Hagar: The Woman Seen by God

Many women’s stories are recorded in the Bible as incredible examples of faith. This is the case with Hagar, Sarai’s and Abram’s slave. Hagar stands as a witness to the ugliness of humanity. Women abused and enslaved throughout history can be comforted by Hagar’s story. I believe Hagar’s story was written to show us that God cares for even those seen as the lowest of society (a slave, a woman, and a foreigner) and that we can be comforted and strengthened by him. 

Hagar had a hard life. Her troubles start with her enslavement. She was possibly offered to Sarai as a slave by Pharaoh, who had taken Sarah into his dwelling place, thinking she was Abram’s sister.

The king’s officials told him about her, and she was taken to his house. The king was good to Abram because of Sarai, and Abram was given sheep, cattle, donkeys, slaves, and camels. 

(Gn 12:15-16, CEV)

Pharaoh returned Sarai when he found out she was indeed Abram’s wife. We read:

But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife?  Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

(Gn 12:17-20, NIV)

So Hagar, being Egyptian (Gn 16:1), was possibly one of these female slaves given to Abram by Pharaoh, then handed over to serve Sarai^[1]. In any case, she was taken from her homeland, Egypt, and given or sold to Abram and Sarai, likely without her consent. How horrible is it to be torn from family and kin and sent off to an unknown land? How daunting to be wandering in the desert with an old man and his wife? She is allowed no husband or family of her own, no rights to her own labor or body. She was nothing but a slave.

We are first introduced to Hagar by name, as Sarai, being childless, offered her up to Abram so that she may give him a child in Sarai’s place. 

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. 

(Gn 16:1-4, NIV)

Sarai gave Hagar to her husband, Abram, who took her as a wife^[2] and slept with her. Did Hagar consent to have this done to her? Unlikely. She was handed over to be raped and impregnated with no say in the matter, no power to have her voice be heard and respected. What a harsh world it is that such things are done to poor women.

However, her position improved; she was elevated from slave to wife and had indeed conceived a son for Abram. With this newfound privilege, she, in turn, mistreated the mistress that had mistreated her.

“When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.” 

(Gn 16:4, NIV)

Abram’s and Sarai’s sin induced bitterness in Hagar, and division ensued.

“Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” 

(Gn 16:5)

How ironic that Sarai blamed her husband for a wrongdoing in which she was complicit. Yet, there is some truth in her words. God had promised Abram a son; he should have been confident in the word of the Lord that this promise was to Sarai also. Abram should have comforted his wife, assuring her that he would remain with her and not dispose of her.  Reminding her that, even though she had been childless until then, God had made a promise and that God is faithful.

Sarai, in turn, abused Hagar more severely; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. 

(Gn 16:6, NIV)

How great must have been Hagar’s mistreatment to make her flee her only home and wander into the wilderness alone? The pain and sorrow she must have suffered. How can one harm another human being in such a way? I can only imagine Hagar collapsing onto the ground in tears, pouring out of her soul into a river of sadness.

This is when God, our merciful God, saw her distress.

The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 

(Gn 16:7-8, NIV)

God’s answer is surprising; he told her to go back to Sarai, the mistress that had so mistreated her. However, not without deeply comforting her and making her a promise. God blessed Hagar and her son that day.

Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit^[3] to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” 

(Gn 16:9-12, NIV)

God had blessed Abram, telling him that his children would be as numerous as the stars:

“Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 

(GN 15:5, NIV)

To Hagar, God said that her descendants would be too numerous to count! Hagar’s blessing seems greater than Abram’s in comparison. God had heard her misery; that is why her son was named Ishmael, “God will hear.” God saw Hagar, came to her, spoke with her, and blessed her, just as he did with Abram. In turn, Hagar named God:

So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” 

(Gn 16:13, NRSV)

Hagar is blessed to be the first person recorded to have given God a name. An honor not even given to Abram. She called him El-roi, “the God who sees us.” God is not blind or indifferent to our suffering. He comes and encounters us in our distress and comforts us. Hagar went from being in despair to being grateful to God that revealed himself to her. 

Hagar took courage and returned to Abram and Sarai. But that is not the end of her troubles. She bore Abram a son, Ishmael, but Sarah conceived the child that God had promised, Isaac. There was hostility between Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael laughed at the one who is called laughter, incurring Sarah’s anger, who ordered he be sent away along with his slave mother.

The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”

Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba. 

(Gn 21:8-14, NIV)

God might have affirmed Sarah’s faith in the inheritance her son was to obtain by telling Abraham to do as his wife said, but did it have to happen this way? Did Abraham have to send Hagar and the boy away with only some food and a bit of water? Could this wealthy man not have even given her a camel to ride on for her travels? Might he not have arranged to have her returned to her country of origin? Instead, she was sent into the wilderness to die. Even selling her into another household would seem more merciful than what he did. He sent a woman alone into the desert with a young child, without protection and vulnerable.

When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob. 

(Gn 21:15-16, NIV)

Unsurprisingly, her food and water ran out, and her son was weakened to the point of death. She was in despair, sobbing, knowing there was nothing she could do for her son. Death was upon them. 

Yet, God had made her a promise. Had she forgotten what he had said to her, that her descendants would be too numerous to count? God again appeared to her.

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt. 

(Gn 21:17-21)

God again saw Hagar’s and her son’s distress. He came to comfort and fortify her a second time, providing life-giving water to rescue her. God kept his promise.

Hagar was but a slave, the lowest of the low, and she lived through incredible hardship. But no suffering is too great that our Lord God cannot rescue us from it. Have you ever been mistreated as Hagar was? God sees you and will shine his face upon you. Turn to him, and he will comfort you and give you strength.

God is our refuge and strength,

    an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way

    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam

    and the mountains quake with their surging. 

(Psalm 46:1-3, NIV)

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^[1] Anonymous. “The Bereshit or Genesis Rabba”. in “Medieval Hebrew: The Midrash, the Kabbalah”. B&R Samizdat Express. 2018. Translated by W. Wynn Westcott. p.78 scribd edition    

^[2] The Hebrew word used is the generic word for woman, also used to mean wife, female, concubine, or female slave. see definition of ishshah at https://biblehub.com/hebrew/802.htm

^[3] The Hebrew word anah means rather to humble oneself or to be afflicted, see https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6031.htm It does not seem to have been translated as submit anywhere else in the ESV. I think God was telling Hagar to go back to Sarai and to stop mistreating her, to take back her humble position, and not consider herself above her mistress.