An eye for two "I's"

Was Sarah really as cruel as she appears to be in this scene? The answer might just be contained in one word. A word that invites us to discover a fuller, more human, and more hopeful story.

Welcome back to The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined. This week I continue my tightrope walk: translating Sarah’s story from the biblical Hebrew, verse by verse, in public view. Last week we restored Hagar’s name within a controversial chapter in Sarah’s story. This week we’ll open our eyes to a new perspective on Sarah.

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The Egyptian Eye

Genesis 21:9 Translator’s Notes, continued

Genesis 21:9, three versions

וַתֵּ֨רֶא שָׂרָ֜ה אֶֽת־בֶּן־הָגָ֧ר הַמִּצְרִ֛ית אֲשֶׁר־יָלְדָ֥ה לְאַבְרָהָ֖ם מְצַחֵֽק׃

*

And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. (King James Version)

*

Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing. (The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006)

Scroll to the end of this post for my poetic (and restorative) translation.

+ For more Translator’s Notes about this verse, especially about the power of Hagar’s name, read this.

On the surface, this verse simply describes Sarah watching Hagar’s son and her son playing. But this innocent scene inexplicably, it seems, prompts Sarah to cast out Hagar and her teenage son, exiling them to the desert—where they almost perish. What would make a woman treat her handmaid, who has lived with her family for decades, and who she enlisted as a surrogate when she couldn’t give birth herself, to act so cruelly? What was it about the way the boys were playing that sparked this extreme reaction?

The answer might just be contained in one word. A word that invites us to discover a fuller, more human, and more hopeful story.

Photo by Carlota O. on Unsplash

The verse begins with the word: וַתֵּ֨רֶא, which is usually translated as: And she [Sarah] saw.

For my translation I chose to use the verb eyed (“Sarah eyed the son of Hagar”) instead.

That’s because Sarah is not just seeing two boys playing. She is not passively observing their laughter. She is eyeing them as she assesses the situation, and as a result, she makes a painful calculation.

Well past menopause, Sarah made another difficult assessment. Trying desperately to fulfill God’s covenant to her, that she would bear a son who would in turn father nations, she turned to Hagar to bear a child on her behalf. That too, was a painful decision for Sarah, who had no reason to hope she could get pregnant. And like the decision before her at the moment we are in here in Genesis 21, that choice had deeply consequential repercussions for Hagar, too.*

But now, with Ishmael approaching manhood and her own baby weaned and gaining independence, Sarah has to face the facts.

If Hagar and Ishmael were to remain, not only would her son lose his material inheritance, but also Sarah would give up passing on her maternal inheritance. She needs to continue her ancestral line through Yitzchak.

It was a risky decision, but there are hints that Sarah was seeing more than just what meets the eye. There’s reason to believe that she had the foresight to know that mother and son would survive their trial in the desert wilderness:

In the next verses, when God tells Abraham to do as Sarah says, to listen to her voice, this can be taken as affirmation that Sarah has foreknowledge than even Abraham lacks—that knowledge of Hagar’s true destiny as a matriarch in her own right, and Ishmael’s destiny as the progenitor of a separate nation.

There’s another reason I chose to use the verb eyed in this verse:

In ancient Egypt, Hagar’s motherland, the eye was a symbol of protection, healing and knowledge. That’s because the sky god Horus lost an eye, which was then magically restored to him by Hathor, the goddess of love and fertility.

In this heart-wrenching scene between Sarah and Hagar, both women stand to lose something as precious as their own eye: that is their I of self-hood; the twin I’s of two women, each with a unique calling.

Sarah, who is an immigrant herself, has left her motherland—a sophisticated cultural center where her ancestors lay buried on land that was sacred to her—and has made a new life in a perilous desert environment. She would feel a sense of urgency about her son inheriting the spiritual birthright passed down through his mother, as was the custom of her people. And even more than that, her miraculous pregnancy had been ordained and orchestrated by God. And to ensure that God’s will was carried out, she had to make a difficult choice.

As for Hagar, there were few choices for a woman in her situation. Had she remained with Sarah and Abraham she would have forever been a second wife, indentured to her mistress and master, and her son would never truly be her own, to raise as she saw fit. She too, would lose her chance to pass on her customs and her legacy to her child, and would live and be buried far from her people and her ancestors. Expulsion, then, is a step toward a new set of possibilities.

And in fact, in the desert of exile, Hagar, receives her own covenant with God, her son is restored to her (as was Horus’s eye), and she is able to choose a wife for him from her homeland, thus returning him to the Egyptian ways she was raised in.

Sarah’s gift of prophecy—of deep seeing and knowledge—is affirmed by this outcome. Despite the wrenching process of separation, both women are ultimately freed to pursue their destinies.

And the final reason the eye is so important in this verse:

In the desert, Hagar will become the first person in the Bible to give God a name. She will call him, The One Who Sees Me.

This is, after all, a story of Divine vision; of seeing past what looks like tragedy into a new and more hopeful ending.

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NOTES: on An Eye for to I’s

* In the time and culture that Sarah and Hagar lived in, this would not be as outrageous or unacceptable as it seems to our minds today. And yet the human heart has not changed. The pain of a woman facing infertility, or of a woman being a surrogate in service to another couple, is real. As are the inherent power imbalances that place these women and their children in this crucible of separation and pain. In my translation I aim to balance these ancient and eternal realities with our experience of the story today.

Want to learn more?

I recommend reading Savina J. Teubal’s Hagar, The Egyptian for scholarly analysis of Sarah and Hagar’s story. That book is one of many that inspired my own thinking and that informed my translation.

Why do I put these translations behind a paywall? Because I hope one day to publish this work, and if I share it now with all 2,000+ of you, my cherished subscribers, it will be considered ‘previously published’ and will thus have a harder time finding its way into the wider world. PLUS: What I’m doing here is difficult, time consuming (and joyful!) work. So by subscribing you help to support this project.

Genesis 21:9, Tzivia’s Poetic, and Restorative, Translation

Soon after, Sarah eyed the son of Hagar,