Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/163

 Hayar and Ishmael trates

145

for us one of the simplest, yet also one of the most

fundamental, mother's

beautiful,

love.

The

and

of

eternal

human

virtues,

a

Hagar's love, and of her the thought of the impending death

picture

despair and anguish at

of

of her child and of her helplessness to relieve his suffering,

touches us to the quick.

We

spared no effort to keep her

may be little

Hagar had and that she

sure that

one

alive,

had denied herself of the food and water in order to give it to him. And childlike, he had accepted it unquestioningly, not understanding nor appreciating his mother's sacrifice, nor realizing

that

she

children always do

was giving her very life for him. So more or less. The fulness of a mother's

love and a mother's sacrifice ever.

We

we become rifices for

prehend

is

too great to be appreciated

it only when make our own loving sacYet even then we do not com-

begin to understand something of parents ourselves, and

our own children.

all

that our dear parents have done for us,

the

all

tender love they have showered upon us.

The more we read its

irresistible call

the story

and the more we respond

to

for sympathy, the more, too, the realiza-

that Hagar and Hagar's love are types, types motherhood and true mother's love. Especially are they types of the Jewish mother and Jewish parental love and capacity for sacrifice. True, Hagar was not a Jewess by birth. But inasmuch as Jewish law and lore taught that the wife lives in the tent or house of her husband and follows completely after him, the Bible undoubtedly meant to

tion grows,

of true

that, despite the accident of Egyptian birth, Hagar was nevertheless a Jewess in thought and act. Similarly Joseph's wife was an Egyptian and dwelt in Egypt, yet her offspring, Ephraim and Manasseh, are represented through-

imply

out the Bible as quite as thoroughly Jewish as any of the sons of Jacob. So, too, here it is the God of Israel who cares for

Hagar and her

son.

And

the sentiments

and

vir-

tues which this story illustrates have always been recognized