Rosh HaYeshiva, Machon Meir
“Sarah saw the son that Hagar had born to Avraham, playing” (Beresheet 21:9). The Matriarch Sarah saw that Yishma'el was shooting arrows at her son, Yitzhak, and that he had the intention of murdering him” (Rashi). She knew through her divine intuition that Yishma'el’s goal was to dispossess Yitzhak of his inheritance, Eretz Yisra'el. She therefore turned to Avraham with an unequivocal demand: “Drive away this slave together with her son. The son of this slave will not share the inheritance with my son Yitzhak” (21:10). It is true that this demand was difficult from Avraham, but G-d told him: “Do not be troubled because of the boy and your slave. Do everything that Sarah tells you. It is through Yitzhak that you will gain posterity” (21:12).
Avraham heeded Sarah's words, sending Hagar and her son, Yishma'el, out into the desert. He became an expert archer. He would sit in the desert and steal from passersby, as it says, “His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him” (16:12). “Everyone hated him and provoked him” (Rashi, Ibid.).
Our ancestors’ deeds presage our own. The Yishma'elites continue to shoot at us. They have only replaced their bows with rifles. Likewise, their goals have remained the same - to dispossess the Jewish People from Eretz Yisra'el, the inheritance bequeathed to us by Avraham. They have the same methods and the same goals. “The same dame in a different cloak.”
Likewise, Sarah’s words - “Drive away this slave together with her son. The son of this slave will not share the inheritance with my son Yitzhak” - as a response to Yishma'el’s attempts at murder, is a message that resounds in our own time. The day is not far off when we will see with our own eyes how the divine command to Avraham is fulfilled: “With everything that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice,” regarding which Rashi comments, “The voice of her divine intuition. Avraham was second to Sarah in prophecy.”
BeSorot Tovot,
Looking forward to complete salvation,
With the Love of Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael,
Shabbat Shalom
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