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Sarah Sat in the Market and Nursed the Nations

The nations said the old woman was passing off Hagar's baby as her own. God dried up the milk of every noblewoman who had said it.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Everyone Who Hears Will Laugh
  2. They Said the Child Was Hagar's
  3. Sit Down in the Market
  4. Rachel's Name Went on the Whole House
  5. Ninety-Nine Cries Against One
Sarah Sat in the Market and Nursed the Nations Click for full size

Everyone Who Hears Will Laugh

Sarah was ninety when they put the boy in her arms, and what she said was that everybody who heard about it would laugh along with her.

She was right in a way nobody in that tent could have measured.

On the day she gave birth, women in countries she had never heard of stopped being barren. The deaf started hearing. The blind opened their eyes. People who had never spoken said words. Anyone whose mind had come apart was put back together. It went out from a tent in Hebron across the whole of the world in one morning, and every household it reached had its own reason to laugh.

After that, people began praying that God would remember Sarah a second time, so that they could get carried along on the answer.

What God did for Sarah, He did the way He did it on the fourth day, when He made the two great lights. One more lamp went up over the world, and everything underneath saw by it, asked or not.

They Said the Child Was Hagar's

Then the sneering started.

The word among the nations was that no woman of ninety bears anything, and the obvious explanation was sitting right there in the household. It was Hagar's baby. The old woman had taken the slave's son and was carrying him around as her own, and the whole thing was a performance.

So God dried up the milk of every noblewoman who had said it.

Their infants started screaming and did not stop. Wet nurses came up empty. The women who had been the loudest about the fraud came to Hebron and got down in the dirt in front of a tent and kissed the ground at the feet of the woman they had called a liar, and asked her to feed their children.

Sit Down in the Market

Abraham did not tell her to be gracious about it. He told her where to do it.

This is not the hour for modesty, he said. Go and sit down in the open market, where the traders are, and feed them there, and let the Name be sanctified in the middle of it.

She went out and sat down among the stalls and uncovered herself, and her breasts ran like two spouts of water. Goats went on bleating. Coins went on changing hands. Grain went on being measured out and argued over. And a ninety-year-old woman sat in the noise with the children of the women who had mocked her feeding at her, one after another, all day.

Not all of them had come for milk. Some had brought their babies to see whether there was any milk, and those women got what they came for and went home. The ones who came in earnest did not go home the same. Their children took Sarah's milk and grew up and came under the wings of the Presence, and every convert since, and every God-fearing gentile since, comes down from a mouth that fed in that market.

Rachel's Name Went on the Whole House

Most of the tribes came out of Leah. Rachel waited years and produced two sons, and by any count that should have settled whose name the nation carried.

It did not settle it. When the prophet needs to show the people being marched off into exile, the mother standing on the road crying is not Leah. It is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, and that is the voice Heaven answers first. When God speaks about sparing the survivors He calls them the remnant of Joseph, her son. When He aches out loud, He says, is Ephraim my dear son, and that is her grandson.

Everything hinged on her, so the house took her name.

Rabbi Meir heard something harder in the same prophecy. Sing, barren one, said the prophet, and Rabbi Meir heard the barren one as the uprooted one, the city whose enemies stood over it screaming to strip it down to the foundation, told to sing anyway, from underneath the rubble, with nothing yet to sing about.

Ninety-Nine Cries Against One

A woman on the birthing stool cries out a hundred times. Ninety-nine of those cries are about dying. One of them is about living. Then something comes out of nothing at all, smeared with blood and mucus and slick with it, the least presentable object in the room, and every pair of arms in that room goes toward it to hold it and kiss it.

The mess is not overlooked. It is not what anybody is looking at.

That is what was happening in the market. The proud ladies had their faces in the dust, and the Name was being sanctified over the stalls, and nobody in that street was working out what any of it meant. They were waiting their turn for the milk.

SarahIsaacBarrenAbrahamMiracleNursingPesiktaJoy
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From the tradition

Sources

3 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.

Pesikta DeRav Kahana 22:1Pesikta de-Rav Kahana

Translation of the source text.Pesikta de Rav Kahana according to an Oxford manuscript, Dov Mandelbaum ed., N.Y. 1987 · CC-BY

"I will greatly rejoice." It is written, "Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?" (Psalms 85:7). Rabbi Acha said: Your people and Your city will rejoice in You. "And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me" (Genesis 21:6). Rabbi Yudan, Rabbi Simon, Rabbi Chanin, Rabbi Shmuel bar Yitzchak: Reuben rejoices -- what does it matter to Shimon? For Sarah our mother says, "Everyone who hears will laugh with me" (ibid.). Rather, it teaches that when Sarah our mother gave birth to Isaac, all the barren women were remembered, all the deaf were made to hear, all the blind were opened, all the mute were healed, and all the mad were made sane, and all were saying: Would that Sarah our mother be remembered a second time, that we might be remembered along with her.

Rabbi Berachya in the name of Rabbi Levi: To add to the luminaries. "Doing" is stated here, "And the LORD did to Sarah as He had spoken" (Genesis 21:1), and "doing" is stated elsewhere, "And God made the two great lights" (ibid. 1:16). Just as the "doing" stated elsewhere was to give light to the world, so the "doing" stated here was to give light to the world. "Doing" is stated here, and "doing" is stated elsewhere, "And he made a release to the provinces" (Esther 2:18). Just as the "doing" stated there was to give relief to the world, so the "doing" stated here was to give relief to the world.

Rabbi Berachya in the name of Rabbi Levi: You find that when Sarah our mother gave birth to Isaac, the nations of the world were saying, God forbid, Sarah did not give birth to Isaac, but rather Hagar, Sarah's maidservant, she gave birth to him. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He dried up the breasts of the wives of the nations of the world, and their noble ladies came and kissed the dust of Sarah's feet and said to her: Do a kindness and nurse our children. And our father Abraham would say to Sarah: Sarah, this is no hour for modesty; sanctify the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, and sit in the marketplace and nurse their children. This is what is written, "Sarah has nursed children" (Genesis 21:7); it is not written child but rather children.

And are these things not a matter of inference from minor to major? If a human being, when joy comes to him, rejoices and gives joy to all, then when the Holy One comes to gladden Jerusalem, how much more so. "I will greatly rejoice in the LORD" (Isaiah 61:10).

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Pesikta DeRav Kahana 20:2Pesikta de-Rav Kahana

Translation of the source text.Pesikta de Rav Kahana according to an Oxford manuscript, Dov Mandelbaum ed., N.Y. 1987 · CC-BY

Rabbi Reuben opened: "Sing, O barren one" (Isaiah 54:1), behold now, barren. Rabbi Meir said: "barren" means uprooted, a nation that the nations of the world uprooted. This is as it is written, "Remember, O LORD, against the children of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said: Strip it bare, strip it bare, down to its foundation" (Psalms 137:7). Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: it means tear it down, tear it down, as you say, "the broad wall of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown" (Jeremiah 51:58). The rest of this section is like the parallel passage.

Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: the bulk of those reclining at the meal were of Leah, yet they made Rachel the principal one, as you say, "and Rachel was barren" (Genesis 29:31). Rabbi Isaac said: Rachel was the foundation of the house, as you say, "and Rachel was barren" (Genesis 29:31), the essence. Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai taught: because all matters depended on Rachel, therefore the children were called by her name, "Rachel weeping for her children" (Jeremiah 31:14). And not only by her name, but even by the name of her son, "perhaps the LORD of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph" (Amos 5:15). And by the name of her grandson, "Is Ephraim my dear son?" (Jeremiah 31:19).

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Pesikta DeRav Kahana 9:6Pesikta de-Rav Kahana

Translation of the source text.Pesikta de Rav Kahana according to an Oxford manuscript, Dov Mandelbaum ed., N.Y. 1987 · CC-BY

"Behold, you are nothing, and your work is nought" (Isaiah 41:24). "Behold, you are nothing" (me-ayin) [from nothing] means from utter nothingness, foul brine. "And your work is nought" (me-efa) [from a cry] means from the hundred cries (pi'ot) that a woman cries out when she sits upon the birthing stool, ninety-nine for death and one for life. "An abomination is he who chooses you" (ibid.). Even though this infant comes out of his mother's belly soiled and dirtied, full of mucus and blood, all embrace him and all kiss him, and all the more so when it is a male.

Another interpretation of "Behold, you are nothing" (ibid.). Rabbi Berekhiah said: It is the Greek tongue, as you say ina [one]: you are one (ina) to Me from among the nations of the world. "From nothing" (me-ayin) means from those of whom it is written, "All the nations are as nothing before Him" (ibid. 40:17). "And your work is from a cry" (ibid. 41:24). Rabbi Levi said: All the good deeds and consolations that the Holy One, blessed be He, will in the future do with Israel are only the reward of one cry that you cried out before Me at Sinai, when you said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do and we will hear" (Exodus 24:7). "An abomination is he who chooses you" (Isaiah ibid.): that abomination of which it is written, "a molten calf" (Exodus 32:4), from that very abomination they brought before Me an offering, "an ox or a sheep or a goat" (Leviticus 22:27).

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