Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Genesis is a truly dense text. Dozens of stories that all number among the most well known in human history derive from it, and many of its main cast are the most known people of all time. But despite its lasting popularity, Genesis is still a work of great mystery. Since each story is so short, and often rather cryptic, entire books have been written about near every verse: one can truly spend a lifetime reading Genesis. One thing that has always struck me about it personally is the way it treats minor characters, the seemingly odd manner by which some seemingly important people are given but a single sentence to describe their life, leading to fantastical theories on them such as Enoch or Nimrod, who's enigmacy has lead to a small library of Biblical fanfiction. I thought I delve into the apocrypha surrounding some of my favourite Genesis side-characters: the maids.
Maids make surprisingly frequent appearances in the Old Testament, although most are merely allusions without name nor introduction. However three maids do form pivotal parts in the story and lineage of the House of Abraham, and thus the line of David and the Jewish nation as a whole. The first, who is incidentally my favourite character from Genesis, is Miss Hagar of Egypt, Sarah's maidservant and eventual surrogate concubine of Abraham. The other two are Zilpah and Bilhah, the more passive but nonetheless important maidservants of Leah and Rachel respectively, who both end up themselves as mothers to Jacob's children giving birth to the eponymous founders of four of the twelve Tribes of Israel: Dan, Naphtali, Gad & Asher. But here I want to expound the compelling story of Hagar, often missed in a cursory reading of the life of Abraham.
Hagar's origins are obscure, introduced only as the "Egyptian slavegirl" of Sarah (nee Sarai) in the text of Genesis. However tradition says that Hagar was no mere slavegirl, but in fact a princess of Egypt. When Abraham and Sarah first arrived in Egypt and asked for asylum from the Pharaoh, the married couple pretended to be brother & sister. However the Pharaoh, believing them to be siblings, demanded Sarah join his harem in return for Abraham's asylum. The couple were destitute so had no choice but to accept. When Sarah arrived in the court at Memphis, the Pharaoh gifted her with all sorts of riches (mostly gold and myrrh and the like), but also his own daughter Hagar to be Sarah's personal lady's maid, which seemed to be his way of training his unmarried daughters in domestics. However, Abraham's deceit would not go long undiscovered for before the Pharaoh could consummate his new addition to his harem (which was all that was needed to become married in those days) he came out in diseased boils all over his groin which his court physicians (somehow) correctly identified as being omens for adultery, thus leading the Pharaoh to uncover the truth. The Pharaoh was angry, obviously, but he was also scared that more divine punishment might come to Egypt's crown jewels if he punished Abraham too harshly (foreshadowing for Exodus I suppose) and so while he did expel Abraham and Sarah from Egypt, he also promised them safe passage as well as letting Sarah keep all her gifts, including the princess-cum-maid Hagar; if only the Pharaoh of Moses' era had such foresight. In this way we see what I have discussed before as the divine role of maids, as belonging both above and below those who they serve. Just as Mary Poppins is both servant and disciplinarian of the Banks children, and Tohru is both an almighty dragon and mere house-cleaner, Hagar is both royalty and a slave. And this dynamic plays into her role in the story also. Whereas in modern anime we often see maids as physically strong bodyguards, a desirable trait in the world of shounen manga, Hagar instead is fertile: exactly what Abraham needs to propagate his bloodline which God has already promised will be the chosen people. As the years wax on it seems less and less likely to the ageing couple that Sarah will ever bear children, and with Abraham now 86 years young Sarah started to panic that she will stay childless forever (as many childless women do in their middle age). And so she gave Abraham her maidservant Hagar to be his concubine, and give her a child by surrogate. It is unknown whether Hagar was onboard with this proposal, but I am going to assume she was as being the maid of a vagrant family wandering through the Arabian desert can't have been particularly romantically fulfilling. And so Hagar, with her truly awesome levels of fertility, becomes pregnant on the very first night with Abraham's firstborn: Ishmael. However, as Hagar becomes more and more pregnant, Sarah starts to grow regretful of her decision and jealous of her maid to the point at which she gives her husband an ultimatum: he must choose one wife and cast out the other, Sarah or Hagar. Abraham chooses his true wife Sarah as any man would, and so Sarah, after "dealing hardly with her" sends the heavily pregnant girl into the harsh mountains that lie along the Eastern shore of the Red Sea. This would surely have been a death sentence if it were not more the grave of God, who took pity on her and sent down an angel who said:
"Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands... I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude... Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren."Hagar agrees to return to Sarah and resubmit to her as her maid again, and in return God opens a freshwater spring from a black boulder that sat nearby. That black stone would eventually become a place of great worship, the rock towards which all followers of Muhammad face to pray, called "the Kaaba", and around it would grow the city of Mecca. Or so the Imams claim at least. It is said Hagar wept as she drank from the spring, thanking God and declaring him to be "El Roi", which unfortunately was not her rudimentary Spanish lessens from the Pharaonic schoolteachers leaking out, but rather the Hebrew phrase "אלרא" meaning "The God who sees me": the first one who had ever "seen" her and taken pity on her, rather than enslaving, beating or exiling her. And so with God's promise (and founding Mecca) complete, she returns to Abraham's house to return to the life of a maid. And there she soon gave birth to Abraham's first son, Ishmael.
Abraham eventually settles in the land "between the river and the sea" in Canaan, where God finally fulfils his promise and has Sarah finally conceive, giving birth to Abraham's second son Isaac. But Sarah, the spiteful and jealous woman she seems, again grew to hate Hagar and her son, because she wanted Isaac to be the sole heir to Abraham's inheritance. "Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son." Abraham, decidedly kinder to his servants than his wife, did not want to send Hagar yet again into the wilderness to die, but God told the prophet that Sarah was indeed correct: Isaac alone shall carry on Abraham's line. And so, still distressed but ever obedient to God (his other son would know that soon enough), Abraham sent the still young maidgirl and her infant child into the unforgiving dunes of the Negev desert south of Gaza, giving her just a bottle of water and loaf of bread. The mother wandered through the desert for several days, carrying Ishmael upon her back, until the bread had all been eaten and the water had all been drunk and she collapsed. Hagar set Ishmael under a shrub and left him there, for she thought "I cannot watch the boy die". As she wept God "El Roi" again came down to her and opened her eyes, and she saw that a spring had once more opened up before her, this time it would be later named "Beersheba" and become Abraham's home. Hagar and Ishmael would make their way to Sinai, where she would raise Ishmael in the wilderness to become a great hunter and archer, before at some point returning to her homeland of Egypt, but no more of her story has ever been recorded.
While surely God took pity of Hagar and saved her life twice, he also was the one who told Abraham to heed his wife and send her into the desert in the first place. God also seemed to leave Sarah unpunished for actions I can only see as evil and driven by sin. Instead God promises his support to Sarah's son Isaac, who would in turn beget Jacob who would become Israel. But interestingly it seems sentiment has often been against Hagar. St Paul gives a damning analysis on Hagar in Galatians 4:21, saying that all who are born of slaves are destined to remain slaves, while all who are born free shall be the "children of promise". Later analysis of the letter by St Augustine concurs, saying that Hagar and her offspring were unredeemed, and although God showed them mercy, they remained bound to the "Earthly City" rather than the "City of God". Later still scholars would correlate the two places upon which Hagar wept (Arabia and Israel) to be where those slaves live under the bondage of Sinai (the commandments and Mosaic law), thus condemning Jews and Muslims as those unable to break the bondage of Earthly sin. More sympathetic evaluations of Hagar did follow, particularly in the moral revolution of the Victorians (which is so often overlooked) and the subsequent admonishment of slavery and ennoblement of the poor, the destitute, and women in general. But while I cannot see Hagar as anything but pitiable, I understand that St Augustine was, rather than belittling the position of Hagar herself, saying that all things gotten through sin (like Ishmael was through adultery) will bind you to the world of sin, while all things gotten through grace (like Isaac was through Abraham's covenant) will let you into the world of heaven. After all,
"The Earthnoids do nothing but pollute the world, because their souls are weighed down by gravity."