And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.
All Commentaries on Genesis 16:3 Go To Genesis 16
Didymus the Blind
AD 398
Virtue’s purpose was, as we have said, that the wise man do training exercises first in preliminary education and shadow so that later, with this training behind him, he might arrive at greater things—which is the proper procedural order. It is likewise illogical that after the knowledge of perfect things one should turn back to petty things. This is in fact what the apostle Paul writes to the Galatians, who, after the gospel had been preached to them, wanted to live with the shadow, which is the law …. They had been taken in by a certain Ebion, who wanted to practice Judaism after having become a Christian and who was so successful in persuading others that the apostles gave him this surname to show his poverty. Ebion, in fact, means “poor,” and he was so called because of the perversion and poverty of his ideas. As for the fact that the Galatians were of pagan origin, Paul writes, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are not gods, but now you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God.” He reproached them, as I said, in these terms (to produce now the text I announced): “Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” Indeed, when once they had given a wholly divine beginning to their edifice, they were looking for figures in an inappropriate manner, for they were searching for them when it was no longer their time. For we must understand why the visible circumcision was given and until what time it was appropriate to practice it. If one has understood this, he has had children from the concubine and is able, after this, to comprehend the circumcision of the heart that is effected by the Spirit. This holy man, upon the advice of virtue, went in to the slave girl whom she had placed at his disposal, as we have explained, and the slave girl conceived. But after this, it is inappropriate to remain with her beyond the time of her favor. Many indeed, having made use of the preparatory exercises in view of the perfect teaching, never go beyond this point, thus giving birth to a progeny of slavery, and in a certain sense dishonor virtue …. One dishonors virtue, then, who gives other things precedence over it. For if one chooses virtue, not for its own sake but for the sake of something else—praise, for example, or glory—then in a certain sense one is dishonoring the good, which in itself is not susceptible to dishonor.
