Abraham rises early, loads bread and a skin of water onto Hagar’s shoulder along with their son Ishmael, and sends them into the desert. It is a task he dreads, and he does it at dawn. Rabbi Epstein explains why Abraham gave them no money, why a 16-year-old had to be carried, and what the Torah means when it says Hagar “strayed” in the wilderness of Beersheba after 27 years in Abraham’s house. He also points to a single Hebrew letter in G-d’s promise about Isaac that predicts another split in the family, a generation before Jacob and Esau are born.

The water runs out. Hagar leaves Ishmael under a bush and sits a bowshot away so she won’t have to watch him die. She weeps and prays. Yet the verse says G-d heard the cry of the boy.

Before Ishmael is saved, the angels object. They point to what his descendants will one day do to Jewish captives marched into exile after the destruction of the First Temple. G-d answers that Ishmael is judged “as he is there,” and right now he is righteous. Tom asks the obvious question: Abraham just sent him away for idolatry, immorality, and murder. How can anyone call him righteous? The two work through several answers before Rabbi Epstein offers one rooted in how heaven measures accountability.

After 90 years, Sarah finally has a son. Abraham names him Isaac, the name G-d gave him before he was born, and circumcises him on the eighth day. It should be the happiest moment in the household. Instead, people are talking. Sarah spent a night in King Abimelech’s palace, and less than a year later a woman who could never conceive is holding a baby. The cynics of the generation have a theory about who the father really is.

Rabbi Epstein says the gossips stumbled onto something true. Sarah answers the doubters on the day Isaac is weaned, when she nurses the children of the women who questioned her. Then the family begins to split. Sarah sees Ishmael, now 16, “mocking,” a word the Sages read as something far darker, and she insists that he and Hagar leave. Abraham is deeply distressed. G-d tells him to heed her voice. Rabbi Epstein explains what that phrase reveals about Sarah, and why G-d chose to send this message through her and not through Abraham.

Abraham and Sarah arrive in Gerar, and Abraham tells everyone Sarah is his sister. She is, technically: his half-sister. She is also his wife (and one of the 4 most beautiful women ever to live). So when King Abimelech hears there's an unmarried woman in town, he has her brought to his palace. That night G-d appears to Abimelech in a dream with a warning: give her back or you die. By morning the orifices of his entire household are sealed shut, and he summons Abraham with one question, “What did you see, that you did this thing?”

Abraham's answer is that there is no fear of G-d in this place. Rabbi Epstein calls it the crux of the whole passage, and he reads it as a direct challenge to a man who thinks of himself as righteous. If you decide for yourself what righteous means, you will never be righteous.

Then comes a puzzle. This is the second time Sarah has been taken. Twenty-four years earlier, Pharaoh took her too, and G-d struck his household with a painful skin disease. Abimelech gets something else entirely. Same woman, same offense, different punishment. Why would G-d change it? Rabbi Epstein's answer comes from a teaching in the Talmud, and it changes how you read what happens to Abraham and Sarah next.