Hagar
is the wild card in God’s plan of universal salvation. When her mistress Sarah cannot conceive, Sarah gives her slave to have sex with Abraham (Gen. 16). Like a lot of poor women, Hagar is just given like a piece of property; her body is not her own. She gets pregnant, bears Ishmael, and Sarah hates her for it.
Eventually, Sarah has a son. One day Sarah sees Isaac playing with Ishmael. “Cast out this slave woman with her son!” Sarah screams at Abraham. And even though we’d like it if patriarchs were better than this, Abraham gives Hagar and the boy a little bread and a skin of water and sends them off—to die, essentially.
But God finds Hagar in the wilderness. She is out of water, sitting away off from Ishmael, saying, “Let me not look upon the death of the child” (Gen. 21). God opens Hagar’s eyes to see a well of water, and she and the boy live. God promises, in fact, to “make him a great nation.”
As much as Sarah and Abraham seek to hound and abuse this woman, God chooses her. From the earliest pages of Genesis, God is telling us something radical: that a black Egyptian slave woman is God’s daughter, and her biracial, mixed-religion son will be stupendously blessed. The God of the Bible is telling us from page one that God’s love and blessing are for all—and God means all.
Just take that in.
COMPANIONS ON THE WAY
Introduction
Stories of Turning
Week One
Stories of Wild Places
Week Two
Stories of Dogged Faith
Week Three
Stories of Mercy & Forgiveness
Week Four
Stories of Simplicity & Joy
Week Five
Stories of Prayer & Surrender
Week Six
Stories of Transforming Love
I’m sitting here reflecting on your post in the light of the current, the endlessly recurrent, crisis in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Here it is, the birth of it, literally.
And, I continue to be nonplussed at how self-critical Hebrew scriptures are. Were I in charge of their archives, this story would be excised.
Yes, the seeds of the current conflict are certainly here in the Bible. And yet—as you say—and yet, the Bible contains these parallel stories that show us how God’s larger vision is never quite lost.
“…God’s larger vision is never quite lost.” Thank God for the always unfolding redemption story.