Hagar’s Story (Genesis 16)

Ryan Scott Carrell - September 7, 2025

We’ve been learning a lot over the past few weeks about the stories we find toward the beginning of our Bibles. And one of the most crucial things we’re learning about them is that they are there because of an event that led to their being written down in the first place. We call this event the exile, and it happened about 2,500 years ago. 

During this exile, the people who lived in Jerusalem, for over ten years, were violently removed from their homes in Jerusalem and forced to live in the city of Babylon, about 900 miles away. As they found themselves in this new city, surrounded by a new religion, culture, and approach to life, they wrestled with huge questions about who they were, who the god was they worshipped, and whether that god had any interest in providing them a future. To answer these kinds of questions, the people did what everyone does when faced with them, which is answer them with stories. And this is how we got much of what we call the Bible. 

Last week, we continued through these stories by looking at the story of two people named Abram and Sarai, two people who the stories tell as the ancestors of the exiled people. In their story, God gave them a promise that, despite being unable to have any children, God would provide, not just a child, but an immeasurable number of descendants.

Now, this week, we find Abram and Sarai still in the story, but not as the main characters. A woman named takes that role. Her story, which will raise a lot of questions and probably an equal number of protests, has something to show us about the exiled people, and what they learned in telling this story, and also, what we can learn from it today. So, let’s begin.

Genesis 16:1-6 (NRSVUE) 
1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian enslaved woman whose name was Hagar, 2 and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my enslaved woman; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her enslaved woman, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. 4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my enslaved woman to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on me. May the Lord judge between you and me!" 6 But Abram said to Sarai, "Your enslaved woman is in your power; do to her as you please." So Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

Now, a lot is happening in this passage that we need to unpack. First, we see Abraham and Sarah still waiting for the children God promised them. Again, last week, we looked at the promise God had given them.

Genesis 12:2 (NRSVUE)
2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

As we explored the meaning of that promise, we also looked at Abram’s frustration when that promise went unfulfilled. This week, we come to Sarai’s frustration and her answer to solve the dilemma of what seemed to be an unanswered promise. To solve that dilemma,  they utilize a practice which was common in their culture: the taking of a second wife who would serve as a surrogate mother. 

Now, this form of surrogate motherhood was common in the ancient Near East. It wasn’t seen as a form of adultery like we might initially read it. Archaeologists have discovered ancient contracts that detail these kinds of arrangements. Even the Code of Hammurabi, a well-known ancient document of law, describes the practice and the legal implications that a child born to a servant would legally belong to the wife, not to the birth mother.

Again, as odd as this might seem to us, for the exiled Jewish community telling this story, this practice would have been very familiar. They were living in a place where arrangements like this were a part of the legal and social fabric. And this goes back to something we’ve talked about a lot during these past few weeks. 

The ancient people of the Bible breathed the ancient air of their ancient neighbors. And, because of that, we’re going to find a myriad of parallels in the Bible with what we see happening in other ancient cultures that intersected with the people who wrote these stories. This is a great reminder that the Bible is an ancient library with poems, stories, and history written through an ancient lens of their ancient experience. And, because of that, there are times that we will find ancient practices, laws, and expectations show up in the stories. Our interpretive job is to navigate that and discover where the subversive and liberating themes of good news are revealed within these cultural constraints. Let’s take a close look at this story to see how this works by backing up to a statement Sarai made.

Genesis 16:2 (NRSVUE)
2 "Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her"

In this rather provocative statement, Sarai was providing legal language for a path forward to obtaining children when God’s promise seemed delayed. The phrase she used, obtain children by her was the technical legal terminology for this arrangement, language we find in other ancient sources. But what happened as a result of her following this path lay the groundwork for what’s to come and what we can learn from this story. We see this following when it was discovered that Hagar had, in fact, conceived a child.

Genesis 16:4-6 (NRSVUE)
4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my enslaved woman to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on me. May the Lord judge between you and me!" 6 But Abram said to Sarai, "Your enslaved woman is in your power; do to her as you please." So Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

Now, while the Bible doesn't always explicitly say when something is wrong, we have the ability to recognize harmful behavior when we see it. Sarai’s treatment of Hagar is just that. And it was so severe that Hagar felt she had no choice but to run away, which put her life and the life of her child at risk. And this is a place we need to wrestle with how this feels.

You see, when we read the Bible through the lens of people wrestling with the experiences they had with God and each other, we can learn from both the good and the bad. When we do that, we see that Sarai’s mistreatment of Hagar was a violation against her as a human being, causing her to feel unseen and disposable, which reminds us why the story was told.

For the people telling this story in exile, this would have felt familiar. They, too, felt unseen, forgotten, cast aside. Later on, we will find even more parallels with this story and others they told, but this tension is what they were wrestling with as they were telling these stories and wondering if God was with them in this place that seemed so far away.

As they sat in the tension, the storyteller continued and revealed an extraordinary twist.

Genesis 16:7-11, 13 (NRSVUE) 
7 The angel of the Lord found [Hagar] by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, enslaved woman of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai." 9 The angel of the Lord said to her, "Return to your mistress and submit to her." 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be numbered for multitude." 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her, "Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. 13 So she named the Lord who spoke to her, "You are El-roi," for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" 

This statement at the end of this part of the story is so incredibly profound when you pause and look at the progression. God sees Hagar when others had rendered her invisible. God speaks directly to her, asking about her situation and listening to her story. Hagar then does the audacious thing of naming god, which translates to the god who sees me.

Now, I want us to understand something extraordinary about what just happened. Hagar was an enslaved foreign woman. In the ancient world, and to the readers of this story, she was marginalized three times over. And yet, she becomes the first person in all of Scripture to give God a name. And this wasn't just theologically significant; it was revolutionary.

In the ancient world, naming carried authority and power. Typically, it would be patriarchs, kings, or prophets who would name gods based on their encounters with the divine. But here, an enslaved woman, at the bottom of the social hierarchy, on the verge of death, had such a profound encounter with God that she had the audacity to give this god a name. God didn't argue or remind her of cultural convention, but blessed her. And in that moment, was saying that it is not the powerful that God sees, but those on the margins, which is a huge parallel to something we discovered in our story last week. 

Last week, we saw Abram dehumanize a man named Eliezer. God subtly corrected Abram in a way that gave worth to the overlooked. We see this same pattern here with Sarai and Hagar. While Sarah's treatment rendered Hagar invisible, God saw her as worthy of divine attention and promise. And this wouldn’t have gone unnoticed because it ties in directly with the promise God made to Abram.

Genesis 12:2-3 (NRSVUE)
2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The tension is found that the promise Abram and Saria want doesn’t match the actions they perform. How can you become a blessing to all people when you pick and choose who you are willing to see? For the exiles, this was a question they wrestled with and one they had been answered already, as through Jeremiah, God tells them:

Jeremiah 29:7 (NRSVUE) 
7..seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

The exiles weren't just supposed to survive Babylon but live out the call Abram had been given to bless their neighbors, their enemies who had conquered them. To do that took a lot more strength than fighting them because it meant seeing them not as enemies but as family, fully human and made in the image of God.

The story also gave them a unique look at a character who was unlike them but who shared a similar story to them. And this is so powerful because it is often in the empathy with those most unlike us that we learn to see ourselves in new ways.

Through Hagar, the exiles heard about a God who sees those whom others overlook, who hears the cries of the displaced, and who creates hope in the wilderness. In the unexpected story of Hagar, they could see themselves and find hope that God was still walking with them. And this should raise several questions for us, too.

Whose stories are we overlooking? Who around us might be encountering God in powerful ways that we're missing because of our own prejudices? Have we bought the lie that God doesn’t see us and our experiences? And to answer that as a pastor who loves you: No matter how invisible others might make you feel, no matter how much your worth has been questioned or dismissed, you are always seen by a God who loves you. Your story matters. Your experience of God matters. And hearing that story is something we all need to hear, which is why they told this story.