Commentary on Genesis 16:1-12,15-16

In spite of God’s promises, Abram is still without child by his wife, Sarai. But among her staff was an Egyptian maidservant, called Hagar. She may have been acquired while Abram was in Egypt (an anecdote not covered in our readings).

Sarai is aware of how she has disappointed her husband by not giving him a son, and she attributes this to God’s action. She then makes a generous offer, suggesting to Abram that he “go in to [her] slave” so that Abram might have sons through her:

You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.

Hagar would, in effect, act as a surrogate mother.

Sarai’s actions are all in keeping with the laws of the time, as known from ancient extra-biblical sources. According to Mesopotamian law, an infertile wife could offer one of her female slaves to her husband and recognise the child born as one of her own. There will be a similar situation with Rachel, the wife of Jacob, and Leah, Rachel’s older sister who was also a wife to Jacob (see Gen 30:1-24).

So, after they had lived 10 years in Canaan, Sarai offers her maidservant Hagar as a concubine to her husband. The servant very soon becomes pregnant. As soon as she did so, she looked on her mistress with disdain and contempt. Although a mere slave, Hagar was able to do what her mistress had not been able to accomplish. As mother to Abram’s long-wanted son she was not afraid of any reprisals from him.

Sarai then turns on Abram and blames him for Hagar’s behaviour:

May the wrong done to me be on you!

Sarai had generously given her maid to Abram and now that the maid is pregnant, she has only disdain for Sarai. Expressing hostility or suspicion on her part, Sarai says to Abram:

May the Lord judge between you and me!

Abram’s response does not sound very admirable to our ears today:

Your slave is in your power; do to her as you please.

Taking him at his word, the jealous and grieved wife treats Hagar so badly that she flees the household.

She is found on a road by an “angel of the Lord” near a spring out in the wilderness at Shur. At this time, the ‘angel’ is understood as a manifestation of God in human form and not—as angels are later understood—a created being distinct from God.

He asks her where she has come from and where she is going. She says she has run away from her mistress Sarai. The angel tells her to go back to Sarai and to submit to her mistress’s abusive behaviour. In return, he promises that she will have descendants too numerous to count.

In addition, the messenger tells her that she is in fact already pregnant. She is going to have a son and he is to be called Ishmael. This is in answer to her prayer. In fact, the name Ishmael means either “May God hear!” or “God has heard”.

However, this son is strangely foreseen to:

…be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.

Away from human settlements, Ishmael would roam the desert like a wild donkey and the hostility between Sarai and Hagar will be passed on to their descendants. Ishmael’s descendants will be the desert Arabs. In describing them, Job asks:

Who has let the wild ass go free?…to which I have given the steppe [wilderness] for its home….[and which] scorns the tumult of the city. (Job 39:5-7)

But sure enough, when Abram was eighty-six years old, Hagar bore a son to Abram and the son was named Ishmael.

It is clear that this story represents a more primitive society with different social values. The having of an heir transcended any duties of marital fidelity, a fact which Sarai clearly acknowledged. Her primary responsibility as a wife was to produce an heir. Being a loving marriage companion was secondary to this.

Hagar’s attitude to Sarai is certainly not commendable, though it is understandable that a slave should feel good about being able to do something so important for her master which his wife could not. Abram’s attitude is not altogether commendable either. But he was, in his time and culture, simply recognising the superior status of his wife over a slave—even if that slave was to be (as he would have thought at the time) the mother of his heir. Hagar was, in contemporary terms, ‘only a baby-bearer’.

In our own day, typically there is a great deal of turmoil when a ‘mistress’ is present in a marriage. Extreme situations can occur, all the way from reducing a wife to the status of a live-in household employee to total amorality about sexual relations outside of marriage—and everything in between. All too often, the victims who suffer the most from this turmoil are the children of such relationships. In today’s passage, the seeds of future problems are sown, and sadly, the same unfortunate outcomes still occur.