Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

But all this time God’s eye was a witness to all that was passing. When we get to the end of self, He always comes to our rescue—our extremity is His opportunity. In her resided the religious disposition in the highest measure, and just at a time when the nations appeared about to sink into heathenism, hence her faith must be saved to the race, so “the Lord plagued Pharaoh with great plagues,” that is to say, God administered “blow on blow,” and these were of such a nature as to guard Sarah from injury. At length the ruler of the land, whose heart does not seem to be hardened like the later kings, concludes that his punishment is for the sake of Sarah, and restores her to Abraham.

After Abraham had separated from Lot, the Lord again appeared unto him, at which time Abraham complained for the want of an heir. So the Lord leads Abraham out of his tent, under the heavens as seen by night, and in that land of blue skies, the night heavens are beautiful indeed. God had promised at first one natural heir, but now the countless stars which he sees, should both represent the innumerable seed which should spring from this one heir, and at the same time be a warrant for his faith.

At this point the human element again seeks to aid in bringing about the realization of the divine promise. The childless state of Abraham’s house was its great sorrow, and the more so, since it was in perpetual opposition to the calling, destination, and faith of Abraham, and was a constant trial of his faith. Sarah herself, doubtless, came gradually more and more, on account of her barrenness, to appear as a hindrance to the fulfillment of the divine promise, and as Abraham had already fixed his eye upon his head servant, Eliezer of Damascus, so now Sarah fixes her eye upon her head maid, Hagar the Egyptian. It must be this maid not only had mental gifts which qualified her for the prominent place she occupied in the household, but also inward participation in the faith of her mistress. So Hagar is substituted, for, in the substitution, Sarah hopes to carry forward the divine purpose of the family. In this she certainly practiced an act of heroic self-denial, but still, in her womanly excitement, anticipated her destiny as Eve had done, and carried even Abraham away with her alluring hope. Though she greatly erred in this effort to assist God in bringing in the realization of the promise, and thereby revealed a lack of faith in the divine appointments, yet we have here a beautiful exhibition of her heroic self-denial even in her error. Perhaps, viewed from the human standpoint, we should here bring into our narrative also, the fact, that they had been already ten years in Canaan, and Sarah was now seventy-five years of age, waiting in vain for the heir, through whom the great blessing was to come to all the families of the earth.

However, in all this, Sarah, the noble generous hearted, had not counted upon the conduct Hagar would assume in her new relation. As an Egyptian, Hagar seemed to have regarded herself as second wife, instead of recognizing her subordination to her mistress. This subordination seems to have been assumed by Abraham, and hence the apparent indifference probably was the source of Sarah’s sense of injury, when she exclaimed, “My wrong be upon thee.” She felt that Abraham ought to have redressed her wrong—ought to have seen and rebuked the insolence of the maid. Beyond a doubt, looking at the pride and insolence of Hagar, from Sarah’s standpoint, it was very trying. The Hebrews regarded barrenness as a great evil and a divine punishment, while fruitfulness was held as a great good and a divine blessing. The unfruitful Hannah received the like treatment with Sarah, from the second wife of Elkanah. It is still thus, to-day, in eastern lands. With almost the tenderness of Elkanah to the sorrowing Hannah, Abraham says, “Behold the maid is in thy hand.” He regards Hagar still as the servant, and the one who fulfills the part of Sarah. But now the overbent bow flies back with violence. This is the back stroke of her own eager, overstrained course. Sarah now turns and deals harshly with Hagar. How precisely, we are not told. Doubtless, through the harsh thrusting her back into the mere position and service of a slave. But Hagar, it appears, would not submit to such treatment. She, perhaps, believed that she had grown above such a position, and fled from the presence of Sarah.

What need was there for Sarah to learn the lesson of the patience of faith. God had promised her great honors and blessings. There was in her nature much that needed toning up by the grace of patience, and God would take his own best time in developing her life. Her haste to anticipate the blessing promised, not only delayed its realization, but brought sorrow to her own heart, and untold trouble to her posterity, for Ishmael’s hand has been “against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” The Ishmaelites, it is said, “dwelt from Havilah unto Shur,” and it is certain that they stretched in very early times across the desert to the Persian Gulf, peopled the north and west of the Arabian peninsula, and eventually formed the chief element of the Arab nation, which has proved to be a living fountain of humanity whose streams for thousands of years have poured themselves far and wide. Its tribes are found in all the borders of Asia, in the East Indies, in all Northern Africa, along the whole Indian Ocean down to Molucca, they are spread along the coast to Mozambique, and their caravans cross India to China. These wandering hordes of the desert have always and still lead a robber life. They justify themselves in it, upon the ground of the hard treatment of Ishmael, their father, who, driven out of his paternal inheritance, received the desert for his possession, with the permission to take whatever he could find. Mohammed is in the line of Ishmael, and the followers of Islam, in their pride and delusion, claim that the rights of primogeniture belong to Ishmael instead of Isaac, and assert their right to lands and goods, so far as it pleases them. Vengeance for blood rules in them, and the innocent have often fallen victims to their horrible massacres. So that the disaster which overtook the race in this premature anticipation of divine Providence is second only to the disaster that overtook Eve in the temptation and the loss of Paradise. Could Sarah have foreseen all the sad consequences of her unseemly haste to pluck the unripened promise God meant to give her, she certainly would have cultivated the patience of faith.

But the years passed on—fifteen of them nearly—since the child Ishmael had been in the home of the patriarch, and the visit of the angels under the Oaks in the plain of Mamre. During this time God had once more renewed his promise to Abraham, and also the rite of circumcision had been established, and, doubtless, the symbolical purification of Abraham and his house, opened the way for the friendly appearance of Jehovah in the persons of the angels, or men, as the patriarch at first thought them to be, as he looked up, while seated in his tent door through the heat of the noontide hours.

When he saw the angels, “he ran to meet them,” and, it seems, instantly recognized among the three the one whom he addressed as the Lord, and who afterwards was clearly distinguished from the two accompanying angels. “If now,” Abraham asks, “I have found favor in Thy sight, pass not away.” This cordial invitation, while it has in it the marked hospitality of Orientals, to the inner consciousness of Abraham it had a deeper meaning, the covenant relation between himself and Jehovah, that is, he hopes this relation is still continued. His humble and pressing invitation, his zealous preparations, his modest description of the meal, his standing by to serve those who were eating, are picturesque traits of the life of faith as it here reveals itself, in an exemplary hospitality. This is the custom still in Eastern lands, and is referred to by our Lord in that passage where He speaks of His second coming, and shall find His people watching, for He will “make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them” (Luke xii, 37), and seems to be one of the countless instances where, in the web of the Holy Scriptures, the golden threads of the Old Testament are interwoven with those of the New, and form, as it were, one whole. And the fact that this beautiful custom of hospitality is still observed among the Bedouins, as we can speak from personal knowledge, is remarkable, and impresses us with the thought that the covenant blessings, like some sweet, heavenly fruitage, refuses to be lost out of the lives of that ancient people.

The meal having been served in this beautiful Oriental manner, the Lord asks, “Where is Sarah?” Abraham made answer, “Behold, in the tent.” Then the Angel of the Lord, not only renews the promise, but that it should be fully realized in the birth of Isaac within a year. Sarah, behind the tent door, hears this unqualified assurance, but, viewing it from nature’s standpoint, rendered doubly improbable from her life-long barrenness, “laughed within herself.” We can not regard this as a laugh of unbelief, or the scoff of doubt, as some do, but as a laugh falling short in her conception of God. The thing which was impossible according to the established laws of nature, her faith had not yet grasped as being possible with God. But the Lord, nevertheless, observed Sarah’s laugh, and this divine hearing on the part of the Angel of the Lord, startled her, and had its part in the strengthening of her faith. It prepared the way for the question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” To her own mind one thing, namely, that she should be a mother at ninety years of age, seemed too hard. And so the question had to do with this very thought, and must be settled on the side of her faith. And she grandly and heroically asserted her belief that nothing, not even the seeming insurmountable obstacle which nature interposed, was too great for God to overcome, and her faith was strengthened, for we read, “through faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. xi, 11). The trial of her patience of faith was a long struggle. It took twenty-five years to bring her up to the point where her faith could grasp the truth that nothing was too hard for the Lord to perform. But this blessed woman at length stood in right relation to God, for, without faith, be it observed, it is impossible to please God, or to receive anything at His hands.

In due time Isaac was born. It was the great event in Sarah’s life. As the mother looked down into the face of the son of her bosom she breaks forth in an exultant song of thankfulness, not unlike that of Mary, the blessed virgin. The little song of Sarah, it has beautifully been said, is the first cradle hymn. Our Lord reveals the profoundest source of this joy, when, in addressing the Pharisees, who held Abraham to be their father, said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” Sarah, in the birth of Isaac, is the ancestress of Christ. Spiritually viewed, the birthday of Isaac becomes the door or entrance of the day of Christ, and the day of Christ the background of the birthday of Isaac.

Another beautiful incident in connection with the childhood of Isaac is, that Sarah, his mother, even at her advanced age and exalted station in life, did not deem it a burden to nurse him. Calvin has well said, “Whom God counts worthy of the honor of being a mother He at the same time makes a nurse; and those who feel themselves burdened through the nursing of their children, rend, as far as in them lies, the sacred bond of nature, unless weakness, or some infirmities, form their excuse.”