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Sarah the Prophet Saw Ishmael Bowing in Strange Worship

Abraham was a hundred years old and the house was full of guests. Sarah looked across the weaning feast at the older boy and stopped smiling.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Feast With a Crack Down the Middle
  2. Abraham Refused
  3. Bread, a Water Cruse, and a Writ
  4. The Water Ran Out at the Edge of the Desert
  5. The Well Was Standing There the Whole Time
Sarah the Prophet Saw Ishmael Bowing in Strange Worship Click for full size

The Feast With a Crack Down the Middle

The tables were out and the whole household was eating. Isaac had been weaned that day, and Abraham, a hundred years old and the father of a child everyone had written off, was giving the biggest feast of his life.

Sarah had been saying it all week to anyone who came near her. "The Lord has done wonders for me. Everyone who hears about this is going to marvel." She was still saying it when she looked past the guests and found Ishmael.

He was playing at worship. Not the worship of the house. Some other people's rite, done as a joke or done in earnest, with the bowing and the mumbling and the small figure set up to bow to.

The laughter went out of her.

"Throw this servant girl out," she told Abraham, "and her son with her. The son of this servant is not going to inherit alongside my son. And he is going to make war on Isaac."

Abraham Refused

It sat very badly with him. Not because of the woman. Because of the boy, his own boy, the one who kept slipping toward strange worship, whom he was now being told to hand over to the desert instead of keeping close enough to correct.

He was still refusing when the answer came.

"Do not let it be evil in your eyes, not for the youth and not for your handmaid. Listen to everything Sarah tells you, because she is a prophetess. Your line will be counted through Isaac, and the son of the handmaid will not be reckoned after you."

Then, before Abraham could take comfort in that: "But I have appointed him a people who live by the raid, because he is your son."

Sarah had not been guessing at the feast. She had been seeing. Abraham had stood in the same room, looked at the same child, and read it as a father reads a difficult son.

Bread, a Water Cruse, and a Writ

He got up early, the way he always got up early for the things that cost him.

He took bread and a cruse of water and set them on Hagar's shoulder, then bound the load to her waist so that anyone who passed her on the road would know at a glance what she was: not a wife of the house, a servant sent off. He put a bill of divorce in her hand. Then he sent her away with the boy.

She walked. Somewhere past the last landmark she lost the road and went out into the wilderness that lies below Beersheba.

The Water Ran Out at the Edge of the Desert

At the mouth of that wilderness their minds went back to the strange worship, and they turned toward it.

The thirst hit Ishmael like a fever. He drank and drank and drank the cruse dry, and it did nothing. His flesh shrank on him. He went down.

Hagar picked him up. He was a young man by then and she was not strong enough for it, and she carried him anyway until her legs quit. She called out to the Fear of his father, the God of Abraham, who had met her in a desert once before and made her promises.

Nothing answered.

She laid him down under a bush. Then she took the idol out of her pack and threw it away from her, walked off the distance an arrow flies from a bow, and sat down on the ground with her back to him.

"I cannot watch the child die."

She turned around anyway, so she was facing him, and cried where he could not hear her.

The Well Was Standing There the Whole Time

It was the boy's voice that went up, not hers. It was heard for the sake of what his father was, and the messenger came down on that account.

"What is it, Hagar? Do not give way. The boy's voice has been heard. He is not being judged by the evil he is going to do. He is being judged by Abraham's righteousness, and there is mercy for him where he lies. Get up. Take hold of the child. Put your strength into him. I have appointed him a great people."

Her eyes opened and there was a well in front of her.

She filled the cruse and got it to his mouth and held his head up while he drank. He lived. He grew up out there in the wilderness of Paran and became a master of the bow, and the water that saved him had been sitting under her feet the entire time she was weeping into the sand.

SarahIshmaelProphecyWomenCovenant
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From the tradition

Sources

4 sources

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.

Targum Jonathan on Genesis 21Targum Jonathan

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862 · Public Domain

The Hebrew Bible tells us God remembered Sarah and she bore a son. The ancient Aramaic translators wanted to know more. They added a detail the Torah left out: God performed a miracle for Sarah that mirrored what Abraham had prayed for on behalf of Abimelech. The healing Abraham secured for a foreign king, God now turned toward his own wife.

When Isaac was weaned, the Torah says Sarah saw Ishmael "playing" (Genesis 21:9). The Targum interprets this as something far more serious: Ishmael was practicing idol worship. Sarah did not merely dislike Hagar's son. She saw a theological threat. And Abraham's distress over sending Ishmael away? The Targum says it was specifically because his son had taken up foreign worship.

Then comes the Targum's most striking addition. When Abraham sent Hagar away, he gave her a letter of divorce and bound her supplies to her waist to mark her as a servant. No ambiguity about her status. In the desert, when the water ran out, the Targum explains that Ishmael's thirst came because both he and Hagar had "wandered after strange worship." Hagar herself threw away an idol before crying out to God. The angel saved Ishmael not for his own merit, but for the righteousness of Abraham.

The chapter closes with Abraham planting not just a tree at Beersheba, but a "paradise", a garden with food and drink for travelers, where he preached to passersby, calling them to "confess and believe in the Name of the Word of the Lord, the everlasting God." Abraham becomes not just a patriarch, but a missionary. The Targum also names Ishmael's two wives: Adisha, whom he divorced, and Fatima from Egypt. These names appear nowhere in the Hebrew Bible. The translators were filling gaps the Torah left open, and every addition carried a theological argument.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 21:12Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862 · Public Domain

When Abraham hesitates, the Holy One settles it with a line that should be underlined in every copy of the Torah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:12), the Aramaic makes the reasoning plain: Hearken unto all that Sarah saith to thee, because she is a prophetess.

The Hebrew text says only, listen to her voice. The Targum adds the title. Sarah is a nevi'ah, a prophetess. And her prophetic rank is the reason Abraham must obey her even when her command feels wrong.

The tradition is preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 14a), which lists seven prophetesses in Israel: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther. Pseudo-Jonathan integrates that teaching directly into the verse itself.

The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan then clinches the inheritance question: in Isaac shall sons be called unto thee; and this son of the handmaid shall not be genealogized after thee. The covenant line is settled.

The Maggidim took this as a rebuke to every household that underestimates the women within it. When your wife sees what you cannot, the takeaway is not to argue. It is to listen.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 21:15Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862 · Public Domain

The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan never lets a wilderness story pass without asking why the suffering. In Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:15), the answer is uncomfortable: when they came to the entrance of the desert, they remembered to wander after strange worship. Hagar and Ishmael, freshly expelled from Abraham's tent, turn their hearts back toward the idols of Egypt. And the water dries up.

The Aramaic draws the link tightly. Ishmael is seized with a tzaha, a burning thirst. He drinks the last drops. His flesh withers. His mother carries him. She cries out to dechaltei d'avoy, the Fear of his father, meaning the God of Abraham, and He answered her not.

This is one of the Targum's sharpest theological moments. Hagar's prayer fails in the silence of heaven because, moments earlier, she had turned toward other gods. The God of Abraham does not answer prayers directed at Him through the memory of idols.

She lays the child beneath a tree. The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the Hebrew's devastating verb, she threw him, as if her own body could no longer hold the consequence of her choice.

The Maggidim took this as a warning. Crisis exposes the true address of our prayers. The takeaway: before you call out to heaven, be sure you have not been serving somewhere else.

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Book of Jubilees 17:14Book of Jubilees

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC-BY

Abraham is often remembered as this towering figure of faith, but the Book of Jubilees, an ancient Jewish text from the Second Temple period, gives us a stark look at the consequences of his actions on those around him.

Abraham, early one morning, sends Hagar, his concubine, and his son Ishmael, into the wilderness. He gives them bread and a bottle of water, placing it all on Hagar's shoulders. Then…he sends them away. Just like that. The Book of Jubilees 17 tells us she "departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba."

The water runs out. The child, Ishmael, is dying of thirst. He can't go on. He collapses.

Hagar, a mother watching her child suffer, does the only thing she can think of. She lays him under an olive tree. Then, she walks away. Not far, mind you. Just a bow-shot's distance. Why? Because she can't bear to watch him die. “Let me not see the death of my child,” she cries, as she sits and weeps.

It’s a scene of utter desolation. A bow-shot. That’s how close she is to her son’s suffering, yet feels utterly powerless to stop it. This small distance becomes a vast chasm of despair.

The Book of Jubilees doesn’t offer a lot of commentary here. It simply lays bare the stark reality of their situation. It's a raw, unflinching look at the human cost of decisions made, even by those considered righteous.

What are we to make of this? Is this a story of abandonment? Of faith tested to its breaking point? Or is it a reminder that even in our darkest moments, hope, however faint, can still flicker? Perhaps it's all of these things, woven together in a tradition of human experience that continues to resonate with us today. A reminder that even in the wilderness, we are not always alone. And even a bow-shot distance can be bridged.

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