Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/188

166 But Satan also appeared in the form of a poor beggar-man, and he stood at the door and asked an alms. Now Abraham and Sarah were busy attending to their guests, so they perceived him not, but the servants thrust him away, and Satan received nothing; therefore he presented himself before the Most High, and laid an accusation of inhospitality and churlishness against the Friend of God. In the meantime Sarah had assembled, and was entertaining all the wives of the guests of Abraham. And it happened that the women found that they had no milk in their bosoms to give their infants, and the babes screamed that no one could hear the voice of another. The mothers were in despair, for the children were hungry, and they were all dry. Then Sarah uncovered her breasts, and there spirted from them jets of milk, and all the babes were nourished at her bosom, and yet there was more.

Now when they saw this, the women, who had doubted that the child was really the offspring of Sarah, doubted no more, and cried, "We are not worthy that our little ones should be nourished at thy bosom!" And the story goes that all those who afterwards joined themselves to the people of Israel, and all those in every nation who in after-times became proselytes, were descended from those who sucked the breasts of Sarah. In allusion to this incident it is said in the Book of Psalms: "Thou makest the barren woman to keep house, and to be the joyful mother of (i.e. giving suck to) children." The child Isaac was shown to every visitor, and all were astonished at his resemblance to Abraham. Both the babe and his father were so much alike that it was impossible to distinguish one from the other, and all doubt as to whose it was vanished before such evidence of likeness to the father, and before the fulness of Sarah's breasts. But as confusion was likely to arise through the striking similarity between father and son, Abraham besought God to give him wrinkles and white hair, that he might not be mistaken for the babe Isaac, or the babe Isaac be mistaken for him.