THE STORY OF HAGAR
Hagar means ‘stranger’. Hagar came from Egypt, and was never fully accepted into the tribal group.
ON THIS PAGE:
What the story is about:
The Conception and Birth of Hagar's Son
The Expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael
Hagar's Importance in Islam
Migration and Settlement in Canaan
Women's Lives in this Era
THE CONCEPTION AND BIRTH OF HAGAR’S SON
Hagar was always disadvantaged among the Hebrew women because she was a foreigner and a slave. This must have seemed ironic to her, since she came from a land that was socially and politically advanced and possessed cities, temples and elaborate burial sites. Egypt had a complex economic system that regulated trade and commerce throughout its empire, and its theology and religion were sophisticated and well ordered. Hagar must have found the living conditions of the Hebrews quite primitive by comparison.
It seems that Hagar's new owner Sarah could not conceive a child, which was after all the primary function of a tribal leader's wife. She was a failure, and her barren state was a constant torment. She decided to offer her slave Hagar to Abraham as a sort of surrogate mother. Hagar would bear the child and look after it, but it would belong to Sarah and be accepted as the child of Sarah and Abraham.
To modern people, the idea of giving another woman to your husband to bear a child seems strange, brutal, but in ancient Near Eastern family law the practice was common and acceptable.
Was Hagar consulted in the matter? There is no information on this. Ancient people assumed she would leap at the opportunity. For a woman in Hagar’s position, the prospect of becoming pregnant to the leader of the clan was an honor, and would result in a dramatic rise in her social status. No longer a slave, she would become an important concubine or secondary wife, definitely a step up in the world.
'Sarah, Abraham’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.' Read Genesis 16:1-6.
Something went wrong between Hagar and Sarah after Hagar became pregnant. Sarah was daily confronted by the other woman's success at conceiving a child, and believed that Hagar no longer gave her the deference she deserved. For her part, Hagar may have enjoyed being treated with respect for the first time in her life, and did not bother to hide her pleasure.
The women fell out, and Sarah berated Abraham for what had happened. It was all his fault, she said. He pointed out, quite rightly, that it was not in his power to do anything, since Sarah was still in charge of the women of the tribe, and Hagar was under her jurisdiction, not his. This gives us some inkling of the property rights and social power of the woman who led the tribe. She, not her husband, ruled the other tribal women and was responsible for them.
She followed the road to Shur, which was one of the trade routes passing through the Sinai peninsula. Alone and unaided, it was a heroic effort and a tribute to her tenacity that she got as far as she did. The country is fearsome: eroded hills like bare bones in the arid landscape, the earth tormented by constant wind. Despite this, Hagar very nearly made it to Egypt, as the map shows. But eventually, exhausted, she stopped at a spring of water in the wilderness of Shur. At this moment, an 'angel' spoke to her, telling her to return to Sarah and have her baby among the Hebrews. It would be a special child, a child with a great future. So she retraced her steps and returned to the tribe, and to Sarah.
‘The angel of the Lord’ was a device used by the biblical writers to show that a human being had received a message from God. What they meant exactly by the word ‘angel’ is an open question. In modern terms we would probably say that a deep conviction of purpose settled on the person involved, guiding them towards a particular course of action. Angels are traditionally portrayed as winged (they carry a message) and genderless (they are spirits without bodies).
Hagar was able to return to Sarah, because she now had a purpose in life:
to bear a child who had an important destiny
Sarah's son Isaac would be born some fourteen years later. But until then, Hagar’s son Ishmael was Abraham’s son and heir, and Hagar’s status in the clan or group was solidly established.
THE EXPULSION OF HAGAR AND ISHMAEL
For fourteen years Ishmael was seen as the future heir of Abraham. He and Hagar were accustomed to being treated with respect. But when Sarah had her own son, everything changed. The question was, who would be Abraham's heir: the first-born son, or the son of the principal wife? This was a question that would surface continually to plague Israel throughout its history.
Sarah had no doubt about the matter. She saw Ishmael as a threat to her son, and the old enmity between the two women reappeared - now even more savage than it had been before. One telling detail is the way that Sarah never speaks directly to Hagar or says her name - never once in the whole story.
We do not know the details of the bitter power struggle between the two women, but we do know that Hagar lost. Neither of the women had ever trusted or liked each other, but now Sarah had a murderous hatred for Hagar, and actively sought her death. In a climactic scene, Sarah insisted that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away from the tribe.
Abraham was uneasy about expelling Hagar and Ishmael into the heat of the open desert, since they had virtually no chance of survival. He argued against it. But Sarah's power over him was still so strong that she could make him do it. He gave Hagar a gift of bread, the food staple, and a skin of water, a symbol of life - not so much for eating and drinking, but as a signal to the tribe that she remained under his protection, despite her expulsion from the tribe. It was a warning to Sarah's servants that they might not kill Hagar when she was out of sight of Abraham.
Alone in the desert, Hagar and Ishmael soon used up their tiny supply of water. Hagar searched desperately for more but found none, and saw her son begin to die of thirst. There was nothing she could do to save him except place him in the shade of an overhanging bush and wait.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat… a good way off… for she said ‘Do not let me look on the death of the child’.
In what she believed were the last moments of her life, she lifted up her voice and called to God for help. God heard her, and heard the weak voice of her dying son. Then her eyes were opened, and she saw something she had missed before: a well of fresh water. She refilled the skin that Abraham had given her with water and took it to her son, gently coaxing the water through his lips. Then she drank the water herself.
She and her son continued on their journey, knowing they had only God and themselves to rely on. They spurned life in a town but lived in the wilderness of Paran instead, where the boy grew to manhood. When it came time for Ishmael to marry, Hagar took good care to find him a wife from her own people, not from the people of his father.
MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN
In the period of confusion and destruction that followed, many people fled. They abandoned their homes and searched for a more secure place, or simply tried to escape the violence. One such group was led by Terah, father of Sarah and Abraham. He and his large group of family and servants set out looking for a new home, forming a tribal group of people who were, without knowing it, ancestors of the Hebrew people.
At first these migrants traveled as a small, mobile clan following its flocks wherever pasture was best. But eventually they arrived at territory already occupied by people called the Canaanites, a relatively sophisticated group who lived in city-states with an economy based on agriculture and trade. The clan, now led by Sarah and Abraham, camped on the outskirts of various cities of Canaan, settling temporarily in one place then moving on when they wished to do so.
This group of migrants prospered and grew. Despite the fact that they lived among foreigners, they tenaciously held on to their identity as Hebrews. This stubborn pride in their heritage was fostered by the women, who were responsible for maintaining Jewish identity.
It was during this period that the tribes developed their unique ethos and began to see themselves as separate from the tribes and kingdoms that surrounded them. Their main identifying difference was worship of Yahweh, a spirit-god who combined the power of all the gods of other tribes but had a special relationship with the Hebrew people. This relationship was embodied in the concept of the covenant, a mutual promise of protection and allegiance made between Yahweh and themselves.
This is the golden headdress of Queen Puabi of Ur who lived about a thousand years before Hagar and Sarah.
The women of the city-kingdoms of ancient Egypt, Canaan and Sumer lived in a hierarchical and ordered society. Some were rich women who lived in the royal court, wearing magnificent embroidered clothes and intricate gold jewelry. At the other end of the social scale were peasant women in villages who worked in the fields every day, growing the crops that supported their whole clan.
Archaeological evidence and excavated clay tablets show that these people lived in a deeply religious society. The women in particular lived and breathed religion because their lives were so closely connected with Nature, on which they depended for survival. Belief in the gods/goddesses, expressed in mythic stories, was intrinsic to everything they did.
Some of their sacred stories influenced later religious thought. In one of the Mesopotamian myths, Inanna (called Astarte in the Bible) was the queen of heaven, who enterws the underworld and died but was restored to life after three days. Tammuz, mentioned in Ezekiel 8:14, was the god of vegetation who died each year but rose again with the reappearance of vegetation in the spring. Both these myths had themes of life, death and resurrection, ideas that would later appear in many other religions, including Christianity.
The laws of Hammurabi, a famous law-maker and king of Babylonia, provided insights into the lives of women in this period. There were laws to
It was probably during this period that Hebrew women enjoyed greatest freedom and prestige. The stories in Genesis and Exodus show them as independent, strong, and smart, displaying leadership and initiative. The women in these stories almost always got their way when they wanted something.
This was because women were necessary for the survival of the tribe, and they knew it. They performed a wide range of tasks without which the clan or family simply could not have managed. They moved freely in society, were not confined within the home, and seem to have spoken and acted confidently.