Reviews

Looking Forward with an Eye of Faith

From the first divine promise made to Abraham about his posterity, the years of continuing childlessness had turned into decades of delay. And yet, as one scholar observes, still Abraham “believed the promise, although from a human aspect everything spoke against it.” ^[1] Or, as eloquently expressed by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard,

By faith Abraham received the promise that in his seed all races of the world would be blessed. Time passed, the possibility was there, Abraham believed; time passed, it became unreasonable, Abraham believed … There is no song of Lamentations by Abraham. He did not mournfully count the days while time passed, he did not look at Sarah with a suspicious glance … Abraham became old, Sarah became a laughingstock in the land, and yet he was God’s elect and inheritor of the promise that in his seed all the races of the world would be blessed … What is it to be God’s elect? It is to be denied in youth the wishes of youth, so as with great pains to get them fulfilled in old age. ^[2]

How had Abraham maintained his faith in the long-delayed promises? We have already seen his constant gratitude and praise to God for blessings already bestowed – apparently a key to Abraham’s faith. For as one of his faithful latter-day descendants observed, “I have discovered that if I insist on tormenting myself with obvious facts, I cannot hold on to the precious peace that is His Gift. But if I give heartfelt praise to our Father in Heaven while in the midst of my trials, He grants me instant peace, strength, and abiding hope.” ^[3]

It is an expression of the principle articulated by Moroni, who explained that God has never worked miracles for men “until after their faith,” so that when they finally “saw with their [mortal] eyes” what they had hoped for, it was only after “they had beheld [it] with an eye of faith” (Ether 12:18-19).

So had Abraham looked ahead with an eye of faith, continually leaning upon the divine promises through the years as he offered “myriad prayers,” says Josephus, for the fulfillment of those promises. ^[4] In the words of the Apostle Paul, Abraham “against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken” (Rom. 4:18). Meanwhile, in selfless exercise of his faith and priesthood, he offered prayers for the welfare of others, including prayers for childless women, and they would conceive. ^[5]

God had confirmed to Abraham that his heir would be a son issuing from his own body, but nothing had been said about Sarah being the mother. Her faith had been firm as she had interpreted the promises of posterity to Abraham as any reasonable wife would, to mean that she was to be the mother. As the promises had been renewed from heaven time after time, her hope and expectation had been renewed and reinvigorated. But months had turned into years as they endured “the anguish of childlessness.” ^[6]

Such an anguishing trial might well have damaged many a marital relationship, but not this one. He “had simply loved her the more tenderly, making the deepening of his love for her entirely clear. Not only had he made no complaints, never even mentioned the word barren,’ he had refused to allow anyone else to do so either.” [7]

But at some point Sarah, who had always thought of the promises of posterity as applying to her also, begin to consider another possibility. For those promises, she reasoned, had never mentioned her directly. A decade after their return out of Egypt, she came to Abraham and suggested that he marry her maid, Hagar, whom Sarah had taught in the things of righteousness and who, as reported in Jewish tradition, “walked in the same path of righteousness as her mistress.” ^[8] Sarah’s words to Abraham are reported in Genesis, the very first time Sarah speaks in the Bible: “See how the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. I beg you [or please’ ^[9] ] now, go and sleep with my maid, and perhaps I will have a son through her.” ^[10]

By those words, according to Jewish tradition, Sarah “took the blame for childlessness upon herself rather than seeking to blame her husband,” ^[11] and thereby demonstrated her “spiritual strength: she was not jealous of her handmaid, but acted with the purest of motives” and even with the prompting of the Holy Spirit. ^[12] Modern rabbi Amos Miller comments:

The secret of the wonderful marital relationship between Abraham and Sarah was that when things went wrong neither sought to blame the other or to find fault with the other. If fault was to be found, each found it within himself. This remains the secret of a happy marriage to this day. ^[13]

Abraham and Sarah were living the law that the Lord would give to their latter-day descendants seeking to build Zion: “See that ye love one another. . . . Cease to find fault one with another. . . . And above all things, clothe yourselves with the bond of charity, as with a mantle, which is the bond of perfectness and peace” (D&C 88:125).

Sarah’s language also suggests, according to the nineteenth-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, that Abraham was reluctant to do what his wife was suggesting. “Sarah wants to do it only for his sake, but she knows that he would not do it for his own sake; hence she says … perhaps I [will have a son through her].’ If Abraham would not want to do it for his own sake, then let him do it for the sake of his wife because she wants it so badly.” ^[14]

Such was the mutual love and loyalty of this couple, each putting the other first even in the matters that touched their hearts most deeply. Their relationship illustrates the truth taught by President Gordon B. Hinckley that “if you will make your first concern the comfort, the well-being, and the happiness of your companion, sublimating any personal concern to that loftier goal, you will be happy, and your marriage will go on throughout eternity.

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“ ^[15]

Modern revelation adds that Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham “because this was the law” (D&C 132:34), a statement confirmed by Bible scholars who note the obligation of an infertile wife after ten years to bring her husband a second wife to bear children. ^[16]

But it was also one of the great acts of Sarah’s life, noted Erastus Snow, done out of “love and integrity to her husband” so “that he might not be childless because she was childless.” ^[17] It was the ultimate sacrifice, a decision made, no doubt, after much soul searching and prayer. Sarah was by no means giving up, nor did this mark a loss of hope; both Rashi and Nachmanides held that Sarah still harbored the expectation that God would yet bless her some day to conceive, but that for now, as throughout her life, Sarah was acting in righteous and under divine guidance in the matter. ^[18]

She was acting out of love, and “did not render herself distant” from Abraham, ^[19] but kept her heart knit together in love with his. According to a modern Muslim scholar, it was because of this unselfish act of Sarah that God would eventually reward her with a son of her own. ^[20]

But up to now the yearning of her heart was not forthcoming, having grown more elusive with each passing year. Indeed, as difficult as Abraham’s long trial of childlessness had been to him, “Sarah must have been the one most deeply hurt by her barrenness.” ^[21] And yet, at this time of profound personal grief, out of the greatness of her loving heart poured forth only soothing words of hope for Abraham, as reported by Philo:

Do not let the trouble of my barrenness extend to you, or [your] kind feeling to me to keep you from becoming what you can become, a father, for I shall have no jealousy of another woman … And if our prayers for the birth of children are answered the offspring will be yours in full parenthood, but surely mine also by adoption. But to avoid any suspicion of jealousy on my part, take if you will my handmaiden … proved and tested by me for many years from the day when she was first brought to my house, an Egyptian by birth, but a Hebrew by her rule of life. ^[22]

Philo further reports that Sarah’s words instilled in Abraham “increased admiration for the wifely love, which never grew old and was ever showing itself anew, and her careful forethought for the future.” ^[23] Even still, Abraham accepted Sarah’s proposal only after receiving revelation on the matter, ^[24] whereupon Sarah magnanimously declared to Hagar, “Happy art thou to be united to so holy a man.” ^[25] Abraham married Hagar, who immediately became pregnant – even though, in the poignant words of modern writers, “as Hagar’s belly swelled with child, Sarah’s womb remained empty.” ^[26]

Hagar, although remembered as a woman of righteousness and faith, ^[27] began to “despise” (NIV Gen. 16:4) Sarah and treat her with “contempt” (NRSV Gen. 16:4) and “disdain.” ^[28] Her unbearable insolence included claiming that Sarah’s infertile condition proved her spiritual inferiority. ^[29] Sarah’s reaction is reported by Genesis, which tells that she went to Abraham and said: “The wrong done to me is your fault! I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem” (JPST Gen. 16:5).

Genesis then reports the following words by Sarah, words which the English reader would automatically suppose were part of what Sarah said to Abraham: “The LORD decide [or, Let the LORD judge’ (GTC Gen. 16:5) ^[30] ] between you and me” (JPST Gen. 16:5). These adversarial words color the immediately prior sentences, making Sarah’s entire communication to Abraham appear angrily divisive.

But it was Judaism’s greatest grammarian and all-time Torah authority, Rashi, who pointed out that the Hebrew word “between you” in this passage is written with a feminine indicator for the person being addressed, showing – according to Rashi and other Jewish sources – that Sarah’s statement about the Lord judging was addressed not to Abraham but to Hagar. ^[31]

Other Jewish sources agree that Sarah was invoking the Lord not against Abraham, but against anyone who would try to cause dissension between her and Abraham. ^[32] Sarah’s commitment to build Zion by being of one heart with her husband was of highest priority, even when she felt wronged.

By Abraham’s supportive response to Sarah – “Your maid is in your hands; deal with her as you think right” (JPST Gen. 16:6) – he was apparently hoping that his soft answer would turn away Sarah’s wrath. ^[33] In any event, Abraham’s reaction to Sarah shows that “he willingly accepts any corrections that come from her.” ^[34]

As Genesis tells, the pregnant Hagar fled. But an angel appeared to her by a spring of water in the wilderness, and instructed her to return to Sarah. That her child would play an important role in God’s plan is evident from the blessing the angel then pronounced upon Hagar, in the name of the Lord: “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude” (NRSV Gen. 16:10). The angel even designated the name of the son she was carrying in her womb: he would be called Ishmael, meaning “God has heard.” For, as the angel explained, the Lord had heeded Hagar in her distress.

The angel further assured Hagar that the freedom that she had sought would in fact be enjoyed by her son. The closest an English translation can come to what the angel then said about Ishmael is that he would be “a wild donkey of a man” (NJB Gen. 16:12), a phrase that can strike the modern ear as pejorative. But the Hebrew word is not the term for a domesticated donkey, but rather for a particular species that lives wild in the desert and, according to biblical scholar Gordon Wenham, “looks more like a horse than a donkey, and is used in the Old Testament as a figure of an individualistic lifestyle untrammeled by social convention.

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“ ^[35] As explained by some of Judaism’s most prominent authorities, the angel’s description of Ishmael carries no negative sense whatsoever, but means “a free man among men,” enjoying the freedom of the desert. ^[36]

And according to Samson Raphael Hirsch, the angel’s words in naming Ishmael and then prophesying about his freedom constituted instruction to Hagar in the “basic ideal” she must seek to instill in her son, and which alone would truly make him free: an awareness of that Divine Providence – memorialized by the name Ishmael, “God has heard” – that watches over the deeds of men and assists them in their suffering. ^[37] In short, Ishmael was, according to the words of the angel, destined to be a great man.

Hagar returned and bore Ishmael, giving Abraham a son at long last. It was part of the divine plan, for as latter-day revelation explains, “from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises” (D&C 132:34). Islamic texts tell of the tenderness of the relationship between Abraham and Ishmael, while Jewish tradition reports that Abraham loved him. ^[38]

Meanwhile, the faithful Sarah remained barren. What trials God requires of His most faithful!