Hagar and Ismael – Genesis 16

Most of us are not characterized by unbroken faith and obedience to God, even though faith and obedience may be the norm for our lives before God.  Abram is no different from us.

[1] Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. [2] And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. [3] So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. [4] And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. [5] And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” [6] But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

[7] The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. [8] And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” [9] The angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” [10] The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” [11] And the angel of the LORD said to her,

“Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son.  You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has listened to your affliction.  [12] He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

[13] So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” [14] Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.

[15] And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. [16] Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. (Genesis 16, ESV)

Abram’s faith, so celebrated in chapter 15, takes a nose-dive in this chapter.  Sarai is feeling pressure to have a child, as Abram has been, but her solution is to give her servant Hagar as a secondary wife to Abram and raise up a child by her (a not uncommon choice in this culture).  Wives who did not bear children were often scorned by others as those scorned by God.  It is no surprise, then, that Hagar scorns or despises Sarai when she is able to have a child and takes a great leap up in status, from slave to bearer of Abram’s heir.  Once again, having multiple wives is depicted as less than ideal.

Sarai responds to Hagar’s attitude by getting angry with Abram, who, as he received Sarai’s solution passively, passively puts responsibility for the problem with Sarai, who chooses to make her servant so miserable that she flees.  After traveling for perhaps a week towards her home of Egypt, Yahweh meets her near a spring where she has stopped to rest.  Though this is not the heir He has promised to Abram and Sarai, Ismael, the name Yahweh gives him, is important to Yahweh’s plan and to Abram as his son.  He commands Hagar to return and submit.  And He predicts the character and future as a man who stands in opposition to many, especially his kinsmen (as Israel, who is reading this, will learn when they seek to conquer Canaan).

At first, Hagar only sees Yahweh as a man, confirming what we have seen elsewhere that this is Yahweh’s normal way to appear to people (see Appendix 3).  But as He speaks to her Hagar recognizes that this is God, The God Who Sees Her.  It is unusual for someone who meets God to give Him a name, but perhaps she doesn’t know the name Yahweh, and she is trying to give words to this incredible experience.  We don’t see the fear common to such meetings with God that to see God is to be in danger of dying.

Walton has well said that the actions of Abraham taking Hagar as wife and bearing a child puts the covenant promises in jeopardy in three ways: “(1) The covenant promises are in jeopardy because of the absence of the true heir. (2) An attempt at resolution of the initial jeopardy creates the second jeopardy of a son who will be a competing heir. (3) The makeshift heir is now in jeopardy of being lost to Abram and Sarai before he is even born.”  Yahweh prevents that last danger by His meeting with Hagar and sending her back.