And the angel of the LORD said unto her,
Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hands.
All Commentaries on Genesis 16:9 Go To Genesis 16
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
As in concrete image, we see here foreshadowed the fact that once the Emmanuel has appeared and his mystery has been shown to the world, the types of the Mosaic cult necessarily disappear, giving way to the evangelical teachings, the better and more perfect precepts. Of what image am I speaking? Because Sarah had not had children, Hagar, after having given birth to Ishmael, began to show arrogant contempt for her owner, the free woman. Sarah was unable to bear that arrogance and began also to mistreat the Egyptian woman. The latter fled from the house and lost her way in the desert. An angel from heaven asked her where she was going and where she had come from. She replied, “I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarah.” And the holy angel replied, “Return to your mistress, and humble yourself under her hands.” She was ordered then, by the voice of the angel, not to depart from the free woman—from instruction, that is, which summons to the dignity of free persons—and to humble herself instead under the free woman’s hands. The cult according to the law, in fact, which takes place through images and types, is as it were the servant of evangelical teachings. In it, obscurely, the beauty of the truth is revealed. At this point in time, the law, which was once established by Moses through the ministry of angels, receives an order from the voice of an angel to bend the neck to the evangelical oracles and to bow and yield, even if unwillingly, to the free woman. This, I maintain, is the spiritual interpretation of Hagar’s imposed submission to the rule of Sarah. We should remember, moreover, that even the venerable Paul sees Hagar and Sarah as prefiguring the two Testaments: “One, who bears children for slavery, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem,” and the other—Sarah—who bears for the dignity of the free. ,.
