A Family Affair-Bill Moyers

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. Bill Moyers.



Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian salve-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children' go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the vice of Sarai.



So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived, and when she aw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to be be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!"



But Abram said to Sarai, "Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said..."Return to your mistress, and submit to her." The angel of the Lord also said to her, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude...Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He 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." So she named the Lord who spoke to her, "You are Elroi", for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him...?"



Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore,Ismael...God said to Abraham, "As for Sarah your wife...I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her..." Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed,and said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man, who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" God said, "No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him a an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ismael, 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..."



The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said...Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age...Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him...But 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."



The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of is son. But God said to Abraham..."Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you...: So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar...And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off...for she said, "Do not let me look on the death of the child..." She lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her..."Do not be afraid; for Go has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him." Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water...God was with the boy, and he grew up...in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

--excerpts from New Revised Standard version (The Holy bible), Chapters 16, 17, and 21

--Bill Moyers Genesis- A living Conversation. 1996

--Marc Chagall's 'Abraham and Sarah' 1956