Sarah and Hagar, Mean Girls[i]

Karen was a frumpy, unpopular, sad girl when the popular girls Penny and Aggie took her under their wing and coached her until she became stylish and popular.  Penny and Aggie’s motives were partly altruistic and partly selfish—they felt sorry for Karen, but they also enjoyed the power of patronizing Karen.  Things spin out of control when Karen, now pretty and popular, feels empowered to act as arrogantly toward Penny and Aggie as they used to act toward her.  She assembles her own clique of friends, ditching Penny and Aggie, her former patrons. 

This story line, from the on-line cartoon “Penny and Aggie,” by Gisèle Lagacé & T. Campbell, could take place in any middle or high school, even ours.  It could even take place in the Torah.

This week’s parasha, Vayera, includes a story so powerful that we read it on the first day of Rosh Hashana:  the story of Hagar and Ishmael (Genesis 21).  The story began in last week’s parasha.  Although God had repeatedly promised Abram that he would become a great nation (Gen 12:2, 15:5), Abram’s wife, Sarai, remained barren.  In Chapter 16, Sarai proposed a solution to Abram: “Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her” (Gen. 16:2).  Like Penny and Aggie, her motives were mixed.  Altruistically, she introduced her own rival in order to give her husband a son, but selfishly, she hoped to maintain control over her underling.  Abram acceded to Sarai’s plan, Hagar conceived, and then matters spun out of Sarai’s control: 

Rashi comments on the words “her mistress was lowered in her esteem,” saying that Hagar began to think that Sarai must not be such a righteous woman after all, since God had not given Sarai a pregnancy, while she, Hagar, was pregnant!  Like Karen in the comic, Hagar’s newfound self-esteem grows out of all proportion, leading her to despise those who led her to her good fortune.  Sarai escalates the conflict, treating her maid so harshly that Hagar flees to the wilderness.  There she encounters an angel who sends her back to Sarai—the conflict is unresolved.  Hagar bears a son, Ishmael.

In this week’s parasha, the story of Hagar returns.  Sarai, now renamed Sarah, has miraculously conceived in her old age and borne a child, Isaac.  Yet even in this moment of triumph, Sarah carries the bitterness of her first encounter with Hagar, to the extent that she cannot watch the two boys playing together.  She urges her husband (now renamed Abraham) to cast Hagar and Ishmael out. 

Sarah’s cruelty is shocking.  The commentaries fall over themselves trying to justify, or at least mitigate it.  They interpret Ishmael’s “playing” as mocking, lewdness, even idol worship.  But even if we accept these apologetics, Sarah’s willingness to expose Hagar to hardship and possible death seems out of proportion.  Abraham’s acquiescence in Sarah’s plan is as deeply disturbing as his involvement in the near-death of his other son, Isaac, in the next chapter.  The story of Hagar and Ishmael is resolved only by divine intervention:  “God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven” (21:16).  God opens Hagar’s eyes and she sees a well of water in the desert, saving the boy’s life.

What are we to make of a story like this, in which all characters behave so badly?  We could try to justify it or explain it away.  We could relativize it, saying that standards of behavior were different back then.  Or we might turn the light of criticism on ourselves.  How often are we, like Sarah, tripped up by mixed motives that we mistakenly think are pure?  How often do we blame others for the unintended consequences of our own actions?  How often do we, like Hagar, think that we are better than others who are not so blessed as we?  How often do we, like Abraham, acquiesce to abuse?  How often is cruelty, among children, among adults, among nations, motivated by a sense of our own inadequacies?  How often is bitterness carried long past the time to let it go?  The Bible, like our own world, is replete with stories of all-too-human behavior.