Slices
Prepare
Look up the words of the old hymn, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’, which repeats the refrain, ‘Take it to the Lord in prayer’ (Joseph M Scriven, 1855). Whatever your story, do just that.
Bible passage
Hagar and Ishmael
16 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 ill-treated 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
towards 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.
Explore
Ten years have gone by and Abram and Sarai are progressively less likely to conceive a child. What other practical solution could there be to help God’s plan along a bit, than Hagar (vs 1,2)? It was even allowed for in the culture of the day – a slave-girl could legally be used as a concubine and then sold. But the turmoil which followed setting aside God’s revealed plan for marriage (Genesis 2:24) is a screeching rage of discord and results in the further fracture of the family (vs 11,12).
In the midst of this mess, God is busy. Whatever mistakes were made, God is at the heart of the drama, healing, restoring, rebuilding. Re-read the conversation between the fleeing Hagar and God’s angel-messenger (vs 7–14). Harsh though the pathway for Ishmael may sound, Hagar has not been abandoned and her son will be the father of a nation. For Hagar, she emerges from this encounter, not dismissed, but knowing that she is seen by God (v 13).
Respond
Do you identify with Hagar in this story – feeling abandoned and hard done by? Pray her prayer – ‘You are the God who sees me.’ Do you identify with Sarai in this story – impatient and wanting life to move along? Commit afresh to following God’s lead, in his time.
Deeper Bible study
Whoops! Great blessings can be followed by sudden downturns. May God help us to find a steady rhythm in our spiritual lives.
What a roller-coaster ride this is! We rose to the highest point in the previous chapter, only to find ourselves hurtling downwards as the result of yet another attempt to do God’s work for him. This time it is Sarai who takes the initiative in a desperate attempt to overcome the problem of childlessness. The text passes no moral judgement on her action, since what she proposed was culturally acceptable at the time, but the consequences are disastrous for all concerned – especially for the Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, whose tragic plight is central to the story.
We have said that families, while foundational to human society, are not romanticised in the Bible – and that is very evident here. Sarai’s proposal, to which Abram meekly agrees (in complete contrast to his bold questioning of God), unleashes unexpected emotions, jealousies and tensions, resulting in the expulsion of Hagar and her son. There is a kind of restoration, but it is desperately one-sided and the tensions in this extended family will bubble away before breaking out again following the birth of Isaac.1
The story of Hagar is full of ironies, because her weeping is heard by God who rescues her from death, anticipating the plight which will befall Abram’s descendants by Sarai, when they later cry out in distress as slaves in Egypt. The tragedy of Hagar reminds us of the desperate struggle of so many women today in a world that can be harsh and cruel to people on the margins.
Pray for women whose lives have been blighted by Hagar-like tragedies today and ask for a world in which prejudice and slavery of all kinds are eliminated.
1 See Gen 21:8–21
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Numbers 20,21; Matthew 20
Pray for Scripture Union
Please pray for those children, young people and adults in the 400 Soul Children choirs that have already developed in other parts of the world, for God to be glorified through their singing and, through their songs, for the wider community to hear what God has done for them through Jesus.
