Sarah's Good Eye and Hagar's Pride

1a“Do to her what is good in your eyes” [Bereishis 16:6]. Onkelos translates this as “do to her as is proper in your eyes,” literally, “as will set her right.” In terms of our own avodah, the verse can be understood as follows. Avraham Avinu's defining trait was a good eye, a generous and favorable way of seeing others (Avos 5:19). Avraham was secondary to Sarah Imeinu in prophecy, and she surely learned this trait from her husband and had a good eye as well. (Chazal's remark that a woman is “narrow-eyed toward guests” [Bava Metzia 87a] has already been explained by earlier commentators and by the Ba'al Shem Tov.) A good eye is the opposite of an evil eye. An evil eye can turn something good into harm; Chazal say that ninety-nine of a hundred deaths come from the evil eye (Bava Metzia 107b). In the same way, a good eye can turn every bad thing into good. This is why looking at the face of a tzaddik does so much for a person's holiness, as Chazal teach: “When you study, look at your teachers' faces, as it says, ‘Your eyes shall see your teachers’ [Yeshayahu 30:20]” (Horayos 12a). It works the other way too: when the tzaddik looks at his students, his gaze helps set them right.

1bSo when Sarah complained that Hagar was belittling her, Avraham told her, “Do to her what is good in your eyes”: use your good eye to set her right, and turn whatever is bad in her into good. But a tzaddik's gaze helps only someone who submits to him. A student who humbles himself before his teacher is able to receive the holiness that flows to him when the tzaddik looks at him. Hagar, however, became arrogant. She stopped respecting Sarah and thought herself the more righteous of the two. As the Midrash relates (Bereishis Rabbah 45:4), she said, “Sarah is not what she seems. She has been with that tzaddik all these years and never conceived, while I conceived at once.” Because of this, Hagar could not receive any good from Sarah's gaze. Worse, her contempt turned that very gaze against her. That is what Chazal mean when they say Sarah cast an evil eye on Hagar's unborn child, who was then lost [cf. Bereishis Rabbah 45:5; Rashi on Bereishis 16:5]. Heaven forbid that we take this literally about Sarah. Rather, by looking down on Sarah and telling herself that Sarah was not righteous while she was, Hagar drew the harm onto herself and turned Sarah's good eye into a bad one.

2What emerges is clear: to receive a tzaddik's blessing and holiness, a person must humble himself and set himself aside. That is what draws the blessing and the higher holiness down to him. I saw the same idea in a manuscript recording the words of the elder Rebbe, R' Yitzchak of Vurka, zt"l: the story of Hagar and Sarah is the story of a student and his teacher.

3This also explains what the angel told Hagar: “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her” [Bereishis 16:9]. Why did he need to add “submit yourself to her”? Because he was showing her the way forward. She was to place herself under Sarah and recognize that Sarah was truly the gevirah, the mistress. The word is related to gever, which Rashi explains as one who masters his yetzer (Rashi on Tehillim 37:23). Sarah had mastered hers and was completely righteous, while Hagar was a maidservant, whose eyes should look “to the hand of her mistress” [Tehillim 123:2]. And if it seemed to Hagar that Sarah was being harsh with her, she should know that Sarah only meant to humble her. Then she would receive all of Sarah's blessings and good. (From the author's handwritten manuscript.)