Parshat Vayera5 min read

Sarah Laughed Then Sent Hagar Into the Desert

Abraham put bread and a water-skin on Hagar's shoulder. When it ran dry she set Ishmael under a bush and sat far enough not to watch him die.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Three Strangers at the Oak
  2. The Boy Named Laughter
  3. Cast Out This Woman
  4. The Bush and the Distance
  5. The God Who Sees

Sarah stood behind the tent curtain in the heat of the day and heard a stranger tell her husband she would have a son.

Sarah Laughed Then Sent Hagar Into the Desert Click for full size

She was ninety. Abraham was a hundred. The thing being promised was impossible, and her body knew it better than her mind did. The laugh came out before she could catch it.

Three Strangers at the Oak

Abraham had been sitting at the door of the tent by the oak of Mamre when three figures appeared on the road. He ran to greet them, brought water, had a calf slaughtered, set out bread and curds. They sat under the tree and performed the appearance of eating. Then one of them asked after Sarah, and when Abraham said she was within, the visitor said they would return and find her a mother.

That was the sentence that slipped through the curtain.

Sarah even tried to deny the laugh afterward, when she was called on it. God said no. You laughed. The visitors dropped the last of their disguise. They were not travelers. They were angels, and the meal had carried two messages at once: a son within the year, and a verdict already moving toward Sodom.

Abraham bargained for the city while Sarah's laugh still hung in the tent. He got the number down to ten righteous people. There were not ten. The angels went on. Sarah stayed with the laugh, and with the year that had been named.

The Boy Named Laughter

When the child came, a year later, exactly as the strangers had promised, Abraham named him Yitzchak (יצחק). He laughed, or he will laugh, or simply: laughter. The name carried the absurdity inside it. Every time someone said the boy's name, the moment at the curtain rang out again.

Sarah had waited decades for this weight in her arms. Hagar had already given Abraham a son, Ishmael, years before, when Sarah herself had put the Egyptian servant into Abraham's tent and then hated what followed. Hagar had run once, toward Egypt, and an angel had found her at a spring and sent her back. She had named the One who met her there. "You are the God who sees me." Then she had returned to a household that still called her servant.

Now Isaac was weaned, and Sarah looked across the feast at the older boy and could not bear the arithmetic of two sons under one roof.

Cast Out This Woman

Ishmael was playing with the young child, or teasing him, or doing something Sarah saw and would not forgive. No one named the game. Sarah went to Abraham and made her demand. Cast out the slave woman and her son. The inheritance could not be shared. Her son and this woman's son could not grow up under the same roof.

Abraham was troubled. Ishmael was his son too. God told him to listen to Sarah.

The next morning Abraham rose early. He took bread and a skin of water and put them on Hagar's shoulder the way a master loads a servant, so that anyone watching would see what rank she carried out the gate. He placed the child there too. Ishmael was twenty-seven, old enough to walk, but Sarah's eye had already done its work. Fever had him. He could not keep his feet. Hagar carried the water and the son, and Abraham sent them into the desert of Beersheba.

The Bush and the Distance

A sick man drinks. The skin emptied faster than a healthy road would have emptied it. When the water ran out, Hagar put Ishmael under a bush and sat down a bowshot away. She would not watch him die.

She had named God at a spring once. This time there was no spring in sight. She wept. The boy under the bush made his own sound, smaller than hers, and heaven answered that sound, not hers.

An angel called from above and told her to lift the boy up. God had heard the child. Then she saw a well of water that had not been there a moment before, or that grief had covered. She filled the skin and put it to Ishmael's mouth. They lived.

The God Who Sees

Hagar lifted a son who could not walk and made him drink. The first desert had given her a name for God. The second desert made her use it with a fevered body in her arms and a bush still holding the shape of a grave she had been ready to leave behind.

Ishmael grew. He became an archer. He took a wife from Egypt, the land Hagar had run toward the first time and been turned back from. Sarah kept Isaac in the tents. The laugh that named him had done more than mark a birth. It had drawn a line through Abraham's household, and Hagar had been sent across it with bread, a skin of water, and a son too ill to walk.

Behind her the well remained, a fact in the sand, as stubborn as the laugh behind the curtain.

SarahHagarIshmaelIsaacAbrahamJosephusPatriarchsExile
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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Antiquities I.11-12Antiquities of the Jews (Josephus)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Antiquities of the Jews, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

Sarah laughed when the angels told her she would bear a son. She was ninety years old. Abraham was a hundred. The idea was absurd. And yet Isaac was born, and his very name, Yitzchak (יצחק), means "laughter" (Genesis 21:3).

Before the laughter came fire. According to Josephus, three angels appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre disguised as travelers. He offered them food, and they pretended to eat. Then they dropped the disguise and delivered two messages: Sarah would have a son, and Sodom would be destroyed.

Abraham bargained with God for the city. Would God spare it for fifty righteous people? For forty? For ten? God agreed to ten. But there weren't ten. So the angels went to Sodom, where Lot took them in. When the men of the city demanded the visitors, Lot offered his own daughters instead. They refused. God struck the mob blind and told Lot to run.

The destruction was total. God rained fire on Sodom and its surrounding country until nothing could grow there again. Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt, which Josephus claims he personally saw, still standing in his own day. Lot and his daughters fled to a tiny settlement called Zoar, believing themselves the last people alive.

Meanwhile, Abraham moved south to Gerar, where King Abimelech fell for Sarah, just as Pharaoh had. And was struck with disease until he returned her. It was the same story playing out a second time: the beauty of Sarah, the greed of a king, the intervention of God.

When Isaac finally arrived, Sarah's joy curdled into jealousy. She demanded that Ishmael. Abraham's firstborn by Hagar, be sent away. Abraham resisted at first, horrified at the cruelty of it. But God told him to listen to Sarah. So Hagar and Ishmael were sent into the wilderness with a single bottle of water and a loaf of bread. When the water ran out, Hagar laid her dying child under a fig tree and walked away so she wouldn't have to watch. A divine angel appeared, showed her a fountain, and promised that Ishmael would become the father of a great nation (Genesis 21:18). He did. His twelve sons became the ancestors of the Nabateans, the Arabian people who traced their lineage back to Abraham.

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Bereshit Rabbah 45:10Bereshit Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

Bereshit Rabbah 45, a fascinating passage from the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) that grapples with just that.

The verse in question is from (Genesis 16:13), when Hagar, after fleeing from Sarai, says, "She called the name of the Lord Who spoke to her: You are the God who sees me, for she said:, I have seen here too, after my vision.” It seems straightforward enough. God spoke to Hagar. But the rabbis of the Midrash, never ones to shy away from a good theological wrestling match, aren't so sure it's that simple.

Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon and Rabbi Yoḥanan, quoting Rabbi Elazar bar Shimon, make a rather bold claim: that God never directly spoke to a woman, except for Sarah, and even then, it was only out of necessity. Wait, what? Why this apparent reluctance? Well, the Midrash gives us an example. Remember when God told Abraham that Sarah would have a child, and she laughed? (Genesis 18:13). When confronted, Sarah denied laughing (Genesis 18:15). God then had to correct her: “No, but you did laugh” (Genesis 18:15).

Rabbi Abba, citing Rabbi Beiri, points out how even in this instance, God spoke "in a roundabout manner." Instead of a direct "Yes, you laughed," God phrases it indirectly. But what about Hagar? And what about Rebecca, when God tells her that two nations are in her womb? (Genesis 25:23).

Here’s where things get interesting. Rabbi Yehoshua bar Neḥemya suggests that in Hagar’s case, it was an angel, not God directly, who spoke to her. Rabbi Levi, quoting Rabbi Ḥanina bar Ḥama, makes the same argument about Rebecca. And Rabbi Elazar, in the name of Rabbi Yosei ben Zimra, proposes that Rebecca actually consulted with Shem, son of Noah, who was considered a spiritual leader at the time. These interpretations attempt to maintain the idea that God doesn't generally speak directly to women.

But what does Hagar mean when she says, "You are the God who sees me?" Rabbi Aivu offers a beautiful interpretation: it is God who sees the wretchedness of the wretched. God sees Hagar in her suffering, her vulnerability. And the phrase "Indeed, I have seen here too, after my vision" is interpreted as Hagar realizing that not only has she encountered divine speech, but she has also been granted a glimpse of her son's future kingship. She connects her experience to that of King David, who similarly felt unworthy of the blessings he received, saying "That You have brought me to this point [halom]" (II (Samuel 7:1)8).

Another interpretation suggests Hagar is marveling that she, along with her mistress, saw an angel, and yet another that she saw an angel by herself. Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman illustrates this with a parable: Imagine a noblewoman whom the king asks to pass before him. She walks by, supported by her maidservant. The noblewoman, perhaps out of modesty or awe, turns her face away and doesn't see the king, but the maidservant does.

So, what are we to make of all this? The Midrash isn't giving us a simple answer. It's presenting different perspectives, different ways of understanding the relationship between God and women. It raises profound questions about divine communication, about status, and about who is deemed worthy of direct access to the divine. The rabbis confront the text, revealing the complexity and nuance within the Torah. It leaves us to ponder: What does it mean to be seen by God? And how do we each, in our own way, encounter the Divine?

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Bereshit Rabbah 53:13Bereshit Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

Bereshit Rabbah turns to Abraham Sends Hagar and Ishmael into the Desert.

The verse tells us, "Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar, he placed them her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away. She went and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba" (Genesis 21:14). Simple enough. But the rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary), in Bereshit Rabbah, saw so much more simmering beneath the surface.

"Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar" – the Midrash emphasizes the generosity of Abraham's household, noting his early rising as a sign of care. But then comes the phrase, "he placed them on her shoulder." The Midrash immediately asks, why specify that he placed the water skin on her shoulder?

One interpretation, as offered in Bereshit Rabbah, suggests that Abraham was deliberately trying to demonstrate Hagar's status. He wanted to show everyone that she was only a maidservant, not a wife with full rights, and that Yishmael wasn’t his primary heir. By having her carry the water like a common slave, he was making a public statement. A calculated act to diminish her standing.

But then the Midrash throws another curveball. "On her shoulder and the child" – but wait! The text implies Yishmael was also placed on her shoulder? How could a grown boy, twenty-seven years old according to the rabbis (based on calculations involving Isaac's supposed Bar Mitzvah feast), be carried on his mother's shoulder?

The answer, according to the Midrash, is heartbreaking: "It teaches that Sarah introduced an evil eye into him and he was afflicted with fever and pain [and could not walk on his own]." The ayin hara, the evil eye, is a potent force in Jewish tradition. It suggests that Sarah's jealousy or resentment towards Yishmael resulted in his physical weakness. This idea gets further support from the next verse: "The water in the skin was finished" (Genesis 21:15). The Midrash connects this to illness, noting that "a sick person typically drinks a lot and frequently." Yishmael's illness, brought on by the evil eye, caused him to consume more water, hastening their dehydration.

We can almost feel Hagar's desperation. "She cast the child beneath one of the bushes" (Genesis 21:15). Rabbi Meir identifies the bush as a broom tree, common in the wilderness. Rabbi Ami offers a different take, suggesting that "beneath one of the bushes [hasiḥim]" is significant because that's where angels "conversed [hesiḥu]" with her. A place of divine communication in her darkest hour.

Then comes the devastating line: "She went and sat herself opposite him, at a distance of about a bowshot, for she said: I will not see the death of the child. She sat opposite him, raised her voice, and wept" (Genesis 21:16).

The Midrash meticulously analyzes the phrase "at a distance." It connects it to other verses in the Torah that use similar language to determine precise measurements. Just as the distance around the Tent of Meeting was a specific measurement, so too was the "bowshot" distance Hagar kept from her son. Rabbi Yitzḥak even quantifies it: "About a bowshot [kintaḥavei keshet]" – two bowshots, which is one mil (a unit of distance).

Finally, Rabbi Berekhya imagines Hagar's anguished protest: "She protested her fate like one who speaks impertinently [kemataḥat] toward the One on High. She said to Him: ‘Yesterday you said to me: “I will multiply your descendants…” (Genesis 16:10); now he is dying of thirst.’" A raw, unfiltered moment of questioning God's promise in the face of unimaginable suffering. "You promised me descendants, and now my son is dying!" It's a powerful indictment of divine justice, born from a mother's love and despair.

This Midrash on Bereshit Rabbah 53 isn't just a dry exegesis of a biblical verse. It’s a window into the hearts and minds of the characters involved. It exposes the complex motivations, the cultural assumptions, and the profound theological questions that lie hidden within the text. And it all stems from paying attention to the details, to the small words and phrases that unlock a world of meaning.

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