Gn 21

During the decade of the ‘90s, a term that became deeply entrenched in our political and cultural discussion was the phrase “family values.” It’s now become fashionable for politicians of every stripe to parrot those words. Many of the people who have been the strongest advocates of “family values” have held up, as examples of the model family, something that has largely disappeared in America: a husband and wife with no previous marriages, 2.5 kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. (Forgive me for being facetious!)

“Family values” is usually closely linked with someone’s reading of “biblical values.” The interesting thing about this is that actual biblical families are rarely used as examples for our imitation. Maybe that’s a good thing, though it isn’t very honest. Those families tend to be too messy; they have too much conflict and dysfunction. In that sense, they tend to look like American families!

A good case in point is the family in today’s Old Testament reading. We’ve got all the ingredients necessary for some serious family therapy: jealousy, rivalry, power plays, squabbling over who’s to be the favored son, feelings of betrayal, and at the center of it all, a father who seems unwilling or unable to straighten out the mess. And I focus on the father, Abraham, because it is Father’s Day and because he is, in a way, the one in the middle of the whole mess.

To be honest, there are two qualities of this family that don’t exist in American life—at least not legally—polygamy and slavery! Another aspect, surrogate, or substitute, motherhood, is usually performed in a way quite different from the method described in the Bible. Most wives today wouldn’t suggest to their husbands that they have sex with another woman (indeed a much younger woman) in order to produce a child!

To understand what’s going on in today’s reading from Genesis 21, we have to look back at chapter 16. That’s where this whole thing gets started. God has already promised Abraham that he will father a son (which so far in life hasn’t happened), but the fact that Sarah is past menopause presents a problem. Abraham has assumed that Eliezer of Damascus, a trusted servant, will be his heir. But God assures him that his heir will be his own offspring.

Now Sarah knows that it’s no longer possible for her to give birth. So she comes up with an idea! She has this servant, a young Egyptian woman named Hagar, who is certainly able to produce a son. So this is the idea: following one of the customs of the day, Abraham is to take Hagar as his wife, and maybe she can have his baby. We don’t know what Abraham says in response to Sarah’s plan, but he doesn’t seem to put up too much of an argument!

Abraham really does take Hagar as his wife. The word used for her in 16:3, hV;ai [‘iššah], meaning “wife,” is the same word used for Sarah. The word for “concubine,” vg,l,yPi [pilegeš], is never applied to Hagar.[1] The son who’s the result of this union, Ishmael, is legally Abraham’s heir. And the same custom that provides for a male heir to be provided by a surrogate also forbids the expulsion of the slave wife and her child. That partly explains Abraham’s distress when Sarah demands that he do that very thing.[2]

But even before Ishmael is born, some of that serious jealousy and rivalry I spoke of earlier has already begun. After it becomes clear that Hagar is pregnant, Sarah perceives an air of contempt coming from her servant girl. We don’t know what’s actually going on. Maybe Hagar has adopted a smirking attitude, suggesting that she’s been able to give Abraham something that Sarah never could. Or perhaps Sarah is simply feeling threatened by this young woman who is rising in stature due to the relationship with her husband. In a society in which women are valued primarily for their ability to reproduce, Hagar is being empowered in a way that Sarah, even with all her wealth, is not.

All three of them are driven by different forces. Sarah, probably regretting that she ever came up with this scheme, feels a sense of desperation and outrage at her husband. Hagar, the one with the least amount of say, has been forced to share her bed with her elderly master and now faces the wrath of Sarah. And Abraham is torn by his love for Sarah, his respect for custom, and the very real bond that now exists with Hagar. Add to that, his hopes for the unborn child, and you have a man who really doesn’t know what to do. When Sarah presents her complaint, he simply withdraws and says, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please” (16:6). In other words, “I don’t want to get involved; do whatever you want.”

Sarah proceeds to make life a living hell for her servant, and we have the episode of Hagar running away into the wilderness. It’s there that she encounters God and receives the promise that she, too, will produce offspring that “cannot be counted for multitude” (16:10). This encounter is very important—Hagar is one of the few people in the entire Bible who gives God a name (El roi, “God of vision,” 16:13).

Let’s jump ahead about fourteen years, to today’s scripture reading in chapter 21. The Lord has told Abraham and Sarah that she actually will have a son, and he will be the true heir. Isaac is born, and the rivalry between the two wives now involves their two sons.

Things reach a melting point at the feast celebrating the day Isaac was weaned, which can happen when the child is up to three years old or more.[3] The party’s going fine until Sarah notices something that gets her really ticked off. She sees, as the scripture puts it in verse 9, Ishmael “playing.” The Greek and Latin versions of the Old Testament add something not found in the original Hebrew. They add that Ishmael was playing “with her son Isaac.” This has led to all kinds of theories, ranging from innocent play and laughter all the way to sexual assault. A common Jewish interpretation, which Paul reflects in Galatians 4:29, is that Ishmael somehow is bullying his younger half-brother, that he’s “laughing” and making fun of him.

But something else may be going on here, something that reflects the rivalry between the women. What we have in verse 9 is a play on words. The term for “playing” (qj,x'm] [m^etsahaq]) comes from the word meaning “laugh” (qj'x; [tsahaq]), which is also the source of Isaac’s name (qj;x]yi [yitshaq]). Taking into consideration the great similarity in the words for “playing,” “laughing,” and “Isaac,” it’s entirely possible that the scripture is referring to Sarah’s alarm at how similar Ishmael is to Isaac. She senses his equality by tradition and realizes that he poses a threat to Isaac as the heir. After all, he is the firstborn son. As a result, Sarah chooses to take decisive action. She demands that Hagar and Ishmael be driven out. Abraham really doesn’t want to do this, but he receives an assurance from God that Ishmael, too, will become the father of a nation. Again, God comes to the rescue of Hagar, this time with her son, when she finds herself stranded in the desert.

I’ve taken some time talking about the incident that leads to Hagar’s expulsion because it’s a key turning point in the story of this family. It also helps us understand Abraham. As I said at the beginning, I especially want to focus on him, today being Father’s Day.

My sermon title asks the question, “What kind of father is that?” If Abraham is intended, a rather harsh reply would be: “not a very good one.” What kind of father would allow his own son to be driven away and face abandonment in the wilderness? What kind of father would allow the mother of his son to be treated that way?

Of course, while we’re bashing Abraham, let’s not forget how he’s treated Sarah. In chapter 12, when the two of them travel into Egypt, he poses as her brother, with the result that the Pharaoh feels no hesitation in taking Sarah as his wife. And in chapter 20, Abraham does the same thing. Only a warning in a dream prevents King Abimelech from putting his hands on her. What kind of husband is that?

Certainly one lesson is that Abraham, with all his flaws, is still chosen by God to be a blessing to “all the families of the earth” (12:3). It’s God, not Abraham, who has the responsibility of bringing all this to pass. Abraham’s responsibility is to follow where God leads. And despite himself, he succeeds in doing this. And in his favor, we shouldn’t forget that Abraham didn’t exactly ask for all of this. Leaving his homeland wasn’t exactly at the top of his “to do” list. It certainly wasn’t his idea to be told that he would become father of a nation, after he and his wife were already old and childless.

While probably none of us would want Abraham as our own father (and don’t forget the incident when Isaac learns about burnt offerings the hard way!), we probably would want him as the example of faith that he eventually proves to be.

Thinking about Abraham and the question, “What kind of father is that?” has led me to think of my own experience. It’s led me to think of my own father. And I’m glad to say: my mother never encouraged him to take another wife and to father a half-brother with whom I now have a bitter rivalry! I don’t think he would have gone along with that idea anyway!

Sometimes on Father’s Day people feel obligated to praise to the highest heavens the glories of fatherhood. It can get even worse on Mother’s Day. Others—not too many—go in the opposite direction and talk about how their dad was the biggest jerk who ever lived. I won’t do either of these!

What I will say is that my father is someone I know really loved me. (And still does!) Having been adopted as a baby, I later came to understand all the hoops he and my mother had to jump through in order to get me. I know that I was truly wanted. Later on, though, he probably wondered what he’d gotten himself into.

When I was young, we did all the usual father-son stuff: going fishing, throwing the football…all that kind of stuff. But as I approached adolescence, it was clear that he and I lived on separate planets. For example, I remember times when he would perhaps be explaining something to me about lawnmower engines, and I’d be looking at our dog and wondering what it would be like to think with her brain. Add to that a dose of teenage rebellion, and I think you get the point: we weren’t connecting.

Something happened in 1985. Within the span of one or two months, both my father and I came to Christ. Our relationship had never been a bad one; it just hadn’t really gone anywhere. We spoke at only the most shallow of levels. But Jesus Christ changed that. We now were free to open up to each other. And I rediscovered something that I had believed as a little kid: my dad’s an okay guy!

Just as it was faith that redeemed our relationship, so it’s faith that redeems Abraham. He and his family provide ample proof that nobody’s perfect. In fact, we can be quite vicious to each other. But by the grace of God, we can rise above that.

“What kind of father is that?” All of us can ask that question of our own fathers, and those among us who are fathers can ask that of themselves. Each person has a different answer. But regardless of our own particular cases, there are fathers that all who are in Christ share: the fathers of the church. (I also realize that there have been many mothers of the church, but I’m sorry, today is Father’s Day!)

There’s a song in the old Presbyterian hymnal (the red one) entitled “Faith of Our Fathers.” I want to finish with a stanza not included in the hymnal, a stanza which is a prayer to God:[4]

[1] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 30-31.

[2] John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), 79.

[3] E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1964), 155.

[4] Handbook to the Hymnal, ed. William Chalmers Covert (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Education, 1935), 290.