Abraham once sent his servant Eliezer to Sodom with his compliments to Lot and his family, and to inquire concerning their welfare.  As Eliezer entered Sodom he saw a citizen beating a stranger, whom he had robbed of his property.  “Shame upon thee!” exclaimed Eliezer to the citizen.  “Is this the way you act towards strangers?” To this remonstrance the man replied by picking up a stone and striking Eliezer with it on the forehead with such force as to cause the blood to flow down his face.  On seeing the blood the citizen caught hold of Eliezer and demanded to be paid his fee for having freed him of impure blood.  “What!” said Eliezer, “am I to pay thee for wounding me?” “Such is our law,” returned the citizen.  Eliezer refused to pay, and the man brought him before the judge, to whom he made his complaint.  The judge then decreed:  “Thou must pay this man his fee, since he has let thy blood; such is our law.”  “There, then,” said Eliezer, striking the judge with a stone, and causing him to bleed, “pay my fee to this man, I want it not,” and then departed from the court.[66]

   [66] There are two Italian stories which bear some
        resemblance to this queer legend:  In the fourth novel of
        Arienti an advocate is fined for striking his opponent
        in court, and “takes his change” by repeating the
        offence; and in the second novel of Sozzini, Scacazzone,
        after dining sumptuously at an inn, and learning from
        the waiter that the law of that town imposed a fine of
        ten livres for a blow on the face, provokes the landlord
        so that he gets a slap from him on the cheek, upon which
        he tells Boniface to pay himself out of the fine he
        should have had to pay for the blow if charged before
        the magistrate, and give the rest of the money to the
        waiter.—­A similar story is told in an Arabian
        collection, of a half-witted fellow and the kazi.

Abraham and Ishmael’s Wife.

Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, was given as a slave to Abraham, by her father, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who said:  “My daughter had better be a slave in the house of Abraham than mistress in any other house.”  Her son Ishmael, it is said, took unto himself a wife of the daughters of Moab.  Three years afterwards Abraham set out to visit his son, having solemnly promised Sarah (who, it thus appears, was still jealous of her former handmaid) that he would not alight from his camel.  He reached Ishmael’s house about noontide, and found his wife alone.  “Where is Ishmael?” inquired the patriarch.  “He is gone into the wilderness with his mother to gather dates and other fruits.”  “Give me, I pray thee, a little bread and water, for I am fatigued with travelling.”  “I have neither bread nor water,” rejoined the inhospitable matron.  “Well,” said the patriarch, “tell Ishmael when he comes home that an old man came to see him, and recommends him to change the door-post of his house, for it is not worthy of him.”  On Ishmael’s return she gave him the message, from which he at once understood that the stranger was his father, and that he did not approve of his wife.  Accordingly he sent her back to her own people, and Hagar procured him a wife from her father’s house.  Her name was Fatima.