Bible Commentaries

Sarah the Steadfast

Genesis 21:10

Israel has from the very first provided a place for the pariah—has opened a door of entrance to the man whom she has herself turned out. Ishmael is the first pariah, the first outcast from society. To any man who had breathed the patriarchal atmosphere the expulsion from that atmosphere was death in the desert. Expulsion from the patriarchal fold was not necessarily a change of land at all: the outcast could live in sight of his former home. But the sting lay in the fact that the brotherhood itself was broken.

I. What brought Ishmael into this exile? As in nearly all cases of social ostracism he owes it partly to his misfortune—for an Eastern—of being an unconventional man. The spirit of the age is at variance with his spirit. He set up the authority of his individual conscience in opposition to the use and want of the whole community. What was that individual conviction for which Ishmael strove? Ishmael saw Hagar, his actual mother, in the position of a menial to his adopted mother. He saw her subjected to daily indignities. He listened to her assertions of a right to be equal to Sarah, of her claim to be treated as the wife of Abraham.

II. Then something happened. A real heir was born to Sarah. Ishmael was supplanted. All his hopes were withered. He seems to have thrown off the mask which had hitherto concealed his irritation. His tone became mocking, satirical. He preferred a life of independent poverty to a life of luxurious vassalage. He panted to be free. The wrath of Sarah was kindled. She moves her hand and says "Go!" and Hagar and Ishmael issue forth from the patriarchal home to return no more. When they reach the desert their supply of water is exhausted. Hagar betook herself to prayer. It was not the God of Israel she communed with. It was her own God. But he answered her. The answer comes in the form of an inward peace. It sent no supernatural vision, because that was not needed. The means of refuge lay within the limits of the natural. The well was there, had always been there. What was wanted was a mental calm adequate to the recognition of it.

III. But the grand thing was the moral bearing of the fact. It had an historical significance. It declared that God had a place for the pariah. It proclaimed that the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac was still the God of Egypt and the God of Hagar. God is larger than all our creeds, and higher than all our theories.

—G. Matheson, Representative Men of the Bible, p1.

References.—XXI:6.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p167. XXI:16.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No974. XXI:17.—C. Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p1. J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children (5th Series), p105. XXI:19.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No1123; ibid. vol. xxv. No1461. XXI.—J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p14. P. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis , p50.