Sarah and Hagar in the Early Jewish Literary Imagination
Genesis 16 relates that after Abraham and Sarah’s arrival in Canaan, Sarah remains infertile despite God’s promise to make Abraham a “great nation” (Genesis 12:2). For this reason, she gives her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to her husband to bear children in her stead. Although Sarah initiates this union, she requests its dissolution after she bears her own child, Isaac, and sees Hagar’s son, Ishmael, taunting him. Abraham turns to God for advice, and God tells him to follow Sarah’s instructions and expel Hagar and Ishmael. However, God later appears to Hagar in the wilderness and promises that Ishmael too will be made into a great nation.
Philo, whose interpretation of the Pentateuch is largely allegorical, suggests that Sarah is an allegory for wisdom and other virtues, which are in the soul, while Hagar represents formal philosophical study, which makes use of the body and is merely a servant of virtue. Sarah’s giving Hagar to Abraham to produce offspring teaches that those unable to produce good deeds through virtue should pursue education. Josephus offers a more literal reading of the text, using it to explain the origin of the Arabian tribes that traced their ancestry to Ishmael.
Paul, known as “the apostle to the gentiles,” a contemporary of Philo and Josephus, uses the biblical figures of Sarah and Hagar in an elaborate metaphor to describe the different relationships of Jews and gentile Christ followers to the law (Galatians 4:21). In Paul’s allegory, Hagar, who is enslaved, represents the law, and her son, Ishmael, represents the Jews, who are subject to the law. Gentile Christ followers, in contrast, are descendants of Sarah, the free woman. Like Philo, Paul associates Hagar with the body and Sarah with the spirit. Yet Paul also takes the extraordinary step of using the Torah, which he refers to as the “law,” to make an argument against gentile adoption of its commandments. (For more on Paul and his mission to the gentiles, see Paul the Jew.)
The later rabbis of Genesis Rabbah make an exegetical argument that Hagar was an Egyptian princess, the daughter of Pharaoh, given to Sarah after Pharaoh beheld the miracles that God performed on Sarah’s behalf in his house. They suggest that Hagar’s name means “reward,” since she is given to Sarah as a gift.