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Hagar’s story is really hard to read. There’s so much tragedy, and so much injustice, much of it perpetrated by people who were supposed to be followers of God. But it’s also an important story, because it shows that God cares about the suffering of those society has used and cast aside. That he sees the humanity of people who it is more convenient for us to dehumanize and treat as less-than, because their suffering reminds us that we’re not as righteous as we’d like to think.

Transcript

We’ve been going through a series titled “What’s in a name?” about the significance attached to certain names in the Bible, including several names for God.

Today we’re talking about the name “El Roi,” which means, “the God who sees.”

And this name is unique, because it is the only time in the Bible when a human being names God.

Names were a big deal back then.

Do you remember the story about Jacob wrestling with God, unwilling to let him go until he told him his name?

See, back in those times, people believed that knowing a deity’s name gave you some level of power over them.

You could get their attention, and request things of them in their name.

It was probably like nowadays, when organizations ask for your email and phone number.

And you’re like, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

It gave them a deeper level of access.

But this situation was different.

Instead of a person meeting God and asking for his name, this person meets God, knows exactly who he is, and tells him so.

It’s the only time in the Bible that this happens.

And this wasn’t just any person who names God—it was a woman.

And it wasn’t just any woman—it was a slave from Egypt, who has been treated horribly by her supposedly God-fearing masters.

God meets her in distress, and she says “you are El Roi, the God who sees me.”

Her name was Hagar.

Hagar’s story is one of those stories that is really hard to read.

There’s so much tragedy, and so much injustice, and much of it was perpetrated by people who were SUPPOSED to be good people! By people who called themselves followers of God.

It was real life, and maybe hits a bit too close to home for some of us.

And even today, I believe, Hagar is misunderstood and treated unfairly by the people who speak of her. We’ll get to that later.

But it’s also an important story, because it shows that God cares about the suffering of those society has used and cast aside.

That he sees the humanity of people that it is more convenient for us to dehumanize, and treat as less-than.

The poor.

Oppressed minorities.

People we consider our enemies, or whose suffering reminds us that we’re not always as righteous as we’d like to think.

Now, because Hagar’s story is spread out through Genesis, and intertwined with Abraham and Sarah’s story, I’m going to tell it Bible story style, instead of just reading it, because I really want to give you the big picture of what was going on.

Hagar’s story was set in motion when an old Aramean man, from the city-state of Ur, received a revelation from God.

God told Abraham to leave his father and his father’s household, and go into the land that he would show him.

God promised to bless Abraham so that he could bless all the other nations of the earth, and part of this promise was that Abraham would have many descendants.

Now, most of us have probably heard this story.

But what we may not have noticed is that every time God talks Abraham about descendants, Abraham goes out and does something incredibly stupid.

See, Abraham has a problem.

His wife, Sarah, is barren.

And I always kind of roll my eyes when I hear about barren women in the old testament.

Because I’m like, Dude, maybe try NOT marrying your sister, or your cousin.

It’s bad for the gene pool. It might help you out there.

But they didn’t know that back then.

And in fact, in that society, if you really loved your daughter, you wanted to marry her off to someone in the family, so you could make sure she was taken care of.

If you married her outside the family, you were essentially selling her into servitude.

So Sarah was matched with her half-brother Abraham.

And unsurprisingly, they didn’t have any kids.

And in a patriarchal society, that was about the worst kind of disgrace a person could bear.

So, like I said, every time God talked about their descendants, they acted faithlessly and did something stupid. The Bible is trying to show us how much they struggled to believe this promise.

The first stupid thing is entirely on Abraham.

There’s a famine in Canaan, where they live, so they decide to go down to Egypt, because the Nile River protected it from drought.

But Abram was worried that Pharaoh was going to get the hots for Sarai, so he begs her to tell Pharaoh she’s his sister.

Listen to this, from Genesis 12 verses 14-20:

¹⁴ When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman.¹⁵ And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. ¹⁶ He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

¹⁷ But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. ¹⁸ So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? ¹⁹ 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!” ²⁰ Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.”

So, God had just told Abram he is going to give him descendants. But instead of trusting, he pimps his wife out to the harem of one of the most powerful men in the world.

And while we always say Abraham did it to save his own skin, he’s actually profiting here.

He’s getting livestock and slaves out of the deal.

Sarah’s been sold.

She couldn’t have kids anyway.

So she might as well benefit the family by sleeping with Pharaoh so Abram could get the bride price for her.

And as outrageous as that sounds to us, that sort of thing was very common in those days.

It still happens in some parts of the world.

But God sees what has been done to Sarai, and is having none of it.

He sends a plague on Pharaoh’s household to get Sarah out of there.

So Pharaoh tells them to hit the road, and take all the stuff they’d been given with them, because Pharaoh wanted no part of that nonsense.

And while we don’t know for sure that this is how Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian handmaid, came into their entourage, it seems pretty likely.

Hagar was part of the settlement package Sarai got for being sold into sexual slavery.Which may make what happens ten years later less surprising.

But let’s consider this from Hagar’s perspective for a minute.

The Bible doesn’t tell us a whole lot about her background, but we can take a few guesses from what we do know.

First of all, she was probably pretty young.

She wasn’t married yet, and we know that she was considered a prime target for childbearing ten years later.

The other thing we know about Hagar is that she was a handmaid, not a laborer.

Handmaids had pretty cushy jobs, living with and attending to wealthy women.

And even when they were slaves, they often came from high class backgrounds.

Some Jewish traditions actually say that Hagar was one of Pharaoh’s daughters—perhaps the daughter of some lesser concubine—entrusted to Sarah as a wedding gift.

So while there is no way to know for sure, it’s quite likely that Hagar was a young girl who has lived most of her life in the palace of the most wealthy, powerful man in the world.

But then, a strange woman showed up in the harem, everyone got sick, and now, Hagar is being sent away with her to live among Nomadic tent dwellers who speak a different language, have a different culture, and worship a strange new God she’s never heard of.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine being ripped away from everything you’ve ever known with no hope of returning?

It didn’t matter if Hagar had a mother who loved her, or playmates she would miss.

It didn’t matter if she was afraid of this strange woman, or terrified at the idea of traveling through the desert, living in tents.

No one saw her fear, or her grief, or her loneliness, or sense of betrayal.

Or if they did see it, they didn’t care.

But God saw. And God cared. And I believe that God wept right along with her.

So ten years go by, and God appears to Abram again, making a covenant with him.

You can read about this in Genesis 15.

Abram complains about his lack of descendants, and God promises once again that he will have a son.

Then we turn to chapter 16 and no surprise, read this.

“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.⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.”

So, this is where the story gets really difficult.

It’s hard to even know what to say about a young woman being forced into marriage with an 85 year old man, for the purpose of having a baby for her owner.

The fact that this was a common practice, and that forced and child marriage is STILL a common practice in many parts of the world, doesn’t make it any less horrible.

No one is asking Hagar how she feels about this.

No one seems to care.

Just like no one seemed to care when Sarai was given to Pharaoh.

These women were both trafficked and abused, treated like objects to be bartered and used at the whim of the more powerful people in their lives.

Their culture deemed that acceptable. And while we have laws against such things nowadays, the prevalence of trafficking, abuse and gender based violence shows that maybe OUR culture accepts it too, at some level.

But God did not.

God sees the suffering and degradation women, and children, and boys, and men suffer, sometimes at the hands of his people. And it grieves his heart.

So, Hagar is married off to Abram, and gets pregnant.

And despite everything, she starts to hope.

Because despite Sarai’s plans for the baby, she is STILL going to be this baby’s mother.

And this baby is going to become the leader of this clan someday—and probably sooner rather than later, given Abram’s age.

And when that happens—when this baby that she’s carrying is in charge—everything is going to change for Hagar.

Only it doesn’t work out that way.

Sarai gets jealous, and complains to Abram.

Let’s read what happens, from Genesis 16, verses 5-13.

⁵ 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.”

⁶ “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

⁷ The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ 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.

⁹ Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” ¹⁰ The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

¹¹ 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,^[a]
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
¹² 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^[b] all his brothers.”

¹³ 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^[c] the One who sees me.”

You are El Roi, she says.

The God who sees me.

The God who notices all the inequity and injustice being piled on her, all the ways she has been hurt and taken advantage of, BY PEOPLE WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FOLLOWING HIM.

The God who refused to turn a blind eye to her distress, but instead showed up, and sat with her in it.

In fact, he blessed her and her son.

And he blesses them again fifteen years later when, after the birth of Sarah’s son Isaac, Abraham turns Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert for good.

You can read about that in Genesis 21.

It was a horrible betrayal, but it was also the way in which God kept his promise to Hagar, and set her free.

I want to finish up by clearing up some misconceptions about Hagar, and about ourselves.

There was a lot going on in that passage we just read, and a lot of it has been horribly misunderstood by our western ears.

We understand that the promise of many descendants is a blessing, just like the one given to Abram.

But what’s this about Ishmael being referred to as a wild donkey as a man, and living in hostility toward all his brothers? How is that a blessing?

And why was Hagar told to go back to an abusive situation?

The simple answer is that we just miss the cultural cues.

While the angel saying that Ishmael would be a wild donkey of a man sounds like an insult to us, Hagar would have heard: “Your son will be capable of surviving and thriving alone in the desert, just like a wild donkey. Go back and keep your head down until he is old enough to help you, because you won’t survive on your own.”

When we hear “his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him,” Hagar would have heard: “he will be politically independent, not beholden to any nation”

And when we hear “he will live in hostility to all his brothers,” she might have heard that, or she might have just heard that he would live to the EAST of all his brothers.

Bible translators aren’t really sure about that last bit.

Another misconception that needs to be cleared up is that

you’ll sometimes hear people say that Ishmael, Hagar’s son, was the progenitor of the Arab people.

In fact Mohammed, the founder of Islam, claimed to be descended from him.

So some evangelicals will say, “if only Abraham hadn’t slept with Hagar, we wouldn’t be having all these problems in the Middle East today.”

But we need to stop and think about this for a minute.

Ishmael was born about 2000 years before the coming of Christ.

Mohammed was born about 600 years after Christ.

Now, I find geneology interesting. But it doesn’t matter how much time I spend on Ancestry dot com—it doesn’t go back 2500 years!

I don’t know WHAT my ancestors were doing back then—probably painting snow caves with reindeer blood or something.

So I’m just going to go ahead and say that I find Mohammed’s claims to be descended from Ishmael rather dubious.

And here is why this is important.

Even if ALL Arabs WERE descended from Ishmael, which they definitively are not, do you hear what we are saying, when we say “if only Abraham hadn’t slept with Hagar”?

We are saying, in some way, that Arabs are a MISTAKE.

That God did not mean for them them to exist.

That they are a problem to be dealt with, instead of beloved people, created in the image of God.

And it is THAT sort of depraved thinking that led to the mistreatment of Hagar and Ishmael in the first place.

It’s led to all sorts of nastiness over the course of human history: abortion, genocide, racism, classism—anything where we look at another human being and see a problem, rather than a beloved person created in the image of God.

See, we don’t always see people clearly.

We don’t always want too.

Seeing people clearly can be painful and convicting.

Especially when we’re being asked to give up some privilege we’ve always enjoyed at their expense, or own up to some sin against them.

It’s easier and more convenient for us to believe there’s something inherently broken about them, than to look inward at what may be wrong with us.

And I’m going to guess that most of us, like Sarai, have been on both sides of that equation.

We’ve been hurt, because people have not treated us like precious people created in the image of God, who are worthy of dignity and respect.

They’ve violated us.

So we harden our hearts, and go out and do the same thing to others.

We scramble for top dog status, because it’s the only way we know to protect ourselves from getting hurt.

But Jesus dealt the death blow to that type of thinking when he took all of our sin, and our brokenness, upon himself on the cross.

When, instead of using others for his own gain, he sacrificially laid down his life for people who didn’t deserve it, but were inestimably precious and loved by God anyway.

Like Hagar. And Abram. And Sarai. And you and me.

You know, I love that question God asks Hagar.

“Where have you come from, and where are you going?”

And it’s something that we can ask ourselves too.

Where have we come from?

Where are the wounds and insecurities in our lives, and how do we react when something touches them?

So many of us live as slaves to those things, whether we’re powerful people like Abraham, who wind up hurting the people around us when we feel insecure, or underdogs like Hagar, who can’t seem to catch a break.

We’ve bought into the lies about where our worth comes from, so adversity has us running scared.

And where are we going?

Are we willing to be vulnerable enough to let God meet us in those broken places, and heal us?

Are we willing to give up our dysfunctional, human ways to trying to preserve our status, and accept Christ’s provision for us, knowing that we are loved, and that God is going to work on our behalf, in God’s time, and in God’s ways?

We are beloved people, created in the image of God, and inestimably precious to him.

We don’t have to live as slaves to our fears, or insecurities, or other people’s opinions about us anymore.

We are children of God.