God Has Left the Building: Genesis 16:1-13


read the Bible story here

This is the first of two stories about Hagar (see also Gen. 21:1-21), an Egyptian woman who is enslaved by Abram and Sarai. The story progresses quickly (the focus tends to be on Abram and Sarai, making this an incidental anecdote to many commentators) but the details are brutal. Because they do not trust God to provide the promised descendants, as many as the stars of the sky (Gen. 15:5), Abram and Sarai take things into their own hands, forcing Hagar to become a surrogate, and treating her harshly once she is pregnant. She flees the abuse and ends up in the wilderness, likely headed back to her family in Egypt. Along the way she meets God, an angel of the Lord, and her life is transformed.


Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash


The language and symbolism in the story is rich. Ha-gar means “the foreigner” in Hebrew—from the beginning she is set apart as different from Abram and Sarai. She is Egyptian, female, young, and enslaved—she has no power in this story. She runs away through the wilderness, which is often a setting for encounters with God in scripture (think Jesus’ temptation or the Israelites at Mt. Sinai).

In this encounter with God, God sees, hears, and speaks to Hagar, as well as knows her name. In return, Hagar sees, hears, and speaks to God, as well as giving God a new name; /el roi/, the God who Sees Me. In previous and subsequent stories, it is most often a male who speaks or prays to God on behalf of his wife (usually regarding fertility), but in this story Hagar herself has a direct encounter with God. She is the only person in all of scripture who gives God a new name! God has many names (100 in Islamic tradition) but normally God tells us what God’s name is (think burning bush). Here Hagar names God.

Another fascinating thing is that this story is shared by all Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Bahai, the latter two having additional stories about Hagar and Ishmael that trace their “ancestry” back to Abraham through Hagar rather than Sarah. In some traditions Hagar is viewed as a wife rather than a slave; the story tells us that is the case in verse 3, but she continues to be treated as a slave.

Hagar is a significant character in the story of the covenant between God and Abram. She has an encounter with God, who knows, sees, hears, and speaks to her. She receives the same promise given to Sarah: more descendants than she can count. Although a foreigner, she becomes part of the covenant both because of her relationship to Abram and because of the divine encounter in the wilderness. God finds Hagar when she barely knows herself, and transforms her trouble into promise.

Questions to ponder:

Is this a story about racism? How?

What does this story teach us about God redeeming difficult situations?

In what kind of wilderness have you encountered God?


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