morality tale for how we ought to live our lives. We tell this story not because it makes everybody look good but rather because, despite behaving badly, these people did become ancestors of many peoples. The example of Abraham’s willingness to follow a call to a strange land to a future he couldn’t possibly plan or control, of Sarah’s willingness to share Abraham with another and then to be fiercely protective of her own son, of Hagar’s obedience in the face of adversity – these people are no more perfect than we are, and yet they persevere and triumph.
So this isn’t a goody-goody story, and it’s not strictly suitable in all its details for Sunday School lessons, but it is a story which is repeated in many variations down to our own time. How many of us know of families where an adopted child is not treated the same as a biological child, of surrogacy gone wrong, of jealousy and envy among siblings, of favoritism by fathers and mothers and all of the pain and anger that can follow?
It would not be surprising at all if Ishmael had been so outraged at his father that he never wanted to see him or think of him again, or if Isaac was so poisoned against his older brother that the two of them never met again. But we learn that when Abraham died, “His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah.” [NRS Genesis 25:9] So the end of the story is the tenderness with which the two sons came together to bury their father.
We live in an age when those who claim descent from Isaac are at odds with those who claim descent from Ishmael. Just as in our own families, stories are told which reinforce the distances between them and lead to an expectation that the conflict over the land promised to Abraham could rage on for generations more. There are other seeds of possibility there as well, though. A group of Jewish and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones to the violence of the conflict joined together to create an organization where each speaks to their own friends and neighbors and urges and end to the violence and misunderstanding which has divided them. Rabbi Shira Joseph’s daughter is working in Israel in a school made up equally of Jewish and Palestinian children where from the beginning of their school years the children can develop stories of harmony rather than conflict between them, where they come to know each other from daily interactions rather than from misinformation and suspicion. Reconciliation between the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael is possible, just as it was possible for Abraham’s two sons to join together at the end of his life to bury him tenderly.
We have such conflicts in our own families, schisms that develop over time to tear families apart, stories that are told year after year that increase rather than dissipating tensions. The imperfect first family of our faith traditions, the family of Abraham, Sarah & Hagar, of Ishmael and Isaac, suggests that stories can be remade, that reconciliation is possible, that conflict need not rage eternally between peoples and nations and family members. Their very imperfection gives us hope that we, too, imperfect as we are, can find peace where there is conflict, understanding where there is incomprehension, hope where there is despair.
May this story serve to open possibilities that have become closed and to inspire us to do what we can to strive for peace in our own households and extended families, in our nation and in our world.
Amen www.secondparish.org