Speaker 1: There's a woman in the Bible who did something Abraham
Speaker 1: never did, Moses never did, David Solomon, and every prophet
Speaker 1: after her never did. She looked at God, and she
Speaker 1: gave him a name, not a title. Someone taught her
Speaker 1: a personal name she invented in the moment, born from
Speaker 1: her own encounter with the divine, and the Biblical authors
Speaker 1: preserved it for over three thousand years. Her name was Hagar.
Speaker 1: If you grew up in church, you probably heard her
Speaker 1: mentioned once the footnote in Abraham's story. So why did
Speaker 1: God choose her to be the first person in all
Speaker 1: of Scripture visited by an angel? That question changes the
Speaker 1: way you read the entire Bible. If you'd asked anyone
Speaker 1: in the ancient Near East about Hagar around two thousand BCE,
Speaker 1: they would have told you she was property, not a person. Property.
Speaker 1: She was an Egyptian slave in the house sold of
Speaker 1: a wealthy nomadic chieftain named Abram before God changed his
Speaker 1: name to Abraham, and his wife Sarah before she became Sarah.
Speaker 1: Now here's something most English Bibles completely miss. The Hebrew
Speaker 1: word used for Hagar in the early chapters of her
Speaker 1: story is shipcha, and that word is specific It doesn't
Speaker 1: just mean servant or handmaid the way your translation probably
Speaker 1: renders it. Shipcha refers to a female slave who belongs
Speaker 1: to another woman, not to the household, not to the husband,
Speaker 1: to the wife. Specifically, Hagar was Sarah's personal property. That
Speaker 1: distinction matters enormously because it tells us something about the
Speaker 1: power dynamics that get ignored in nearly every sermon you'll
Speaker 1: hear on this passage. Sarah had total authority over Hagar.
Speaker 1: Abraham didn't own her. Sarah did, and the decisions Sarah
Speaker 1: made about Hagar's body, her future, and her children were
Speaker 1: legally and culturally within her rights. Think about what that
Speaker 1: means for a second. In the world Hagar lived in,
Speaker 1: she had no legal standing, no voice, no ability to
Speaker 1: refuse an order. If Sarah told her to do something,
Speaker 1: she did it. If Sarah decided her fate, that fate
Speaker 1: was sealed, and the ancient world was full of women
Speaker 1: like Hagar. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan. Every civilization in the Fertile
Speaker 1: Crescent ran on slave labor. We know from archaeological records
Speaker 1: from clay tablets found in places like Nutzi and Mari
Speaker 1: in modern day Iraq, that female slaves were routinely given
Speaker 1: to wives as part of marriage dowries. Their bodies were
Speaker 1: considered an extension of their mistress's household resources. So when
Speaker 1: Genesis chapter sixteen opens with Sarah unable to conceive a child,
Speaker 1: and she turns to Hagar and says, essentially, you will
Speaker 1: bear a child for me, that wasn't unusual, It wasn't scandalous.
Speaker 1: It was standard legal practice across the ancient Near East.
Speaker 1: The Nutzie tablets from roughly the same period described this
Speaker 1: exact arrangement. A barren wife could give her female slave
Speaker 1: to her husband, and the child born from that union
Speaker 1: would legally belong to the wife, not the slave. Hagar
Speaker 1: had no choice in this none, And this is where
Speaker 1: you have to resist the temptation to sanitize this story.
Speaker 1: A lot of Bible commentaries treat this moment as Abraham
Speaker 1: and Sarah making a reasonable decision within their cultural context,
Speaker 1: and culturally, yes, it was normal, But the text itself
Speaker 1: is doing something far more in interesting than just reporting
Speaker 1: cultural norms. The text is setting up a collision between
Speaker 1: human systems of power and God's habit of showing up
Speaker 1: exactly where human systems say he shouldn't, because here's the
Speaker 1: pattern that runs through the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
Speaker 1: God consistently shows up for the person at the bottom,
Speaker 1: the overlooked one, the discarded one, the one with no
Speaker 1: legal standing, no social power, no voice. And Hagar is
Speaker 1: the first time we see that pattern play out. Now,
Speaker 1: Sarah's plan works, at least on the surface. Hagar conceives
Speaker 1: she's carrying Abraham's child, and something shifts in the household dynamic.
Speaker 1: Genesis sixteen, verse four says that when Hagar knew she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, her mistress was despised in her eyes. The
Speaker 1: Hebrew here is fascinating. The word is cut lal, and
Speaker 1: it can mean to despise, but it can also mean
Speaker 1: to become light, to become diminished. Some scholars read this
Speaker 1: not as Hagar actively disrespecting Sarah, but as Sarah losing weight,
Speaker 1: losing significance. In Hagar's perception. The power dynamic has shifted.
Speaker 1: Hagar is carrying the air Sarah isn't, and Sarah feels
Speaker 1: it immediately. What comes next is brutal. Genesis sixteen, verse
Speaker 1: six says Abraham tells Sarah, your slave is in your hands,
Speaker 1: do with her as you please. The Hebrew word for
Speaker 1: what Sarah does to Hagar is anna. Remember that word
Speaker 1: because it's going to come back later in the most
Speaker 1: unexpected way. Anna means to afflict, to oppress, to deal
Speaker 1: harshly with. It's the exact same word used in Exodus
Speaker 1: to describe what Egypt did to the Israelites June during
Speaker 1: their slavery. The irony is staggering. Sarah, the future mother
Speaker 1: of the nation that will be enslaved in Egypt, is
Speaker 1: using Egyptian level oppression against her own Egyptian slave. The
Speaker 1: text is drawing a direct linguistic line between Sarah's treatment
Speaker 1: of Hagar and Pharaoh's treatment of Israel. Nobody in Sunday
Speaker 1: School ever, mentions that and this is where Hagar does
Speaker 1: something extraordinary, something that in the ancient world was almost
Speaker 1: suicidal for a pregnant slave. She runs. Genesis sixteen, verse
Speaker 1: six says she fled from her face. She fled from
Speaker 1: Sarah's presence, a pregnant slave alone, heading south through the
Speaker 1: Negev Desert toward the road to Shur, which was the
Speaker 1: ancient trade route back to Egypt. She was trying to
Speaker 1: go home, back to a country she may have been
Speaker 1: taken from as an girl, back to the only other
Speaker 1: life she'd ever known. Think about the desperation required to
Speaker 1: make that decision. She's pregnant, She's in the desert. She
Speaker 1: has no water, no food, no protection. The Negev in
Speaker 1: that era was wild territory, full of bandits and predators.
Speaker 1: A woman alone on that road was almost certainly walking
Speaker 1: toward death. And this is the moment when something happens
Speaker 1: that had never happened before in the entire Biblical narrative.
Speaker 1: An angel shows up. Now we need to stop and
Speaker 1: understand something about what's happening here, because the text is
Speaker 1: doing something that the original audience would have found absolutely shocking.
Speaker 1: Up to this point in Genesis, God has spoken directly
Speaker 1: to Adam, to Eve, to Cain, to Noah, to Abraham.
Speaker 1: But every single one of those conversations followed a pattern.
Speaker 1: God spoke to people who had standing, people with names
Speaker 1: that carried weight, people who mattered in the social order,
Speaker 1: And in every case God spoke directly, no intermediary, no messenger.
Speaker 1: What happens here is different. For the very first time
Speaker 1: in the entire Bible, a figure called the Angel of
Speaker 1: the Lord appears. The Hebrew is Malach Yakwai, and this figure,
Speaker 1: this divine messenger, who will show up again and again
Speaker 1: throughout scripture, makes his first appearance, not to a patriarch,
Speaker 1: not to a priest, not to a king. He appears
Speaker 1: to a pregnant runaway slave sitting by a spring in
Speaker 1: the middle of the desert. The Angel of the Lord
Speaker 1: finds her at a spring of water in the wilderness
Speaker 1: near the spring on the road to Shur, and the
Speaker 1: Angel asks her two questions, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where
Speaker 1: have you come from? And where are you going? Pay
Speaker 1: attention to what the angel calls her, Hagar, servant of Sarah.
Speaker 1: The angel uses her name. In the ancient world, slaves
Speaker 1: often weren't addressed by name. They were addressed by function. Girl, slave,
Speaker 1: you there, But the Angel calls her by her name
Speaker 1: and then identifies her relationship, not to diminish her, but
Speaker 1: to show that God knows exactly who she is and
Speaker 1: exactly what situation she's in. And Hagar answers, honestly, I'm
Speaker 1: running away from my mistress Sarah. She doesn't dress it up,
Speaker 1: doesn't make excuses, doesn't try to spin the situation she's
Speaker 1: fleeing abuse, and she says so directly. What the angel
Speaker 1: says next is complicated and we need to sit with
Speaker 1: it for a moment. The Angel tells her to go
Speaker 1: back and submit to Sarah, and I know that's hard
Speaker 1: to hear. It sounds like God is telling an abused
Speaker 1: woman to return to her abuser. And honestly, scholars have
Speaker 1: wrestled with this passage for centuries. But look at the context.
Speaker 1: Hagar is pregnant, alone in the desert, heading toward a
Speaker 1: journey of hundreds of miles through hostile territory. The likelihood
Speaker 1: of her surviving that trip and reaching Egypt was close
Speaker 1: to zero. And the Angel doesn't just say go back.
Speaker 1: The Angel gives her something nobody else in her world
Speaker 1: had given her, a promise. I will multiply your descendants
Speaker 1: so that they cannot be counted for multitude. Stop and
Speaker 1: think about who's receiving this promise. This is the same
Speaker 1: kind of promise God made to Abraham in Genesis fifteen.
Speaker 1: Look at the stars, so shall your offspring be. And
Speaker 1: now God is making an almost idea dentical promise to
Speaker 1: Abraham's Egyptian slave, a woman who in her society had
Speaker 1: no right to own property, make decisions, or claim descendants
Speaker 1: of her own. God is treating her like a matriarch.
Speaker 1: The angel continues, you are pregnant and will bear a son.
Speaker 1: You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has
Speaker 1: heard your affliction. The name Ishmael in Hebrew, it's ishmah El.
Speaker 1: Y ishma means he hears, l means God. Ishmael literally
Speaker 1: translates to God hears, and look at what God heard.
Speaker 1: He heard her affliction, and the word used for affliction
Speaker 1: here is on Ye, which comes from the same route
Speaker 1: as Anna, the word used to describe what Sarah did
Speaker 1: to her. The circle closes perfectly. Sarah afflicted Hagar. God
Speaker 1: heard the affliction, and the child's name will be a
Speaker 1: permanent reminder that when a slave cried out in pain,
Speaker 1: the God of Abraham was listening. This is the part
Speaker 1: of the story where most commentaries move on. They note
Speaker 1: the angel's appearance, summarize the promise, and get back to Abraham.
Speaker 1: But the text has one more moment, and it's arguably
Speaker 1: the most theologically significant verse in the entire chapter. Genesis sixteenth,
Speaker 1: verse thirteen. She gave this name to the Lord who
Speaker 1: spoke to her. You are el roy, for she said,
Speaker 1: I have now seen the one who sees me. Read
Speaker 1: that again slowly. She gave a name to God. In
Speaker 1: the ancient Near East, naming something meant you had authority
Speaker 1: over it, or at the very least, a relationship with
Speaker 1: it profound enough to define it. Adam named the animals,
Speaker 1: parents named children, conquer as renamed conquered cities. Naming was
Speaker 1: an act of power, of identity, of intimate knowledge, and
Speaker 1: a runaway Egyptian slave looks at the divine presence and says,
Speaker 1: you are el Roi. The Hebrew is dense with meaning
Speaker 1: l is God. Roi comes from the root ra' ah,
Speaker 1: which means to see. But Roi specifically can mean the
Speaker 1: one who sees me, or the God of my seeing,
Speaker 1: or even the God whom I have seen. The phrase
Speaker 1: works in multiple directions. Simultaneously, God sees her, she sees God.
Speaker 1: The seeing is mutual. No one else in the Bible
Speaker 1: does this. Abraham didn't name God. Moses received God's name
Speaker 1: at the Burning Bush, but he didn't generate one. David
Speaker 1: praised God with many titles, but didn't coin a new
Speaker 1: name from personal experience. Hagar stands alone in all of
Speaker 1: Scripture as the only person who encountered the divine and
Speaker 1: responded by naming what she experienced and the name she chose.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about power, It wasn't about creation or judgment
Speaker 1: or sovereignty. It was about being seen. You are the
Speaker 1: God who sees me. Now, I want you to think
Speaker 1: about why that specific name, out of all possible names,
Speaker 1: was the one she chose. She could have said El Shadai,
Speaker 1: God Almighty if she was impressed by his power. She
Speaker 1: could have called him el Elion, God Most High if
Speaker 1: she was overwhelmed by his majesty. But she didn't reach
Speaker 1: for power words. She reached for intimacy. The thing that
Speaker 1: mattered most to Hagar, the thing that defined her experience
Speaker 1: of the divine, was that she had been seen by someone,
Speaker 1: by any one. After a life of being invisible, of
Speaker 1: being property, of being a body used for someone else's purposes,
Speaker 1: the most radical thing God could do was simply look
Speaker 1: at her, and she recognized it immediately. There's something here
Speaker 1: that goes beyond theology and ancient history, something that's probably
Speaker 1: hitting closer to home than you expected. Because if you've
Speaker 1: ever felt invisible. If you've ever been in a situation
Speaker 1: where nobody sees the real you, where you're just a function,
Speaker 1: just a role, just a means to someone else's end,
Speaker 1: then Hagar's name for God isn't academic. It's personal. Elroy,
Speaker 1: the God who sees me, not the collective me, not
Speaker 1: the generic humanity, me specifically individually, with all my mess,
Speaker 1: all my running, all my desperation. That's the God Hagar
Speaker 1: discovered in the desert, and she marks the spot. She
Speaker 1: names the well bier Lahiroi, which translates to the well
Speaker 1: of the living One who sees me. This well becomes
Speaker 1: a real geographical landmark in the biblical narrative. It shows
Speaker 1: up again later, and who eventually chooses to live near
Speaker 1: this well Isaac, Abraham's other son, the son of the
Speaker 1: very woman who drove Hagar into the desert. Isaac makes
Speaker 1: his home at the well that Hagar named. The text
Speaker 1: never explains why Isaac chose that location, but the symbolism
Speaker 1: is extraordinary. The son of the promise settles at the
Speaker 1: place where the rejected woman met God. Pay attention to
Speaker 1: this next detail because it explains everything about what comes later.
Speaker 1: Hagar goes back She returns to Abraham's household and gives
Speaker 1: birth to Ishmael, and for about thirteen years everything is
Speaker 1: relatively calm. Ishmael grows up as Abraham's first born son.
Speaker 1: Abraham loves him. Genesis seventeen makes that clear when Abraham
Speaker 1: pleads with God, if only Ishmael might live under your blessing,
Speaker 1: Abraham isn't just tolerating this child. He loves him. But
Speaker 1: during those thirteen years, something changes in Hagar's status that
Speaker 1: the original Hebrew tracts but our translations completely miss. Remember
Speaker 1: when I said to pay attention to the word shipcha.
Speaker 1: In the early part of the story, Hagar is called Shipcha,
Speaker 1: a female slave belonging to Sarah. But after Ishmael is born,
Speaker 1: the text starts shifting. In certain passages, Hagar is referred
Speaker 1: to as Ama instead. Amah is a different word entirely.
Speaker 1: While Shipcha means a slave who is property, Ama carries
Speaker 1: connotations of a secondary wife, a woman with some legal standing,
Speaker 1: someone whose children have inheritance rights. The shift from ship
Speaker 1: Char to Armah tracks Hagar's changing position in the household.
Speaker 1: She's still subordinate to Sarah, but she's no longer just property.
Speaker 1: She's the mother of Abraham's son, and in the ancient
Speaker 1: Near East, that came with a degree of protection and status.
Speaker 1: English bibles translate both words as servant or slave or handmaid.
Speaker 1: You lose the entire arc. You lose the fact that
Speaker 1: the text itself is tracking Hagar's slow ascent from object
Speaker 1: to person. The Hebrew writers were doing something deliberate here,
Speaker 1: and our translations flatten it completely. Then God drops a
Speaker 1: bombshell Genesis seventeen. God tells Abraham that Sarah will bear
Speaker 1: a son. His name will be Isaac, and the Covenant,
Speaker 1: the promise God made to Abraham about becoming a great nation,
Speaker 1: will pass through Isaac, not Ishmael. Abraham is ninety nine
Speaker 1: years old, Sarah is ninety and Abraham laughs. The text
Speaker 1: says he fell on his face and laughed. The Hebrew
Speaker 1: word for laught is t sachak, and it's going to
Speaker 1: become important because Isaac's name yet Shakh, comes from the
Speaker 1: same route. Isaac literally means he laughs. The laughter is
Speaker 1: baked into his identity. Isaac is born, and the celebration
Speaker 1: is massive. Abraham throws a great feast on the day
Speaker 1: Isaac is weaned, which in the ancient Near East, could
Speaker 1: have been when the child was two or three years old.
Speaker 1: This was a big deal. The heir of the promise
Speaker 1: has arrived. The impossible has happen. And then Sarah sees
Speaker 1: something that reignites the entire conflict. Genesis twenty one, verse nine,
Speaker 1: Sarah sees Ishmael metzachk that word again. The route is
Speaker 1: sachak to laugh. Sarah sees Ishmael laughing or playing or mocking.
Speaker 1: The Hebrew is deliberately ambiguous, and translators have fought over
Speaker 1: it for centuries. Some translations say Ishmael was mocking Isaac,
Speaker 1: Others say he was playing with Isaac. Others say he
Speaker 1: was simply laughing. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible, adds with her son Isaac, making it
Speaker 1: sound like the two boys were playing together. But the
Speaker 1: ambiguity is the point. Sarah's reaction is disproportionate, regardless of
Speaker 1: what Ishmael was actually doing. Because what Sarah says next
Speaker 1: is devastating us. Doubt this slave woman and her son,
Speaker 1: For the son of this slave woman shall not be
Speaker 1: heir with my son Isaac. Notice the language Sarah doesn't
Speaker 1: say Hagar's name. She says this slave woman. She strips
Speaker 1: Hagar of her identity and reduces her back to her function.
Speaker 1: And she doesn't say Ishmael. She says the son of
Speaker 1: this slave woman. She won't even name them. She's dehumanizing
Speaker 1: them in language before she dehumanizes them in action. And
Speaker 1: look at what's driving Sarah here. It's not theology, it's
Speaker 1: not faith, it's inheritance law. She's terrified that Ishmael will
Speaker 1: claim a share of Abraham's wealth alongside Isaac. This is
Speaker 1: a property dispute dressed up as a family conflict. Now
Speaker 1: Abraham is distraught. Genesis twenty one, verse eleven says the
Speaker 1: matter was very grievous in a Abraham's sight because of
Speaker 1: his son, not because of his slave, because of his son.
Speaker 1: Abraham loves Ishmael. He doesn't want to do this, but
Speaker 1: God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah. And the reason
Speaker 1: God gives is important. Through Isaac, shall your offspring be named,
Speaker 1: But I will also make a nation of the son
Speaker 1: of the slave woman, because he is your offspring. God
Speaker 1: acknowledges two things simultaneously. Isaac carries the covenant line and
Speaker 1: Ishmael is still Abraham's son and still entitled to a
Speaker 1: divine promise of his own. God doesn't throw Ishmael away.
Speaker 1: God extends a separate promise to him. This isn't God
Speaker 1: choosing one and rejecting the other. It's God creating two
Speaker 1: paths from one family. And this is where the story
Speaker 1: enters its darkest chapter. Abraham gets up early in the morning.
Speaker 1: He takes bread and a skin of water. He puts
Speaker 1: them on Hagar's shoulder, and he gives her the child
Speaker 1: and sends them away. Read that scene carefully. Bread and
Speaker 1: a skin of water. That's it for a journey into
Speaker 1: the wilderness of Beersheba. Abraham, one of the wealthiest men
Speaker 1: in Canaan, a man who had hundreds of servants and
Speaker 1: vast herds of livestock, sends the mother of his first
Speaker 1: born son into the desert with bread and a canteen.
Speaker 1: Was he being cruel? Was he following God's instruction precisely?
Speaker 1: And no further? Was he afraid of Sarah? The text
Speaker 1: doesn't tell us what Abraham was feeling in that moment
Speaker 1: beyond grief, but the meagerness of what he provides is striking.
Speaker 1: He gives her enough to survive a day or two,
Speaker 1: not enough to build a life, and Hagar walks into
Speaker 1: the desert again for the second time in her story.
Speaker 1: She's in the wilderness, but this time is different. The
Speaker 1: first time she ran by choice. She was fleeing abuse,
Speaker 1: and she still had agency. She chose to leave, She
Speaker 1: chose the direction. She chose the road to Egypt. This time,
Speaker 1: she's been expelled. She didn't choose to leave. She was
Speaker 1: cast out. The Hebrew word is garash, and it's a
Speaker 1: legal term. It means to drive out, to divorce, to banish.
Speaker 1: It's the same word used when God banished Adam and
Speaker 1: Eve from the Garden of Eden, the same word used
Speaker 1: when nations drive out their enemies. Hagar isn't running this time.
Speaker 1: She's been thrown away the wilderness of Beersheba. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen photos of the Negev Desert in southern Israel,
Speaker 1: you know what this landscape looks like. Dry river beds
Speaker 1: called wadis that haven't seen water in months, Rocky terrain
Speaker 1: stretching to the horizon, heat that turns the air into
Speaker 1: visible waves, and silence, the kind of silence that makes
Speaker 1: you hear your own heart beat. Hagar wanders in this wilderness.
Speaker 1: The text says, the water in the skin ran out,
Speaker 1: and she places her son under one of the desert
Speaker 1: shrubs for shade. Now there's a detail here that scholars debate.
Speaker 1: Ishmael at this point should be around sixteen or seventeen
Speaker 1: years old, given the timeline in Genesis, he was born
Speaker 1: when Abraham was eighty six, and Abraham was one hundred
Speaker 1: when Isaac was born. Isaac's weaning feast happened two or
Speaker 1: three years later. So Ishmael is a teenager that the
Speaker 1: Hebrew text in Genesis twenty one describes him almost as
Speaker 1: if he's a small child. Hagar casts him under the
Speaker 1: She sits down a bow shot away because she doesn't
Speaker 1: want to watch him die. Some scholars think this is
Speaker 1: a narrative compression, the author treating Ishmael's age loosely to
Speaker 1: heighten the emotional impact. Others think the Hebrew verbs suggest
Speaker 1: a teenager who has collapsed from dehydration, and Hagar positions
Speaker 1: him in the best shade she can find before backing away.
Speaker 1: Either reading works, The emotional core is the same. Hagar
Speaker 1: sits down about one hundred yards away, and she lifts
Speaker 1: her voice and weeps. The Hebrew word here is baka.
Speaker 1: It means to weep openly, loudly, with full body grief.
Speaker 1: This isn't silent tears. This is the sound of a
Speaker 1: mother who has accepted that her child is going to
Speaker 1: die and she cannot stop it. She's been here before,
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen years ago. She sat by a way
Speaker 1: well in this same kind of wilderness, pregnant and alone
Speaker 1: and running. And God showed up. God spoke, God made promises.
Speaker 1: God saw her. But this time she doesn't call out
Speaker 1: to God. She doesn't pray, she doesn't invoke el Roy,
Speaker 1: the name she herself gave to the divine. She just cries.
Speaker 1: And the text does something unexpected. Instead of saying that
Speaker 1: God heard Hagar's weeping, Genesis twenty one, verse seventeen says
Speaker 1: God heard the voice of the boy Ishmael. God hears.
Speaker 1: The boy whose very name means God hears, is the
Speaker 1: one whose voice God responds to in this moment. The
Speaker 1: name Hagar was given back in chapter sixteen. The name
Speaker 1: that encodes God's attention to suffering activates here in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: like a stored promise finally being cashed in and God's speaks,
Speaker 1: but not to Hagar directly. This time, the Angel of
Speaker 1: God calls from heaven and says, what is the matter, Hagar,
Speaker 1: Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying
Speaker 1: as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take
Speaker 1: him by the hand, for I will make him into
Speaker 1: a great nation. Two things to notice. First, the Angel
Speaker 1: calls her by name again, just like the first encounter,
Speaker 1: in a world where she's been reduced to that slave woman,
Speaker 1: God's messenger uses her name. Second, the promise from chapter
Speaker 1: sixteen is repeated, I will make him into a great nation.
Speaker 1: The promise didn't expire when she was expelled, it didn't
Speaker 1: get revoked when Sarah demanded her removal. It's still active.
Speaker 1: And then comes verse nineteen, one of the most quietly
Speaker 1: devastating verses in the Hebrew by Bble. Then God opened
Speaker 1: her eyes and she saw a well of water. The
Speaker 1: well was already there. It was there the whole time.
Speaker 1: Hagar was sitting in the desert, dying of thirst, weeping
Speaker 1: over her child, and there was a well within sight
Speaker 1: the whole time. She just couldn't see it. The Hebrew
Speaker 1: verb is pakatch, which means to open, specifically to open
Speaker 1: eyes that were closed or blinded. It's the same word
Speaker 1: used when God opens the eyes of Elisha's servant to
Speaker 1: see the armies of Heaven in Second Kings. It's the
Speaker 1: word for removing a veil, for shifting perception, for revealing
Speaker 1: what was present but hidden. The well was already there.
Speaker 1: Take a moment with that, because this isn't just an
Speaker 1: ancient survival story. This is a spiritual principle embedded in
Speaker 1: the narrative structure of the text. Sometimes times, the provision
Speaker 1: is already present, the answer is already there, The way
Speaker 1: forward already exists. But pain and fear and grief have
Speaker 1: a way of blinding us to what's right in front
Speaker 1: of us. And what God does for Hagar isn't magic.
Speaker 1: He doesn't create a well out of nothing. He opens
Speaker 1: her eyes to what was always within reach. If you're
Speaker 1: in a season right now where everything feels like desert,
Speaker 1: where the resources have run out, and you're sitting at
Speaker 1: a distance because you can't watch the thing you love
Speaker 1: most fall apart, this verse is for you. The well
Speaker 1: might already be there, You might just need your eyes
Speaker 1: opened to see it. Hagar fills the skin with water.
Speaker 1: She gives the boy a drink, and the text says
Speaker 1: God was with the boy as he grew up. Ishmael
Speaker 1: lives in the wilderness of Paran. He becomes an archer,
Speaker 1: and Hagar does something that reveals her enduring agency and
Speaker 1: her identity as an Egyptian. She gets him a wife
Speaker 1: from the land of Egypt. Even after everything, after decades
Speaker 1: in Abraham's household, after two divine encounters, after being cast
Speaker 1: out and nearly dying, Hagar's identity as an Egyptian remains.
Speaker 1: She reaches back to her own people, her own culture,
Speaker 1: her own roots, to build her son's future. The text
Speaker 1: doesn't judge this, it simply records it. She's a mother,
Speaker 1: providing for her child from the resources she knows, and
Speaker 1: Ishmael thrives. Genesis twenty five lists his twelve sons by name,
Speaker 1: twelve princes of twelve tribes. If that number sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: it should Jacob Isaac's son will also father twelve sons
Speaker 1: who become twelve tribes. The symmetry is deliberate. Ishmael's line
Speaker 1: mirror's Israel's line. Two great nations, two sets of twelve,
Speaker 1: two branches of Abraham's family, tree. The text is not
Speaker 1: subtle about this parallel. Both lines receive divine promises, both
Speaker 1: produce twelve tribal leaders, both become nations too numerous to count.
Speaker 1: God's promise to Hagar in the desert wasn't a consolation prize.
Speaker 1: It was a parallel covenant. So here's the question you
Speaker 1: need to sit with. Why does this story matter, not historically,
Speaker 1: not academically, why does it matter right now today to
Speaker 1: you sitting wherever you're sitting watching this. Hagar's story is
Speaker 1: the first fully developed female narrative in the Bible. Before her,
Speaker 1: women appear in Genesis as wives, mothers, and daughters, defined
Speaker 1: by their relationships to men. Hagar is the first woman
Speaker 1: in scripture who has her own story arc, her own
Speaker 1: encounters with God, her own promises, her own named place
Speaker 1: in the landscape. She's also the only person in Genesis
Speaker 1: who has two separate angelic encounters. Abraham has multiple encounters
Speaker 1: with God, but their part of an ongoing covenantal relationship.
Speaker 1: Hagar's encounters are rescue operations. God shows up at the
Speaker 1: two lowest points of her life not to make a deal,
Speaker 1: but to save her, and this is what separates Hagar's
Speaker 1: story from every other patriarchal narrative in Genesis. God's relationship
Speaker 1: with Abraham is transactional in structure. I will bless you
Speaker 1: and you will be a blessing. I will give you
Speaker 1: land and you will walk in faithfulness. There are terms, conditions, expectations.
Speaker 1: God's relationship with Hagar has no conditions. There's no if
Speaker 1: you do this, I will do that. There's no covenant ceremony,
Speaker 1: no smoking firepot passing between cut animals. God simply shows up,
Speaker 1: sees her and makes a promise, no strings, no requirements,
Speaker 1: just grace extended to someone the world considered disposable. The
Speaker 1: theological implications of this are enormous, and they've been mostly
Speaker 1: ignored for centuries. Think about it this way. The entire
Speaker 1: Old Testament is structured around covenants. God makes a covenant
Speaker 1: with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, with David. These covenants
Speaker 1: form the spine of the Biblical narrative. And yet before
Speaker 1: any of the major covenants are fully established, God makes
Speaker 1: an unconditional promise to an Egyptian slave woman who has
Speaker 1: no legals standing, no social power, and no claim on
Speaker 1: God's attention. What does that tell you about the character
Speaker 1: of God as the Biblical authors understood it. It tells
Speaker 1: you that God's attention isn't earned, it's given. That divine
Speaker 1: concern doesn't flow downward through hierarchies of power. It flows
Speaker 1: toward need. It flows toward the person sitting alone in
Speaker 1: the desert. It flows toward the mother who has given
Speaker 1: up hope. Now there's another layer to this story that
Speaker 1: rarely gets explored, and it connects Hagar to three of
Speaker 1: the world's major religions in ways that are both beautiful
Speaker 1: and complicated. In Judaism, Hagar's story is read with a
Speaker 1: mix of sympathy and theological complexity. The Rabbinical tradition has
Speaker 1: a range of interpretations. Some Midrashic texts identify Hagar with Qetura,
Speaker 1: the woman Abraham marries after Sarah's death in Genesis twenty five.
Speaker 1: If that identification is correct, it means Hagar came back
Speaker 1: after everything, after the exile, after the desert, she and
Speaker 1: Abraham found each other again. Not all scholars except this reading,
Speaker 1: but the fact that the tradition exists tells you something
Speaker 1: about how the story resonated. Even in ancient times, there
Speaker 1: was a sense that Hagar's story couldn't end in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: It needed a return in Christianity. Paul uses Hagar in
Speaker 1: his letter to the Galatians as an allegory for the
Speaker 1: Old Covenant versus the New Covenant. She represents Mount Sinai,
Speaker 1: the law slavery. Sarah represents the new Jerusalem, freedom, grace,
Speaker 1: and honestly. This is one of the more controversial uses
Speaker 1: of the Hagar narrative because it turns a real person's
Speaker 1: suffering into a theological metaphor. Paul's point about law and
Speaker 1: grace is valid on its own terms, but the original
Speaker 1: Genesis text paints a far more sympathetic portrait of Hagar
Speaker 1: than Paul's allegory suggests. If you read Genesis without Paul's overlay,
Speaker 1: Hagar isn't a symbol of bondage. She's a symbol of
Speaker 1: God's unexpected grace. She's the proof that God's promises aren't
Speaker 1: limited to the Covenant line. That's not anti Pauline, it's
Speaker 1: just honest about what the text actually says before later
Speaker 1: theological frameworks were applied to it. In Islam, Hagar, known
Speaker 1: as Hajjar, is one of the most honored women in
Speaker 1: the faith. The Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that
Speaker 1: every Muslim is expected to make at least once in
Speaker 1: their lifetime, includes a ritual called the Sai, where pilgrim
Speaker 1: walk seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa.
Speaker 1: This ritual directly commemorates Hagar's desperate search for water in
Speaker 1: the wilderness for her son Ishmael. Every year, millions of
Speaker 1: people re enact Hagar's steps, Her desperation, her faith, her
Speaker 1: endurance become a living, embodied act of worship. The Zamzam
Speaker 1: well in Mecca is traditionally identified as the well God
Speaker 1: revealed to Hagar. Whether or not the geography aligns perfectly
Speaker 1: with the biblical Beer Lahiroi, the theological connection is the
Speaker 1: same God provides water in the desert for a woman.
Speaker 1: The world discarded, three religions, billions of people, and at
Speaker 1: the center of all of it, a woman who started
Speaker 1: her story as someone else's property. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: bring this back to something personal, because hagar story isn't
Speaker 1: just about theology and ancient history. It's about a pattern
Speaker 1: that plays out in ordinary human lives every single day.
Speaker 1: The pattern is this, there are people in the world
Speaker 1: who feel invisible, people who are defined by their function,
Speaker 1: not their identity, people who are used for what they
Speaker 1: can produce, not valued for who they are. People who
Speaker 1: sit in their own version of the desert, watching the
Speaker 1: last of their resources run out, unable to see the
Speaker 1: well that might already be there. Hagar's name for God, Elroy,
Speaker 1: is maybe the most intimate name for the Divine in
Speaker 1: the entire Bible. It doesn't describe what God does, It
Speaker 1: describes what God is. A God who sees, not a
Speaker 1: God who merely watches, a God who sees in the
Speaker 1: way that transforms, the kind of seeing that says I
Speaker 1: know your there, I know what you're going through, and
Speaker 1: your story isn't over. The well Hagar named still shows
Speaker 1: up in scripture long after she's gone beer Lahyroi, the
Speaker 1: well of the living one who sees me. Isaac eventually
Speaker 1: settles there. The son of the Covenant chooses to build
Speaker 1: his life at the place where the outcaste met God.
Speaker 1: You could read that as coincidence, or you could read
Speaker 1: that as the text telling you that the place where
Speaker 1: the rejected encounter the Divine is sacred ground, and even
Speaker 1: those born into privilege are drawn to it. Hagar entered
Speaker 1: the story as property. She exits as the mother of
Speaker 1: a nation, the namer of God, and the only woman
Speaker 1: in Genesis whose encounters with the divine rival the patriarchs themselves.
Speaker 1: She was the first to see an angel, the first
Speaker 1: to name God, the first to rest a promise of
Speaker 1: nationhood outside the covenant line, and she did it all
Speaker 1: from the lowest possible position in her society. The real
Speaker 1: question isn't whether Hagar's story matters historically. Of course it does.
Speaker 1: The real question is whether you can see yourself in it,
Speaker 1: Because Elroyd didn't stop seeing people when the Book of
Speaker 1: Genesis ended. The God who found a runaway slave at
Speaker 1: a desert well is the same God who sees the
Speaker 1: person watching this right now. Whatever wilderness you're walking through,
Speaker 1: whatever name you've been reduced to by people who only
Speaker 1: see your function, whatever well might be sitting just beyond
Speaker 1: your ability to perceive it, right now, you are seen.
Speaker 1: That's what Hagar knew, That's what she named, and three
Speaker 1: thousand years later, we're still talking about it. If this
Speaker 1: video changed the way you see Hagar's story, or if
Speaker 1: it helped you see something about your own story subscribe.
Speaker 1: There are more hidden figures in the Bible whose stories
Speaker 1: have never been told the way they deserve, and we're
Speaker 1: just getting started.