It always bothered me: How could Sarah mistreat Hagar to such an extent that Hagar felt compelled to run away? It’s true that non-chassidic mefarshim regard the avos and imahos as fallible human beings and thus subject to mortal foibles. But to act so pettily? To be so jealous of your co-wife that you cruelly mistreat her? My mind finally settled when I read Rav Hirsch’s interpretation of this incident. First, according to Rav Hirsch, “ulai ibaneh mimenah” does not mean, “Perhaps I will become pregnant” if you marry Hagar, as so many of us were taught it did in elementary school. A woman doesn’t magically become pregnant just because her co-wife becomes pregnant. No, what “ulai ibaneh mimenah” essentially means is, “I will be able to build the future through her.” Rav Hirsch writes that humans beings since the dawn of civilization have been contributing to a “great building” in time. Each generation builds another layer, and each child serves as a brick in this edifice. Sarah found herself unable to give Avraham the child he needed to carry on his world-changing mission. So Sarah suggested he marry her slave. If Hagar had a child, Sarah would be able to raise it and be “the means of its spiritual development” and thus properly contribute to this “building” in time by perpetuating Avraham’s legacy. But Hagar remaining a slave “was the fundamental condition on which the whole purpose of Sarah’s plan depended” [emphasis mine]. If Hagar regarded herself as a slave, her child “could be completely treated as Sarah’s child, and Hagar’s influence on it completely countered and excluded.” (Hagar, after all, was an Egyptian.) So “va’te’aneha.” Most people translate this word as “and Sarah dealt harshly with her.” Rav Hirsch, however, translates it as “and Sarah humbled her.” “Anah” means to answer or to be dependent (a poor person is an ani), so “anei” means to make someone feels dependent. Sarah tried to remind Hagar of her subordinate position so that she, Sarah, could properly raise Yishmael according to her vision, perpetuating Avraham’s mission. Sarah miscalculated, however. Rav Hirsch writes she didn’t appreciate that “what she had wished was impossible – that a woman who had become a wife to Avraham and a mother to her child could not…be a slave. Avraham’s proximity and Avraham’s spirit would break the feelings of slavery, would awaken the feeling of the equality of all human beings, would arouse the urge of freedom and would break all chains.” So, yes, Sarah, made a mistake, but according to Rav Hirsch, the mistake wasn’t indulging feelings of cruelty or jealousy. It was developing a plan that didn’t take into account the spiritual transformation that would overcome someone who became Avraham’s wife. Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity. Elliot Resnick, PhD , is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.