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| Of Sarah’s Handmaid, Hagar, Whom She Herself Wished to Be Abraham’s Concubine. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter 25.—Of Sarah’s
Handmaid, Hagar, Whom She Herself Wished to Be Abraham’s
Concubine.
And here follow the times of
Abraham’s sons, the one by Hagar the bond maid, the other by
Sarah the free woman, about whom we have already spoken in the
previous book. As regards this transaction, Abraham is in no way
to be branded as guilty concerning this concubine, for he used her
for the begetting of progeny, not for the gratification of lust;
and not to insult, but rather to obey his wife, who supposed it
would be solace of her barrenness if she could make use of the
fruitful womb of her handmaid to supply the defect of her own
nature, and by that law of which the apostle says, “Likewise also
the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife,”918 could, as a
wife, make use of him for childbearing by another, when she could
not do so in her own person. Here there is no wanton lust, no
filthy lewdness. The handmaid is delivered to the husband by the
wife for the sake of progeny, and is received by the husband for
the sake of progeny, each seeking, not guilty excess, but natural
fruit. And when the pregnant bond woman despised her barren
mistress, and Sarah, with womanly jealousy, rather laid the blame
of this on her husband, even then Abraham showed that he was not a
slavish lover, but a free begetter of children, and that in using
Hagar he had guarded the chastity of Sarah his wife, and had
gratified her will and not his own,—had received her without
seeking, had gone in to her without being attached, had impregnated
without loving her,—for he says, “Behold thy maid is in thy
hands: do to her as it pleaseth thee;”919 a man able to use women as a man
should,—his wife temperately, his handmaid compliantly, neither
intemperately!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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