Hard Places

I've been reading through Genesis this week.  I read about Sarai and Abram (God had not yet changed their names at this point). God had spoken to Abram and told him his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, which is pretty awesome when you consider that even at this point he and Sarai were old and had yet to have a child.

Sarai offered Abram a servant girl.  "Here take my slave girl.  Perhaps I can get a family from her."  Hagar was an Egyptian slave.

 In their culture it was common for a barren woman to offer up a slave girl to her husband but here Sarai has gone all these years and not offered one to Abram.  They've long since left Egypt and been in Canaan about ten years.   No Sarai has not offered him a servant girl  and  more importantly, Abram has not complained!   In fact, when Sarai does offer to give him Hagar, her words are selfish: "Perhaps I can get a family in this way."  She has no thought for Abram having an heir but she wants a family for her own standing as well as perhaps her personal desire.  Hagar soon became pregnant. And her behavior towards Sarah creates a problem.



Hagar no doubt had become insolent.  Abram had never had a child and now she was pregnant, carrying his only child.  I would think she likely put on a few airs and took some liberties.  Sarai had enough.  But again she thinks first of herself. She blames Abram..."It's all your fault...You take my servant girl and sleep with her.  Now she's pregnant and mistreats me."  Then she adds, "May God decide who is right, you or I."  Abram took a stand here that I admire.  Sarai had not allowed God to enter into her plans up to now.  "You decide.  Your maid is your business."  Whoa.  He has a point, doesn't he?

The Bible doesn't tell us all that is going on between Hagar and Sarai but I'll just bet we can safely assign our own human feelings to them.  Hagar likely was becoming insolent with Sarai.   I've always supposed Sarai felt a bit jealous of Hagar, as well.  Have you ever noticed how when we try to figure out how to tend to God's business we usually end up creating a mess of ill feelings all around?  We don't know  if Sarai is aware that God had told Abram he'd have a son, but it does seem likely, given the closeness of their relationship.


Sarai became so upset with Hagar that she began to abuse her and Hagar ran away.  Hagar went into the desert which surrounded their camp, and sat down near a stream.  I am sure she was nursing her hurt feelings at this point and no doubt taking none of the blame.  God's angel found her hiding there near the well and asked her why she had run away.   He revealed to her the future of her child, a son, and then he told her "Go back and submit to your mistress."

Now there's a hard assignment!   Go back to being mistreated.   Go back and submit to the authority of someone who has the power to make your life miserable.  Go back into slavery.  Go back and endure whatever is there for you to endure.  One translation even says "Go back and suffer the abuse."  Gracious!  Submitting doesn't mean going back with the same ill attitude you've had thus far either.  It means letting go of the insolence and going back to a servile attitude!

In the Hebrew, the word used for submit in verse 16 is the same word used in verse 12 when  Sarai mistreats Hagar.  The word is 'anah and it means to be bowed down, afflicted, oppressed.  It's not just an assumption on my part that when Hagar returns she will be abused.  The Lord's angel has told her as much in his language.

Submission does not come naturally to us.  I've often wondered at the people of the Bible who do submit and willingly.  Look at Sarai who submitted to Abram and went into Pharaoh's house and even Hagar who submitted to Sarai's orders to go into Abram...Biblical women knew submission in a way that many of us women will never know it.  Hagar returns and we hear nothing more of her until Ishmael's birth. 

Hagar does not return empty of promise to her former state.  She goes with a promise from God Himself that her child will be a son and from him will come many nations.  Submitting to Sarai was part of the fulfillment of that promise.

 I can't help but think of how often I've longed with everything within me to NOT submit to some hard task before me, even when I knew that I MUST.  I recall my children going through some pretty awful places in their lives and I recall too my words to them were truthful, but harsh in a way as well.  "There's nothing you can do but go through it."   I'm pretty sure that's about what Hagar realized after God spoke with her there by the stream.  She knew full well she had to do as He instructed her, but going through the hard places is no doubt the most difficult part of life, isn't it?   Even when the promise is there.

Hagar's hard place lasted a good little while.  Though it's not recorded if her situation with Sarah improved, it seems unlikely.  For one thing, Abraham named his son Ishmael.  Typically naming was reserved for the matriarch, which would have been Sarah.  Later, when Sarah has weaned Isaac, it's recorded that she demands Abraham banish Ishmael.   He sends Hagar and her son into the desert.   I expect this final parting was indicative of what kind of treatment Hagar had put up with all along.  Ishmael certainly had not become Sarah's 'family' if she could send him away.

What we do know is that Ishmael became the man God promised Hagar he would be.  And at the end of the story he and his  brother Isaac came together to bury Abraham at the end of his life.  Through his two sons 24 different tribes were formed, 12 of which became the Israelites.  I wonder if Hagar felt it was all worth while in the end?