Parshat Vayera: Brothers in Yarns

By BEN GREENFIELD

The Biblical narratives of Aqeidat Yitzhaq and of “Yishmael's Expulsion” hold radically different places in the hearts and minds of Jewish readers. Aqeidat Yitzhaq is, after all, Aqeidat Yitzaq! - familiar to us through repeated emphasis in Jewish liturgy, literature, and theology – while the story of Abraham sending Yishmael and Hagar away is, well, somewhere in Bereishit. What may surprise you, however, is that the Torah seems to disagree with this well-known dichotomy. Instead, she implores us – constantly, emphatically – to read treat these two episodes as a singular whole.

The Torah employs two tools in closing the gap between these two narratives: structural parallels and textual parallels. To appreciate the first, it may be worthwhile to briefly summarize both stories. 

Aqeidat Yitzhak, it may be recalled, flows roughly as follows:

Avraham is commanded to kill Yitzhaq; Avraham rises and prepares; they journey, without a set destination; for a moment, it seems Yitzhaq will be killed; Divine intervention saves Yitzhaq; Avraham opens his eyes and sees a replacement; God blesses Avraham's seed; cut to the genealogy of Yitzhaq's future wife (cf. Gen 22)

Now consider Aqeidat Yishmael Yishmael's Expulsion:

Avraham is commanded to banish Yishmael and Hagar; Avraham rises and prepares; Yishmael and Hagar journey, without a set destination; for a moment, it seems Yishmael will die; Divine intervention saves Yitzhaq; Hagar's eyes open and she finds water; God blesses Hagar's seed; Yishmael finds a wife (cf. 21:12-21)

The parity, I pray, is perfectly perceptible. Of course, my summaries overextend themselves just a bit in an attempt to emphasize the resemblance. Nonetheless, the point remains: in their structural core, the two stories are pretty much one.

In addition, a wide range of syntactic parallels likewise link these two tales. A full survey is beyond the scope of brief dvar – but suffice it to say that many relatively rare phrases are blatantly repeated between the two stories: “Abraham rose early in the morning”; “a distance”; “laid it upon”; “the angel of the Lord called to him”; “lifted up”; “get up”; “listen to . . . the voice” . . . the list goes on. One can find even dissimilar words that bind the texts together: Hagar places her dying child under a bush ( הַשִּׂיחִם) and Avraham finds a ram caught in a thicket (בַּסְּבַךְ ): rarely does shrubbery play such a prominent role in the Biblical chronicle without first being set ablaze.

In effect, reading Aqeidat Yitzhaq on its own is simply impossible: one cannot scan it without immediately thinking of Yishmael and Hagar. Reading over Yishmael's Expulsion elicits the converse effect, as Aqeidat Yitzhak language and themes are soon invoked. And the effect is profound.

For one, this connection liberates the Yishmael story from its otherwise “mediocre” place in the Stories--of-Biblical-Significance hierarchy. Much as the re-canonization of Shir HaShirim transformed it from an apocryphal piece of poetry to a central theological work, the re-Aqeidazation of Yishmael's story invites us – allows us, even – to find rich meaning therein. In addition, this literary bridge rescues us from the trap of necessarily reading the Yishmael story through “negative glasses”. Several traditional commentators seem to snatch at every hermeneutic opportunity to gloss virtue into Yitzhaq's tale and vice into the Yishmael story. (For example, Rashi to 21:14: “Avraham gave them bread and water – But not gold or silver, for Avraham hated Yishmael for developing evil ways.”) Guided by the tight similarities of these texts, we may see in Hagar and Yishmael tremendous signs of virtue¹ or, alternatively, be emboldened by the Torah to read constructive criticism into the Akeida chapter. Granted, in reading these texts carefully, we may arrive at the same conclusions transmitted by Rashi and captured in our liturgy – but in letting them live side-by-side, we breathe new life into Yishmael's story and discover a fresh view of the familiar Aqeida story.

1Several Islamic hadiths do just that, reading faith and heroism in those self-same Biblical details. Check out http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/I/ishmael.html for these texts in translation.