Texts of Terror: Using & Abandoning Haggar
Hagar was a slave-turned-concubine of the patriarch Abraham. She fathered him a son and was sent away to die in the desert. The story is tragic and heartbreaking, and yet, it’s included in Holy Scripture. Why? (Genesis 16, 21)
Transcript
I sat down to write this sermon on March 8, International Women’s Day. While social media was replete with the strength and accomplishments of women, I was grappling with how to present the tragic stories of women who more accurately represent the majority of women throughout history and the world.
I need to confess that reading and rereading the Bible stories of what Dr. Tribble called “the texts of terror” has been overwhelming, agitating, and anguishing for me.
It was challenging to read the details of oppression, degradation, abuse, and murder. On top of that, it was impossible for me not to think of the women in my life who have suffered in similar ways to the women in these Bible stories. And I found it difficult not to direct my anger at the men in my own patriarchal culture.
You, too, will likely find it challenging to hear these stories. And that is OK and normal. There is no humane way to hear these stories without emotionally and psychologically experiencing horror, anger, and even despair. Yet, I invite you to courageously sit with the swirl of emotions, face the horror of human atrocities, and bear witness and give voice to the women from the Bible who have too often been left in the background of sermons or theological debates.
All scripture is God-breathed, inspired by His Spirit, and instead of sugar-coating or hiding these stories, God chose them to be told, written down, and retold from generation to generation.
As we retell these stories, no profound exegetical insights will be given. No big ideas will neatly emerge. And no personal applications will be crafted.
It is enough that we take time to retell these stories and to bear witness to the abuse and the human beings who were abused.
In today’s text of terror, we meet a woman who was socially, financially, racially, and even spiritually powerless. This is the story of Hagar, the Egyptian slave who was used, abused, rejected, and abandoned by those with power over her.
Genesis 16:1-15
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”
6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
11 The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.”
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Thirteen years go by before we hear of Hagar again. By then things have changed for her mistress, Sarai. God changed her name to Sarah, which means mother of nations, and He has opened her womb so when she was 90 years old, she gave birth to a son whom God names Isaac. And Abram’s name has been changed by God to Abraham, which means father of many.
Genesis 21:8-21
8 The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
11 The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. 12 But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. 13 I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”
14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba.
15 When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob.
17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”
19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
20 God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. 21 While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.
Hagar, who was referred to only as “my slave” by Sarah and as “your slave” by Abraham, was only called by her name by the narrator and by the angel of God. In these two chapters, her status as a slave is reiterated nine times—whether to remind us of her low status or to point to her powerlessness in the interactions is up for debate. Even when the narrator and the angel of God referred to Hagar, they also used her title of slave.
Social psychologist Geert Hofstede coined the term “power distance” to measure how people in a society accept the unequal hierarchal distribution of power. In a high power distance culture, there is great inequality and difference in power among people, and everyone accepts this inequality. In addition, the powerless agree to not comment upon or disagree with those with power. In cultures and social settings with high power distance, the exploitation and abuse of the powerless can easily happen—and the less powerful person has not to say in the matter.
Clearly, Hagar found herself in a cultural and social situation of high power distance. As a slave, Hagar was powerless—without voice or influence to shape decisions that affected her. And this fact can be disturbing to us modern hearers. She owned nothing and was completely owned by her masters. Her youth, fertility, and body could be used for their purposes. For Sarah and Abraham, it was all too easy to objectify Hagar and use their power at her expense.
We are not told what Hagar’s response was when Sarah “took” and gave her to Abraham so he could have access to her body. We are not told what Hagar thought about the culturally accepted practice that whatever child she bore would count as Sarah’s accomplishment of securing the continuation of Abraham’s lineage. It seemed she had no choice, so the slave of Sarah became the sex slave of Sarah’s husband.
Unfortunately for Hagar, Abraham did not come to care for her as his wife. He continued to refer to her as a slave, he gave Sarah permission to mistreat a pregnant Hagar, and when Sarah wanted to banish them to the desert, he was concerned for Ishmael his son--not for Hagar.
This story is challenging on another level: Hagar’s abusers were followers of the Lord God Most High. Just a few years before Hagar came into their lives, God had revealed Himself to Abraham and made a covenant with him, promising that God would make Abraham’s name great, that he would have innumerable descents, and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him.
How could followers of God, patriarchs of the Jewish and Christian faith, do such horrific things to a powerless foreigner who depended completely on them? There is no justifiable answer, no way to clean up the story. The Bible tells it like it was—not like it should have been.
And finally, even God seemed to be against Hagar’s equality and freedom. When she ran away because of Sarah’s abuse, the Angel of God told her to go back to Sarah and submit to her. But he promised that she would become the mother of innumerable descendants (similar to the covenant God had made with Abraham). And through her son’s name, Ishmael, God revealed that she was not forgotten or forsaken but instead had been heard by God. Even though she must go back and suffer under her mistress, she now had the assurance of God’s blessing.
Hagar, who most likely had no relationship with her master’s god before, now realized He was also her god. Her suffering, abuse, and misery were not ignored by Him. She was not invisible to Him. And she was valuable enough that He would come to find her. With surprise and gratitude, she gave Him the name “the God who sees me.” The powerless slave named the most powerful God.
Thirteen years later, when Abraham and Sarah no longer needed her or her son, they kicked them out of their house and their family, exiled them into the desert, and abandoned them there to perish. Again, it seemed God was on the side of her abusers—telling Abraham to follow Sarah’s instructions to banish them. And once again, Hagar could do nothing other than obey those who had power over her.
So, there Hagar and Ismael were, lost in the desert, hungry and thirsty, and on the point of death. The Lord heard Ishmael’s cries, and this time, the angel of God spoke from heaven and called Hagar by name without any mention of her being a slave. The promise to establish Ishmael’s greatness and increase the number of his descendants was renewed. And the Lord provided life-giving water for her and her son. They survived and made their home in the desert, where they were finally free from the oppression and abuse of their masters/families.
Four thousand years later, Hagar’s story still echoes in the lives of many women and even men who experience powerlessness in the face of those who would oppress them without mercy, exploit their service and bodies, and even abandon them to destruction.
Hagar’s story is not so alien to us.
We see the degradation of the image of God in how foreigners, people of lower social and economic levels, and non-majority folks are not given equal rights or opportunities; the abuse of power in relationships and marriages where one person does not have the permission or ability to say “no” to sex or to having more children; the use of God’s words and promises to justify abuse; the violation of trust when spouses and children are left behind without protection or support; the objectification of human beings when we lust after them on screen, in print, or in our imaginations.
I hope that the telling of Hagar’s story has brought her to our remembrance and has created space for and given voice to the numerous women and men who have experienced similar experiences of being used, abused, and abandoned.
