Fifth Reading: Sarah’s Sensitivity
“She said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman will not inherit together with my son, Isaac’”
The main narrative in the fifth reading is the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael. Ousting dangerous foreigners from the land corresponds to the fifth of the seven emotive sefirot, the sefirah of acknowledgment (hod). Acknowledgement also corresponds to the body’s immune system, which is tasked with identifying foreign organisms that are dangerous, must be fought against, and expelled.
To expel Hagar and Ishmael, God instructs Abraham to acknowledge the correctness of Sarah’s judgment that Ishamel could not and should not have any part in Abraham’s legacy. God says to him, “Everything that Sarah tells you to do, listen to her voice.” Listening, or hearing relates to the sefirah of understanding (binah), which extends all the way to the sefirah of acknowledgement. Abraham indeed acknowledges that Sarah has greater insight than he does.
On these words, “Listen to her voice,” Rashi writes, "[listen] to the holy spirit within her. From here we learn that Abraham was secondary to Sarah when it came to prophecy.” The explicit reference to Abraham as a prophet is found in the fourth reading of the parashah, in the verse, “Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet.” Thus, Abraham corresponds to the sefirah of victory (netzach) and Sarah to the sefirah of acknowledgment (hod), the two sefirot that are considered the source of prophecy. In addition, we have now learnt that the prophecy emanating from the sefirah of acknowledgment surpasses that which originates from victory.
The Earnestness of the Present
After the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, a situation arises where Ishmael is cast under one of the shrubs, inclined to die, until God hears his voice “as he is.” What these words mean is that despite all the death and suffering Ishmael would bring to the world in the future, at the present moment, “he is being judged based on his current actions, not on what he will do in the future.”
This too connects with the sefirah of acknowledgment, whose inner experience is one of earnestness. In our service of God with our faculties, earnestness means to refrain from investigating the future. From God’s unconditional assessment of Ishmael, there is a lesson on how to relate to everyone with earnestness and consider them “as is.”
(Amudeha Shivah, Bereishit, p. 101)
