Sarah and Hagar (Part 1)

Passages: Genesis 15, 16. (https://www.biblegateway.com/)

Sarah (Sarai) is Wife to Abraham (Abram) who in Genesis chapter 12 is told by God to leave his land and his people and to take his family to a land that God has set aside for him. Abraham goes and is told he will become a great nation, have a great land and be a blessing to all people on the earth. In the part about the great nation Abraham is told he will be the father of as many children as the stars in the sky. (Think about what the sky looks like out in the country, where there is no light pollution from the cities, this is what Abraham would have seen).

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,
    your very great reward.”

But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”  And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.”  He took him outside and said, “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.”

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

(Genesis 15: 1-6)

Abraham is remembered to be a man of great faith in God. This is something he is admired for. Leaving your home land to go somewhere else without knowledge of where it is takes a lot of guts.

Now here’s the tricky bit. Sarah can’t have kids. They’ve tried but it just won’t happen. They are both really old (past child bearing age) and don’t have a single child yet.

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.

(Genesis 16: 1-6)

Here we introduce Hagar. And Egyptian slave owned by Sarah. Hagar, being a slave obviously has to obey Sarah. (Yes the bible doesn’t seem to be against slavery. It was a common institution at the time. I will make a post on slavery in the bible at a later time). Hagar would not have had a choice about moving away from Egypt and we don’t get any clues as to her feelings about the move or hear anything about her apart from this section of Genesis.

Sarah doesn’t believe that she will be able to have children and so she says to her husband “the LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”(Genesis 16:2). Hagar doesn’t seem to have a voice in this. She has no choice but to sleep with Abraham, which she might not have wanted to do at all. And once she conceived “she began to despise her mistress.” (Genesis 16:4).

Sarah tries to deal with the issue by going to Abraham but his response is to tell her “Your servant is in your hands… do with her whatever you think best,”(Genesis 16:6). Then Sarah mistreats Hagar and Hagar leaves. We don’t know what sort of behaviour Sarah showed toward Hagar but if it was bad enough for Hagar to flee from them, then it must have been bad.

Hagar is found by an angel of the LORD and is told.

Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit 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.”

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”  That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

(Genesis 16:9-16)

So after all that Hagar goes home and gives birth to Abraham’s son. That’s all the focus this passage will take. We will look at the rest of the story next time. But for now let’s look at the different characteristics Hagar and Sarah have displayed in these sections of scripture.

Attitudes
Sarah	Hagar
·         Sarah has come with Abraham to the Promised Land and she shares in the promises God makes to Abraham. Particularly the one about being father to many nations and being a blessing. ·         Sarah doesn’t believe she will be the biological mother of any children God will give her and Abraham at this point. Sarah does not respond to God with the same faith her husband has when they moved to Canaan and when he was given the promises that Sarah also shares. ·         Sarah mistreats Hagar to the point that Hagar runs away.	·         Hagar has come along to the Promised Land as well but she isn’t given a voice about what she thinks because she is a slave in this situation. ·         Hagar is told to sleep with Sarah’s husband and to give birth to a child on Sarah’s behalf. Hagar isn’t seen to complain here. She seems compliant. ·         Hagar despises Sarah once she has fallen pregnant. Perhaps she was hoping she wouldn’t conceive. ·         Hagar is mistreated by Sarah and runs away. ·         Hagar told by an Angel of the LORD that she is to return to Abraham and Sarah and give birth to the child. ·         Hagar responds in faith (similarly to Abraham earlier) and returns back to Abraham and Sarah. ·         Hagar expresses her appreciation to God for seeing her and caring. She says “You are the God who sees me” (Genesis 16:13) Perhaps Hagar didn’t feel seen before, being a slave she may have felt isolated and she wouldn’t have been listened to.

Here we see two women. One who shares in the promises God has given to her husband and an Egyptian slave who ends up sharing in the promises of a great nation through the unfaithful actions of Sarah. Who may even have been to lead her husband away from God by telling him to conceive with Hagar. Sarah is Abraham’s wife and Abraham may well have told Sarah to have faith instead of sleeping with Hagar. But Hagar in the end of all this trouble is looked after by the LORD and also included in the promises of a great nation. (Genesis 16:10).

One should have responded in Faith and the other did respond in faith. One now has to share a promises that is rightfully hers and the other is included into a promise because the first was not faithful to God.

In the next post we will see what happens with Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. We will see what happens to Hagar now that she’s returned to Abraham and Sarah. We will find out if Sarah does get the child God promised.

We will be looking at Genesis 18:1-15 and 21:8-21.

For now, have a think about how you would react if you were in Sarah or Hagar’s place.

·         Did one react better than the other do you think?

·         Which one would you rather be if you could choose?

·         Who got the better deal? How has God acted in this story so far?

·         How can we see the promises to Abraham being fulfilled?

 (Read Genesis chapter 12:1-9 for more on the promises).

Many Blessings!