As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we know that our heavenly parents and Savior wish to save all their children because of their great love for all of us. One of the most moving examples of God’s loving-kindness is found in the tale of Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian (Genesis 16; 21). However, Hagar’s story is often quickly glanced over rather than intensely studied because it requires us to recognize the complicated humanity of our revered ancient patriarchs and matriarchs. New Testament scholar Frances Taylor Gench reminds us, however, that “biblical texts . . . do not exist to make us comfortable. They exist to make us think, to be engaged by God, and to effect our transformation.”[1] By raising issues such as abuse, trauma, power, and complicity that are all too relevant today, difficult texts, such as the narrative of Hagar, create space for personal and group reflection that may inspire us toward individual and societal change.Though the learning process challenges us, our careful engagement with Hagar’s story helps us see not only the profound reality that God cares about and reaches out to all his children regardless of any identity marker, but also the miraculous fact that recognizing God’s grace, aid, love, and involvement in our lives can enable us to face life’s challenges and may even transform the way we view these difficulties.

Who Was Hagar?

Hagar’s interaction with God is one of the most inspiring stories in the Old Testament. However, to be inspired, we must first understand who Hagar was. Readers are first introduced to Hagar in Genesis 16: “Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar” (Genesis 16:1).[2] The word handmaid is from the Hebrew shifhah, which is translated as “bondmaid,” “maid,” “woman servant,” “female slave,” or “bondswoman.”[3] How Hagar came to be in servitude to Sarah is uncertain. Did her parents, unable to care for one more child, sell her into bondage? Did she, orphaned and without resources, sell herself to survive? Was she, as early rabbis conjectured, a gift from the Pharaoh received during Abraham’s time in Egypt (12:10–20, esp. v. 16)?[4] Though the text does not answer this question, considering it helps humanize Hagar. We begin to see her as an individual with an unknown but likely difficult backstory.

Hagar’s Life in Abraham and Sarah’s Household

We can further relate to Hagar by trying to understand what it would have meant to be an enslaved person, a bondwoman, or a handmaid in Abraham’s household. A range of possibilities exists, as evidenced by the various translations of shifhah,but one thing is certain: her life in servitude would not have matched our conception of slavery today.[5] In the ancient Near East, almost all people existed within a social hierarchy of dependence in which collective identity rather than individuality and personal freedom was the prevailing social order.[6] As archaeologist Carol Meyers explains:

As best we can tell, the concept of the individual as a fully separate and independent entity was not part of the ancient Hebraic mindset. . . . Like most premodern agrarians, [Israelites] were so interdependent in a variety of economic, social, and religious ways that they were rarely viable as individuals. . . . The identity of Israelites was thus relational, in contrast to the individuation and separation that typically characterizes human development in much of the industrialized world.[7]

By encouraging us to recognize that slavery during the patriarchal period did not look the same as slavery in later times, scholars are not trying to mitigate the harsh realities in which many people existed. Rather, they are trying to aid readers’ transformation by helping them see how the relationships described in the biblical text are more relatable than we would expect and, consequently, have much to teach us about our relationships with others. Along this line, Alice Ogden Bellis, a professor of Old Testament language and literature, writes:

The story of Hagar is the story of a servant and her mistress, or in modern terms an employer and employee. It is the story of struggle for status. It is sadly also the story of abuse and exile. With the exception of the sexual component of the relationship, it is debatable whether the relationship can fairly be called any more economically exploitive than the relationship between a contemporary middle-class woman and a live-in domestic employee (or even a cleaning service worker). The modern domestic worker may be technically, legally free, but economically probably has few options.[8]

Likewise, Bible scholar Renita Weems reminds us that the story of Hagar and Sarah “is a story of ethnic prejudice exacerbated by economic and sexual exploitation. Theirs is a story of conflict, women betraying women, mothers conspiring against mothers. Theirs is a story of social rivalry.”[9] Thinking about Hagar and Sarah’s relationship in this way will hopefully allow us, as we study their story, to consider contemporary parallels in our own lives in which we can improve.

In one crucial way, however, Hagar and Sarah’s relationship is very different from what we find in similar modern counterparts: Sarah can compel Hagar to act as her surrogate. “And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. . . . And Sarai . . . gave [Hagar] to her husband Abram to be his wife” (Genesis 16:2–3).[10] So much heartbreak for Sarah and Hagar is apparent in these two verses. For decades Sarah likely believed that God had deliberately prevented her from having a child.[11] How inadequate did Sarah feel over her inability to produce an heir? Did she blame herself or did she blame God? Did she fear for her economic future without a son to provide for her should Abraham die? Though surrogacy was an acceptable feature of family relations in the ancient Near East,[12] this was not how Sarah wished to become a mother.

And how did Hagar feel about joining Abraham and Sarah’s marital relationship? Did either Sarah or Abraham seek her consent? The absence of Hagar’s voice at this point in the narrative, coupled with how Abraham and Sarah refer to her only as Sarah’s shifhah and never as Hagar, indicates that they did not. Only after Hagar conceives do we learn anything about her feelings: “And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes” (Genesis 16:4). The sight words that begin and end this moment—“she saw” and “in her eyes”—reveal a shift in Hagar’s perception.[13] She, an individual in servitude, sees herself as better than Sarah, her mistress, reminding us that power relations are not “static but are rather circumstantial and continuously being negotiated.”[14]

Carrying Abraham’s child raises Hagar’s status within the household, and she “despised,” “looked with contempt on,” or “no longer respected her mistress” (Genesis 16:4 KJV, RSV, CEB). Many commentators blame Hagar’s behavior for Sarah’s subsequent harsh treatment.[15] Others, recognizing the significant power differential between the two women, do not allow Hagar’s contempt for Sarah to justify Sarah’s actions. However, they do acknowledge how difficult this loss of power and status would have been for Sarah.[16] In a culture where a woman’s ability to have children was intricately connected to her identity and security,[17] Hagar’s and Sarah’s statuses were in flux, and this was evidently deeply troubling to Sarah.

Sarah turns to Abraham to rectify the power dynamic: “My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. . . . But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee” (Genesis 16:5–6). In turning the matter over to Sarah, Abraham reasserts Hagar’s status as a bondwoman and reinforces Sarah’s managerial role in running the household.[18] Unfortunately, Sarah responds to Hagar’s contempt by dealing “hardly” (ʿanah) with her (v. 6). The Hebrew means “to afflict, to oppress, to treat harshly, to mistreat”[19] (notably, the same word describes the suffering of the Hebrews when they were enslaved by the Egyptians).[20] Whether this implies Sarah treated Hagar as her maidservant—asking her to clean or fetch water—or suggests actual abuse we do not know. What we do know is that Hagar flees from Sarah into the wilderness (vv. 6–7).

Hagar in the Wilderness

What was Hagar’s plan? Did she hope to traverse the wilderness and return to Egypt alone? Was there even a slim possibility she could make it? Did she have a family to return to, or did she leave with no destination in mind? We cannot know for sure, but given that her identity, agency, and security were all bound up with her position in Abraham’s household,[21] Hagar’s flight demonstrates surprising courage and sense of self—and quite probably sheer desperation.

We never discover the answers to these questions because in the wilderness everything changes as Hagar learns of God’s great love for her and his plan for her life. There, by a fountain of water, a divine messenger appears to Hagar and calls her by name: “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?” (Genesis 16:8). For the first time in the story, an individual—a divine individual—uses her name and engages her in a dialogue. In so doing, the angel of the Lord establishes God’s awareness of and concern for Hagar. Although to Sarah and Abraham she is a bondwoman, to God—who is not limited by time and culture—she is an individual worthy of being addressed by name and whose future matters to him: “And whither wilt thou go?” (v. 8). During this encounter Hagar learns that she will bear a son (making her the first of a very few women in the Bible to receive a birth annunciation)[22] and that she will call him Ishmael, meaning “God hears,”[23] for “the Lord has heard your affliction” (v. 11). How did this knowledge that she, a woman of little status in the world’s estimation, is known and watched over by God alter her perception of herself? How did that perception continue to change as the angel of the Lord revealed to her a future beyond anything she could have imagined?

In this remarkable encounter Hagar learns that the Lord will multiply her posterity so greatly “that it shall not be numbered for multitude” (Genesis 16:10). With this promise she becomes the only woman in the Bible to receive a divine promise of numerous descendants not through her husband but as her own prerogative. Likely of most importance to Hagar was learning that this would be her son—not Sarah’s. The rules of surrogacy dictated that Hagar’s child would belong to Sarah, but the text indicates that Sarah had forfeited her right to Hagar’s child through her treatment of Hagar. Hagar flees to the wilderness because Sarah “dealt hardly” with her (v. 6), and there the Lord tells her that Ishmael will be her son “because the Lord hath heard [her] affliction” (v. 11). Hagar’s affliction begins with her status as a slave but has been compounded by Sarah’s particular actions toward her (v. 11).

Furthermore, as part of Ishmael’s annunciation, Hagar is told that her son will be a free man who cannot be exploited or subjected by others: “And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren” (v. 12). Though this may sound distressing to twenty-first-century ears, it was likely welcome news for Hagar; she was under the control of Abraham and Sarah, but her son would be free.

That Ishmael is Hagar’s son and not Sarah’s is further reaffirmed by the narrator at the closing of the story when Hagar’s name appears three times and Sarah’s not at all at the birth of Ishmael: “And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son’s name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram” (vv. 15–16). Sarah will have to wait another fourteen years for a son to call her own.

Hagar’s extraordinary encounter at the well concludes with her becoming the only person in the Old Testament to name God: “And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me” (v. 13). While many individuals in the Bible name the place where they encounter the Lord, Hagar is the only one who names the Lord himself. This act of naming is significant. Naming in the ancient Near East and Old Testament demonstrated power and the bond of relationship.[24] By concluding her interaction with the Lord by giving him a name, “The God Who Sees Me,” Hagar is claiming the promises God has made to hear her, to see her, to answer her. She is ratifying the relationships formed and defined through their conversation, both her relationship with the Lord and with her son. Empowered by her experience, secure in her most vital relationships, Hagar is enabled to take the next step in her difficult journey—to obey the Lord’s command to return to her home and submit herself to Sarah.

Hagar Returns to Sarah and Abraham

For many readers, God’s concern for Hagar is complicated by his command to return and submit to Sarah. This has troubled those who see God as a God of liberation, and unfortunately there is no definitive way to understand this directive. Many readers have turned to context to establish the impossibility of a pregnant woman surviving alone in the wilderness: Hagar must return in order to survive.[25] Some, however, wonder why God didn’t perform a miracle for her, as he would during her second trek into the wilderness, or as he would for the children of Israel during the Exodus. God is a God of miracles, so why liberate some people but command others to return and submit to servitude?

Delores Williams, a professor of theology and culture, suggests that “God’s response to Hagar’s (and her child’s) situation was survival and involvement in their developments of an appropriate quality of life that is appropriate to their situation and their heritage.”[26] For Williams, God’s work within the survival and quality-of-life struggles of families is as important as God’s work of liberation. Summarizing Williams’s argument, Old Testament professor Katharine Doob Sakenfeld writes, “Since it is unlikely that racism, sexism, or economic exploitation will disappear in the near future, our theology needs to have room for God to be at work supporting and caring about those who are oppressed within these structures from which there is no apparent escaping. God is present and at work in the struggles for survival and some degree of quality of life within all the brokenness of this world. . . . God helps people . . . ‘make a way out of no way.’”[27] Similarly, Church leaders teach that God does not always deliver us from our trials but strengthens us in our trials. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland states, “[Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ] sustain us in our hour of need—and always will, even if we cannot recognize that intervention.”[28]

Hagar, of course, does recognize the Lord’s intervention, and she returns to Abraham’s household a different person, transformed by the knowledge God has given her. Though the Lord at that point did not see fit to liberate her (that will come later), he did give her the knowledge and perspective she needed to wait on him and on his plan for her and her son. Hagar returns from her flight knowing that God is aware of her, that her son will live free, and that her posterity “shall not be numbered for multitude” (Genesis 16:10). Given the communal mentality of her time and place, these promises likely did more to aid her upon her return than we can possibly understand. To us with our twenty-first-century individualist mentality, a promise for our descendants hundreds of years from now may not mean much, but for Hagar it meant everything.[29]

Her return allowed Ishmael to undergo the rite of circumcision at thirteen years old and gain rights of inheritance from being born as Abraham’s son (Genesis 17:25). Her willingness to follow God’s direction made it possible for Ishmael to live out God’s plan for him: to be raised under Abraham’s tutelage and protection until the age of seventeen, to receive God’s promises to multiply his posterity through “twelve princes,” and to make him a “great nation” (v. 20). Even though Hagar still had to endure unknown afflictions in Abraham’s household, she did so knowing that God was aware of her and had a plan for the freedom of her posterity.

Understanding the Conflict Between Sarah and Hagar

For thirteen years, the narrative is silent about Hagar and everyone else in Abraham’s household. When the narrative resumes, Ishmael is thirteen years old and the Lord is promising Abraham that his wife Sarah will bear him a son, Isaac, through whom God will establish his everlasting covenant. Upon hearing this news, Abraham cries to God, “O that Ishmael might live before thee!” (Genesis 17:18). While the text reveals nothing of Abraham’s feelings for Hagar, his love for Ishmael is clear. He does not seem anxious for Sarah to provide him an heir—a reading made stronger by the possible alternative translation “Why not let Ishmael be my heir?” (v. 18 Good News Translation, God’s Word Translation). Instead, he is concerned for his eldest son’s well-being. The Lord responds by promising that Ishmael, too, will be blessed and become a great nation (v. 20).

A year later Sarah gives birth to the promised son Isaac (Genesis 21:2), and while we rejoice for Sarah, we worry about how this will affect Hagar’s and Ishmael’s status within the household. Our concern is justified when, three years later at Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael interacting with her son (v. 9). The verb for Ishmael’s behavior, shq, is unclear—it “can mean ‘to play,’ ‘to laugh,’ or ‘to sport,’ and can cover a wide range of activity.”[30] Whatever it is, Sarah perceives it as a threat and calls for the immediate expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael (v. 11). Again, we witness Abraham’s love for Ishmael (though not for Hagar): “And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son” (v. 11). It seems that Abraham agrees to Sarah’s demand only because the Lord sanctions it and promises Abraham once again that he will make Ishmael a great nation (vv. 12–13).

So how are we, as readers, to regard Sarah’s demand to send Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness? I do not think we are supposed to overlook this tragic moment by seeing it as God’s will since the Lord tells Abraham to “hearken unto [Sarah’s] voice” (Genesis 21:12). Instead, I think we need to grapple with what led Sarah to make such a terrifying demand. To understand Sarah, we must recognize the trauma she had suffered relating to her married life with Abraham.

Before Hagar entered their lives, Sarah was placed in a highly dangerous situation when Abraham, as instructed by the Lord (Abraham 2:22–25), told Pharaoh during their sojourn in Egypt that Sarah was his sister (notably, though, God did not tell Abraham to go to Egypt; that was Abraham’s decision). Sarah was subsequently taken into Pharaoh’s house (Genesis 12:10–20). Though most translations, with the notable exception of the KJV, indicate that Pharaoh had already taken Sarah to wife,[31] the text is silent on whether this included sexual relations. What can be said with more certainty is that in Pharaoh’s house Sarah is a victim who likely experienced and felt unknown terrors as she was separated from Abraham and placed in Pharaoh’s harem for an unspecified amount of time with no knowledge of when or perhaps even if she would be returned to her family. Even if she did have faith that the Lord would save her, as he had saved Abraham from being sacrificed by the priest of Elkenah (Abraham 1:7–16), this experience would have been no less real. Consequently, her subsequent oppression of Hagar should be understood within a cycle of trauma: she received terror from others, and she would pass on that terror to Hagar.

Perhaps her loss of agency in Pharaoh’s court carried over into her marriage where once again her body felt out of her control because she was unable to bear children. Perhaps feelings of disempowerment, ineptness, and shame, coupled with her desire to fulfill the Lord’s promise of posterity, are what motivated her suggestion that Abraham father a child with Hagar. We can imagine how difficult those fourteen years were for Sarah, when Hagar had a child and she did not. Did she continue to feel insecure about her position within the household? What did it feel like to believe that the Lord’s promise of numberless posterity made to her husband did not include her as well (Genesis 15:4–5)? Did she feel unloved and unseen by God?

When Sarah did at last conceive and bear Isaac, when she too was drawn into the covenant and became a “mother of nations,” she must have felt great joy—but perhaps anxiety as well (Genesis 17:15–21). Ishmael, fourteen years older and the firstborn son, may have felt like a rival to Isaac’s future family and covenantal primacy.

Looking over Sarah’s life, we see a life filled with episodes of intense sorrow and at times even terror. In Egypt she was powerless to control and protect her life, dignity, and marriage. In her marriage she was powerless to produce the son she and Abraham longed for. She asserted her agency in giving Hagar to Abraham, only to find that “success” as painful as her failure to bear children. When she did, at last, bear a son, she seems to have lived in fear that somehow Ishmael would hurt or displace Isaac, so she had Hagar and Ishmael banished to the wilderness (Genesis 21:9–10). Though none of this excuses Sarah’s abusive behavior toward Hagar, it may help us understand Sarah’s emotional state that led her to treat Hagar the way she did.

Return to the Wilderness

Sarah had to know she was, essentially, sentencing Hagar and Ishmael to death. Only divine intervention saved Hagar and her son. When their water ran out and death seemed imminent, Hagar “cast the child under one of the shrubs” (Genesis 21:15). Or as Professor Phyllis Trible, explains, “Sensing the nearness of his death, Hagar ‘puts the child’ under a shrub (21:15). Of various uses in Scripture for the verb ‘put’ (slk), one describes lowering a body into a grave (compare 2 Samuel 18:17; 2 Kings 13:21; Jeremiah 41:9). This meaning suits well this context. Contrary to some translations, Hagar does not cast away, throw out, or abandon her son; instead, she prepares a deathbed for ‘the child.’. . . Powerless to save ‘the child,’ Hagar would give him a proper burial.”[32] Having done all she can for her son, Hagar “lift[s] up her voice, and [weeps]” (Genesis 21:16). What was this moment like for Hagar as she is unable to protect her son? And as she experiences what she likely thinks is God’s failure to fulfill his promises to her? As readers, although we know Hagar’s cry is about to be answered, we should not shy away at this moment from mourning with Hagar for all that she has suffered. In particular, since Hagar’s story depicts oppression in the familiar forms of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationality, mourning with Hagar may inspire us to know how to personally apply the counsel from our prophet President Russell M. Nelson “to build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation,” “to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice, . . . [and] to promote respect for all of God’s children.”[33]

God’s great regard for Hagar and her son is about to be manifested again, for as she sits weeping, “the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation” (Genesis 21:17–18). Reestablishing the promise the Lord made to Hagar seventeen years ago, God now provides her with the miraculous liberation that she desired at her first encounter with a divine being: “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink” (v. 19). Again we see an emphasis on sight in Hagar’s story, but this time God has enabled her to see what she cannot see on her own. Once more God has provided Hagar and Ishmael the means to continue on his chosen path for them. In very different circumstances than when she first encountered a divine messenger, Hagar and her seventeen-year-old son—raised in the household of Abraham with blessings and promises—are prepared to face the wilderness together—and with God’s help: “And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness” (v. 20).

Hagar’s story ends with these words: “And his mother took [Ishmael] a wife out of the land of Egypt” (v. 21). Hagar, now acting as Ishmael’s sole parent, shapes Ishmael’s future by choosing his marriage partner from her own people, linking Abraham’s house once again to Egypt. Abraham’s narrative concludes (before the narrator proceeds with Isaac’s story) by listing each of Ishmael’s twelve sons—“twelve princes” (25:16)—who fulfill the Lord’s promise to both Abraham and Hagar, reminding us that Hagar’s descendants, too, are a part of the house of Abraham.

While her story is secondary to Sarah’s in the Christian tradition, Hagar is revered in Islam because she is seen as “the mother of all Arabs” and her son, “the Prophet Ishmael,” as an ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad.[34] Each year, as part of the Hajj, pilgrims “run or walk between the points that symbolize Safa and Marwa [the area where they believe Hagar ran back and forth looking for water].” This honors her as a model of motherly love and as an icon of faith in God’s saving power. Hagar is not a victim within the Islamic faith but “a victor who, with the help of God and her own initiative, is able to transform a wilderness into the cradle of a new world dedicated to the fulfillment of God’s purpose on earth.”[35] Hagar, a woman who was enslaved, has become the matriarch of monotheism within the Islamic faith.[36] Surely, this is a future and a legacy that Hagar never could have imagined for herself as she struggled, suffered, and waited upon the Lord in the house of Abraham.

Conclusion

Hagar’s story is difficult. It describes her slavery, victimization, forced surrogacy, abuse, and ultimate exile. Yet in her we also find a woman who courageously flees her oppression, receives assistance from heaven, obtains her own promise of never-ending descendants, dares to give God a name, has sufficient faith in the Lord to return to Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 16:7–14), and eventually becomes the free matriarch of her people (21:21). So how does her story apply to us? I learn several lessons from her story.

First, Hagar’s story teaches us how important it is to know that we are seen and known by God. Hagar’s name for the Lord, “You are the God who sees me” (Genesis 16:13 NIV), is powerful because it reminds us how vital this knowledge is for Hagar and for each of us. God’s loving-kindness toward each of his children is quite possibly most meaningfully experienced when he reveals to each of us that he sees us—truly sees us for who we are and who we may become. Most of us have likely grown in our knowledge that God sees us through prayer, patriarchal blessings, priesthood blessings, scripture study, church attendance, the receipt of divine aid and inspiration, and countless other small encounters with the divine. What matters is not how we come to this knowledge, but that we do, because as our Church leaders have taught repeatedly, “understanding this truth—really understanding it and embracing it—is life-changing.”[37] As Hagar’s story demonstrates, being seen, heard, and known by God alters our perspective, enabling us to be different within our circumstances and to work through life’s challenges in ways that we otherwise could not.

Hagar’s story also teaches us that if we are willing to follow God’s counsel and his timing—particularly when it is difficult to do so—we can become more with God’s help than we can ever become on our own. As President Ezra Taft Benson taught: “Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life.”[38] God saw in Hagar what she could not see in herself, and as she trusted him, he helped her become that person—he wants to do the same for each of us.

Next, looking at Sarah’s behavior rather than ignoring it helps us evaluate how we treat others. We have all been marginalized or mistreated in some way, and we can choose either to pass our pain on to others or to let our suffering generate empathy and concern for others. Extending compassion and charity is an active choice that we must make to prevent the opposite from too readily occurring. Similarly, we should endeavor to ensure that as we work toward our own good we are not doing so at the expense of others, especially those whose position in society is more marginal than our own. As I have repeatedly studied Hagar and Sarah’s troubled relationship, I have been inspired to write a different story for my own life—a story where I seek to help all those within my sphere of influence to feel seen and known by myself and by God; where I try to treat everyone I meet with the same level of respect and kindness; where I venture to speak out against injustices that I see, particularly when those involved cannot speak out for themselves; where I aspire to value everyone’s children as my own; where I undertake to extend as much grace and aid as I can each day; and where I pray constantly to see everyone as God sees them. Through these efforts, knowing about Sarah and Hagar’s relationship has changed me for the better.

Finally, in Hagar’s story, we discover a fundamental message placed in the opening pages of God’s first revealed scripture to humanity: God offers grace, aid, love, and knowledge to all his children. Through speaking to Hagar, a young woman who was enslaved, and giving her a momentous role to play in his plans for the house of Abraham, God rejects all the divisions that humanity establishes to separate and subjugate one another as he teaches us—nearly two thousand years before Christ will manifest God’s great love for all his children through his daily actions and teachings—that God indeed wishes to have a relationship with all his children. As religion professor Lynn Japinga writes, “The full story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar . . . shows clearly that God did not reject or punish Ishmael. . . . Divine blessing of one nation does not require divine cursing of others. God has enough grace and goodness for all.”[39] Witnessing the transformative impact of God’s loving-kindness in Hagar’s life, we are hopefully inspired to join God’s work by extending as much loving-kindness to his children, our sisters and our brothers, as we can.

Amy Easton is a professor or ancient scripture at Brigham Young University.

Notes

[1] Frances Taylor Gench, Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels (Westminster John Knox, 2004), 81.

[2] Though Abraham’s name is Abram and Sarah’s name is Sarai at the beginning of the narrative, I use the names Abraham and Sarah throughout because those names are more familiar to readers. The Lord changes their names after Hagar bears Ishmael.

[3] Diane Kriger, Sex Rewarded, Sex Punished: A Study of the Status ‘Female Slave’ in Early Jewish Law (Academic Studies, 2011), 36.

[4] Adele Reinhartz and Miriam-Simma Walfish, “Conflict and Coexistence in Jewish Interpretation,” in Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, ed. Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell (Westminster John Knox, 2006), 106–7.

[5] Renita J. Weems, Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible (Luva Media, 1988), 1; Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Fortress, 1991), 165–84.

[6] Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (Basic Books, 1991), 33–41.

[7] Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford University Press, 2013), 219.

[8] Alice Ogden Bellis, Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes: Women’s Stories in the Hebrew Bible, 2nd ed. (Westminster John Knox, 2007), 63.

[9] Weems, Just a Sister Away, 2.

[10] All scriptures quoted herein are from the King James Version unless otherwise specified.

[11] In the ancient Near Eastern world, it was commonly believed that God controlled the womb; consequently, barrenness was often viewed as a punishment from God. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Just Wives? Stories of Power and Survival in the Old Testament and Today (Westminster John Knox, 2003), 14.

[12] Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories (Random House, 2002), 227. See also Ephraim Neufeld, Ancient Hebrew Marriage Laws: With Special References to General Semitic Laws and Customs (Longmans, Green, 1944), 128; Kriger, Sex Rewarded, Sex Punished, 313; Raymond Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law (Berger & Sohne, 1988), chap. 6, esp. p. 106; and Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “Patriarchal Family Relationships and Near Eastern Law,” Biblical Archeologist 44, no. 4 (Autumn 1981): 209–14.

[13] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Fortress, 1984), 14.

[14] Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 200.

[15] See, for example, commentary on Genesis 16:4 by John Calvin (1578), https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01/calcom01.xxii.html; and commentary on Genesis 16:6 by Peter Pett (2011), https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/pet/genesis-16.html.

[16] Lynn Japinga, Preaching the Women of the Old Testament: Who They Were and Why They Matter (1988; repr., Westminster John Knox, 2017), 16; and Sakenfeld, Just Wives?, 15–18.

[17] For an excellent discussion, see Janice P. De-Whyte, Wom(b)an: A Cultural-Narrative Reading of the Hebrew Bible Barrenness Narratives (Brill, 2018), 24–52.

[18] To learn about the gender complementarity in early Israelite agrarian households, see Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 182–93.

[19] Genesis 16:6, note 24, https://netbible.org/bible/Genesis+16.

[20] Trible, Texts of Terror, 13.

[21] Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 120–21.

[22] Besides Hagar, the list includes only Samson’s mother (unnamed); Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel; and Mary, mother of Jesus. Hagar’s inclusion in such a select group indicates how important she and her son are to God’s plan of salvation.

[23] See Trible, Texts of Terror, 32n31.

[24] For a good discussion on naming, see Loren Graham, “The Power of Names,” Theology and Science 9, no. 1 (2011): 157–64, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2011.547020.

[25] For instance, see Elsa Tamez, “The Woman Who Complicated the History of Salvation,” Cross Currents 36, no. 2 (1986): 137.

[26] Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (1993; repr., Orbis, 2013), 5.

[27] Sakenfeld, Just Wives?, 22.

[28] Jeffrey R. Holland, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come,” October 1999 general conference, www.churchofjesuschrist.org.

[29] Notably, Abraham received a similar promise for his future posterity (Genesis 15:13–21).

[30] Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible, 234.

[31] While the King James Version of the Bible indicates that Pharaoh had not yet taken Sarah to wife (“Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife,” Genesis 12:19), the much more prevalent translation is some variant of “and I took her to me to wife,” found in the NIV, NLV, ESV, ISV, ASV, etc. A further indication in the text that Pharaoh may have had sexual relations with Sarah comes from comparing this account to the accounts of (1) when Sarah again poses as Abraham’s sister and is taken by King Abimelech of Gerar and (2) when Rebekah poses as Isaac’s sister when they are in the land of Gerar. In both of these other accounts the author specifically makes it known that Sarah and Rebekah have not been sexually taken: In the case of Sarah, “Abimelech had not come near her” (20:4). And in the case of Rebekah, when the king realizes Rebekah is Isaac’s wife, he proclaims, “What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us” (26:10). That no specific denial of Pharaoh having sexual relations with Sarah occurs in the text leaves open the possibility that he did.

[32] Trible, Texts of Terror, 48

[33] Russell M. Nelson, “Building Bridges,” New Era, August 2018, www.churchofjesuschrist.org; Russell M. Nelson “Let God Prevail,” October 2020 general conference, www.churchofjesuschrist.org.

[34] Riffat Hassan, “Islamic Hagar and Her Family,” in Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, ed. Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell (Westminster John Knox, 2006), 154.

[35] Hassan, “Islamic Hagar,” 155.

[36] Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, “Unto the Thousandth Generation,” in Trible and Russell, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children, 10.

[37] M. Russell Ballard, “Children of Heavenly Father,” Brigham Young University devotional, March 3, 2020, https://speeches.byu.edu.

[38] Ezra Taft Benson, “Jesus Christ—Gifts and Expectations,” Ensign, December 1988, www.churchofjesuschrist.org.

[39] Japinga, Preaching the Women of the Old Testament, 17–18.