Within the culture of ancient Israel there were three reasons that Hagar’s thoughts could easily have been dismissed as irrelevant, unworthy of any consideration: she was an (1) Egyptian (2) slave (3) girl. Yet she is one of my favorite Bible characters, because she had such interesting conversations with God.

<A brief note about chronology>

Sarai, needing a child, had given her slave to Abram to become a surrogate mother (Genesis 16:1-3). The text gives no indication that Hagar was consulted as to her feelings about this: did she, a girl in her mid to late teens, want to become the bedmate of an 85 year old man? Sarai’s plan worked; Hagar became pregnant. But then “she looked with contempt on her mistress” (16:4) – that may be what it felt like from Sarai’s perspective, but it is worth considering whether Hagar was simply naïve about the way she was expressing the excitement of expectant motherhood. Either way, Sarai made no allowance for the emotions of a teenager: she treated her slave so badly that Hagar ran away into the wilderness – where Hagar heard and obeyed the voice of God instructing her to go back to Sarai and bear Abram’s son, naming him Ishmael, which means “God hears” (16:7-13).

After the birth of Isaac, we see Sarah’s harshness come out again in these severe words: “Cast out this slave woman with her son,” she said to Abraham; “for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac” (21:10). She named neither Hagar nor Ishmael in this demand, as if they were no longer persons to her. Out in the desert, with the waterskin empty, Hagar once again encountered the presence of God, who spoke to calm her despair, showed her where there was water, and preserved the life of mother and son (21:15-20).

It’s clear that the great narrative arc of Genesis is heading in another direction, leaving Hagar and Ishmael behind – and, as Sarah (and later Israel) would want to say, good riddance to them. Yet in spite of not really wanting to hear Hagar’s story, the text can’t quite help recognizing that this is the story of Hagar and God. She had been used and then discarded by the covenantal family: but she had seen the God who sees (16:13), and the God who hears had answered her prayer and saved her and her son (21:17-19).

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You are the God who sees us; you are the Lord who hears us. And you are the one who sees and hears the others as well: the ones we ourselves don’t respect or acknowledge or even want to see. Help us, Lord, to recognize that they, too, are beloved of you.

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