Hagar at the Spring

Ten years had passed since Abram came to live in Canaan, and Sarai had borne him no children. There was an Egyptian maidservant in her household named Hagar. Sarai turned to Abram with a proposal that would bring this woman into the long wait for a family. The words of the proposal belonged to Sarai.

“Look now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Please go to my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family by her.” This was how Sarai described her situation and what she hoped to do about it. Abram listened to her, and Sarai took Hagar and gave her to him to be his wife.

Abram slept with Hagar, and she conceived. No agreement from Hagar is recorded before Sarai gives her to Abram. When Hagar realized that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. The pregnancy Sarai had sought through her servant was followed by contempt between the two women.

Sarai went to Abram and held him responsible. “May the wrong done to me be upon you!” she said, reminding him that she had delivered her servant into his arms. She said Hagar had treated her with contempt since becoming pregnant. She called on the LORD to judge between herself and Abram.

Abram left Hagar in Sarai’s power. “Here,” he said, “your servant is in your hands. Do whatever you want with her.” Sarai then treated Hagar so harshly that she fled. The woman Sarai had given as a wife was still spoken of as her servant, and Abram placed no limit on what Sarai might do to her.

The angel of the LORD found Hagar by a spring in the desert, along the road to Shur. He addressed her by name and as Sarai’s servant, asking where she had come from and where she was going. “I am running away from my mistress Sarai,” she replied. She named the person she was fleeing; she gave no destination.

The angel told her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.” He also said, “I will greatly multiply your offspring so that they will be too numerous to count.” The command sent her back to the household she had fled. The account had named Sarai’s harsh treatment plainly, and it did not withdraw that description.

Then the angel spoke of the child Hagar was carrying. She would bear a son and name him Ishmael, because the LORD had heard her cry of affliction. He described a life of conflict for the boy, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him. He would live in hostility toward his brothers.

Hagar gave a name to the LORD who had spoken to her: “You are the God who sees me,” she said. She also said, “Here I have seen the One who sees me!” The woman who had answered a question about her flight now spoke about being seen. The spring along the road became a named place in her story.

The well was called Beer-lahai-roi, between Kadesh and Bered. Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named him Ishmael. The account does not describe her journey back or a reconciliation with Sarai. It records the birth and gives the father’s age: Abram was eighty-six.

There was now a son in the household, born to Hagar after her flight and return. Sarai’s own childlessness remained. Thirteen years would pass before the next recorded appearance of the LORD to Abram. When He spoke again, He would name Sarai herself as the woman who would bear the promised son.