The Midrash (Breishit Rabbah, Lech Lecha, 45) says that Hagar was the daughter of Pharaoh. Chazal say that her birth name was Keturah, not Hagar, but her father, Pharaoh, named her Hagar when he gave her to Avraham as a “gift,” following the episode of his kidnapping Sarah.
The word Hagar comes from the Aramaic root meaning “gift.” Hagar became Sarah’s maidservant. Pharaoh, after seeing the miracles HaKadosh Baruch Hu performed for Avraham, said “Better that she should be a maidservant in the house of Avraham than an aristocrat in this house.”
We tend to automatically think of Hagar in a negative context, but we actually have no conception of the stature of this woman. The parsha is rife with appearances of angels – the three angels visiting Avraham, the angel in the Akeidah.
Hagar had conversations with no less than five angels! (actually, it is a debate whether it was three, four, or five – Breishit Rabbah 45:7; Gemara Me’ilah 17b). The angels spoke directly to Hagar and she was not “phased” in any way. Contrast this with the story of Elkana and Chana – when they saw an angel, they were shocked to the core and Elkana thought they would die. Chazal say that Hagar was used to seeing angels, because they were frequent guests in Avraham’s house.
Chazal in the Midrash says that Hagar soaked up whatever Torah Sarah taught the women and she reached such a high level that she would give shiurim in Sarah’s absence. The fact that, when Sarah could not have children, she chose Hagar to be Avraham’s wife and bear children, shows the degree to which she respected Hagar and considered her worthy.
Avraham did not want to marry Hagar, because he loved Sarah. This is why marrying Hagar is considered Avraham’s 5th trial according to the Rambam. Hagar did not want to marry Avraham because, Chazal say, a woman prefers to marry a poor young man than a rich old man (perhaps today it is different). Sarah had to tempt Hagar in order to get her to agree.
What does Sarah mean when she says “Perhaps I will be ‘built’ through her” (Bereishit 16:2) To understand this we need to skip forward to parshat Vayetzei, where it discusses the birth of the Twelve Tribes. When Rachel sees she cannot give birth, she offers her maidservant Bilhah to Yaakov as a wife. Leah, when she stops giving birth, also follows suit with Zilpah.
The modus operandi behind such a procedure is that if a child is born to the maidservant, but is born “on the knees of the matron of the house” and is named by the matron and her husband (Sarah+Avraham, Rachel+Yaakov, Leah+Yaakov), then the child is considered as if the matron herself had given birth and would be equivalent in status to the other children of the matron and her husband.
The fact is when the sons of the maidservants were born to Yaakov, they were considered of equal status and we thus have the Twelve Tribes.
It was Sarah’s intention for Hagar, her maidservant, to give birth and then Sarah and Avraham would name the child. If that had happened, this child would have been equivalent in every way to Yitzchak.
However, things did not turn out that way. After Hagar conceived, soon after marrying Avraham, Rashi says, she lost respect for Sarah. She would say to the women who she was teaching – “Sarah appears to be so righteous, but she is not. The proof of this is that in all these years she never conceived, and only after a very short time – I manage to conceive a child to Avraham.” Slowly the women who used to go to Sarah to learn, stopped going.
Sarah complained to Avraham, “You have stolen from me”. By not speaking out against Hagar’s behavior, you have stolen my students from me. Nobody comes to me any longer to learn Torah! Avraham replies to Sarah – “She is your maidservant, you are still the matron, do with her as you wish.”
Sarah “tormented” Hagar, to such a degree that she ran away. The Mefarshim say, what was this “torment?” Sarah said to Hagar, “From this point on, you are no longer allowed to give shiurim!” Hagar flees and an angel appears to her and tells her that her purpose in life is to be Sarah’s maidservant and that she must return and endure. In addition, the angel tells her that she will give birth to a son and that she will call him Yishmael.
Hagar returns and gives birth to a son. Hang on a minute! Three pesukim prior to that, the angel told Hagar that she would call him Yishmael and now (Breishit 16:15) it says that Avraham called him Yishmael? The Mefarshim say that Hagar in fact called him Yishmael, based on the angels’ instructions and that Avraham received that name by Divine providence.
However, in the end, Yishmael was named, not as originally planned by Avraham+Sarah, but instead by Hagar+Avraham. Therefore, the whole scheme of Sarah that she would merit the birth, by naming him – fell through. The end result of this was that Yishmael was not considered the son of Avraham and Sarah as intended, and ended up being a “wild man,” just as the angel told Hagar and not on equal status with Yitzchak.
Unlike Bilhah and Zilpah, who were faithful maidservants to their matrons Rachel and Leah, Hagar was not a faithful maidservant to Sarah.
It is for this reason that the subsequent developments with Hagar and Yishmael, which appear in this week’s parsha, occurred. Yishmael did not turn into the righteous son he had the potential to become. He mocked Yitzchak and this resulted in Avraham, on Sarah’s behest, banishing Hagar and Yishmael from his house.
The Torah goes on to relate that Hagar, upon being banished, returned to her prior life of idol worship. Yishmael turned into a “no good,” as the angel had predicted.
Later in his life, after Sarah died, Avraham remarried Hagar (Keturah) and we know that when Avraham died, Yishmael repented and both he and Yitzchak buried Avraham. However, Yishmael had no further role in the destiny of Am Yisrael.
Parshat HaShavua Trivia Question: What was the name of Lot’s daughter?
Answer to Last Shiur’s Teliezerrivia Question: In which country today is the biblical Charan located? In the southeast of Turkey, close to the Syrian border.
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