Abraham and Sarah (39 page)

“Most of the tragedy we brought on ourselves.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Mara died, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. How?”

“It was her fault. The visitors told us to hurry and not look back. Mara was outside the city when she thought of a carnelian necklace she loved. She insisted on going back. I couldn’t stop her. She didn’t even reach the city before she was killed, covered with burning ash.”

“But you and your daughters escaped.”

“We barely escaped. We first went to a small town and then hid in a cave. We thought we were like Noah, the only ones left alive. That’s why my daughters …”

Lot couldn’t finish the sentence. He hung his head in embarrassment. His daughters looked at each other and finally the elder spoke. “You must understand, we thought we were the last people alive. Our fiancés would not come with us. They were lost with Sodom.”

After a slight pause she went on. “It seemed important to keep life on earth alive.” She was at a loss for words. She looked at the younger sister who hesitated only a moment and then spoke in a voice so low it was hard for Abraham to hear. “We lay with our own father so we might have children,” she said.

“You what!” Abraham was puzzled, then astounded.

“We made him drunk, then lay with him to have children. Is that so wrong?”

Lot wiped the perspiration from his brow and shifted uneasily. “Wrong? Of course, it’s wrong,” he said. “Even if they thought it was their only chance to have children, it was wrong. You see how Sodom has changed us.”

For the first time Abraham understood why ten righteous persons could not be found in all of Sodom. Everyone, even his nephew, was tainted. However, he saw the suffering involved and judged they had been punished enough. “I don’t condone what has happened,” he said finally, “but we are your family and you can depend on us.”

Lot broke down and wept. His two daughters gratefully accepted the help Abraham offered and began to relax.

A week later, after Lot had recovered sufficiently, he was heard complaining, “We all know, if it hadn’t been for the promises my uncle kept talking about, I wouldn’t have been here. It’s really my uncle’s fault. And to think, none of his promises have ever come true.”

Three months passed before Sarah was sure she was pregnant. She immediately wanted everyone to know. To her surprise, people looked at her with either pity or disbelief. Some were scornful that she should even imagine such a thing. “Never mind,” she said, “you’ll see.”

As the months passed it was true that she had all the signs of being pregnant. Her stomach grew large like a ripe melon, and her breasts filled out until they looked like a young girl’s. Most of all, she began to openly resent Hagar. “Hagar was a mistake,” she told Abraham one evening. “If I had just waited.”

“But you didn’t, and now we are responsible for Hagar. We have a young boy who loves us as his parents.”

Sarah tossed her head and her mouth stiffened. “We no longer need her. Once I have my own son she can have Ishmael back.”

“Have Ishmael back?” Abraham said. “What are you suggesting? He’s my son and I love him.”

“He’s not really a true son, Abraham. My son will be the son of the promise.”

“Sarah, Sarah, what terrible things are you thinking?”

“It seems very simple to me. Before I found I could have a child, I needed her. Ishmael seemed the only son I could have. Now everything is different.”

Abraham was astounded by her reasoning. He loved Ishmael. Ishmael was a bright boy who thrived outdoors. He remembered how the Elohim had told him that Sarah would bear a son, and it was this son by which his seed would be called and nations blessed. He struggled to remember what had been said about Ishmael. No word of covenant was mentioned, but blessings were promised and the statement was made that he would bear twelve princes.

Abraham pondered over the word princes. It was true that if Ishmael were in Egypt, he would be a prince. Pharaoh was his grandfather. “How strange,” Abraham thought, “he shall be the father of princes.”

There was also a sense in which he was a son of the covenant because Ishmael had been circumcised.

For the first time Abraham realized that with the birth of Sarah’s child there could be conflict. He would have to be strong. He must not let Hagar or Ishmael be hurt.

The time passed quickly. Sarah gloried in every aspect of her pregnancy. She could talk of nothing else. When she first felt movement, she held both hands over her rounded stomach and waited. When she felt again the forceful push, she laughed. It was real. She was not mistaken. She was really going to be a mother, even at her age.

When the days became hot and the women came to wring out cloths in cool water to place on her head and wrists, she laughed. When she was too big and clumsy to grind the grain for her sweet cakes, she laughed. When her clothes no longer fit, she laughed. Everything was a delight. Nothing was burdensome or hard. To carry a child was infinitely wonderful, and Sarah intended to enjoy every minute of it.

“Wait until she comes to the birthing stool,” the women whispered among themselves. “She won’t laugh then. She won’t think it is such a wonderful thing.”

They were wrong. Sarah bore the hours of trauma and pain without complaint, because even they were part of her need and desire. When the small red
screaming bundle was at last held up for her to see, she reached out for him. “How beautiful he is!” she cried.

As people gathered around to see the child, they asked what he was to be called. Abraham stepped forward and took the child in his arms. They all became silent, watching him, noting the look of wonder and joy on his face. “Isaac, Laughter, he is to be called Isaac,” Abraham said.

Sarah looked up at Abraham with tears in her eyes as she said, “The Elohim has kept his promise and brought me laughter. Everyone who hears of this will laugh and rejoice with me. How impossible it seemed that I should give my husband a son in his old age.”

That night as Abraham walked out under the stars, he felt new excitement. Sarah was a mother at last. The old curse of Ningal was broken, which proved the Elohim was stronger than the earth goddess. To promise a young virgin a child was simple, but to give a woman well past the age of childbearing a child was an astonishing miracle.

Sarah didn’t complain when Abraham and the men of the tribe came to circumcise Isaac when he was only eight days old. “If the Elohim has seen fit to give me a child,” she said, “surely I can trust him to protect him. He is a strong child.”

Abraham reached down to take him from her arms, and for a moment she clung to him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “there will be many mothers after you who will cringe at such a thing. Let it be known that you were strong and trusted the Elohim.”

Sarah let him go but hurried after Abraham to the tent door where she stood and wept until she heard the cry that told her the worst was over. When Isaac was brought back to her, she studied his little face for any sign of pain. When there was none, she laughed and put him to her swollen breast as a reward for bravery.

From the very first, Sarah began to shut Ishmael out. She wouldn’t let him hold the baby, and she grew impatient when he wanted to show her an unusual rock formation or tell her of some adventure. In the past she had taken great pains to listen and encourage him, but now she was always too busy. Worst of all, she finally told him in a moment of impatience that she was not his mother.

“Hagar, the Egyptian, is your mother,” she said and didn’t notice the hurt and shock evident in Ishmael’s face. He backed away and went out of the tent to hunker down in the crevasse of a great rock. He brooded and pondered and finally hated the child who had come to take his place.

When he returned to the camp, he wouldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep. He refused to see Hagar, and when Hagar mentioned the problem to Sarah, she was so preoccupied with the new baby, she answered, “He’ll get over it. He had to know sometime.”

Hagar was distraught. She had no patience with Sarah and was heard openly criticizing her in the camp. “How can she not see how she has hurt Ishmael?” she would ask.

Abraham suffered as he watched from afar. He loved Ishmael. He was proud of the boy. Everything he had ever wanted in a son was exhibited in the boy. He learned quickly. No one else could match him in physical prowess. He already had mastered the art of reading the wedge-shaped letters used to keep track of sales and purchases, but most of all he was unusually sensitive to anything spiritual.

“What will happen to Ishmael?” was Abraham’s constant prayer. “The boy must not be hurt in any way by what we have done.”

Gradually the realization came that at some point he would have to give Ishmael up. He would have to give him up—not just for Sarah and Isaac’s sake but for Ishmael’s as well. What would it do to this proud, happy boy to be displaced by a younger brother? He was the grandson of Pharaoh, and he must at some point recognize that relationship.

“In the meantime,” Abraham decided, “I must teach the boy everything of importance. Most of all I must teach him all I know of the Elohim. I will have to rely on the Elohim to protect and guide him when I am not able to be there.”

The birth of Isaac minimized the births of Lot’s grandsons by his two daughters. To everyone’s chagrin, they named the sons in such a way that no one was ever able to forget their unholy origins. The elder daughter named her son Mo-ab, “from my father,” and the second daughter named her son Ben-ammi, “son of my people.”

When they were circumcised by their great-uncle Abraham, an old man
predicted, “These sons will be the founders of a great people. The first will be remembered as father of a people called the Moabites and the second as father of ones called Ammonites.” It was usual for predictions to be made at special events, so no one thought much about what the old man said.

Only Abraham saw the small, helpless creatures and marveled. Something so small and helpless, how could it be possible for such great and momentous things to come of it? he thought.

The enmity between Sarah and Hagar reached a crisis on the day set aside to celebrate Isaac’s weaning. Isaac was three years old, and Abraham had planned an elaborate celebration for his young son. There were magicians, story-tellers, jugglers, and musicians performing before the small boy who sat in the place of honor on his mother’s lap.