When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 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 [Genesis 21:15-16, NRSV].
Some members of my Carolina Arbors Bible study classes and I have a standing chuckle. Perhaps you share it. It’s this: The story of Yahweh’s walk with Adam and Eve, with Abraham and Sarah, with Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, not to mention the later stories surrounding Saul and David, et al., are told “warts and all.” The OT doesn’t soft-pedal. It breaks the mold of those who proclaim that “History is told by the winners.” If that were true with regard to Holy Scripture, at least some of the stuff would have been omitted. The so-called “victors” often aren’t portrayed with noble strokes of the pen! Indeed, often even God’s portrayal can be somewhat unfavorable.
Take the familiar, Genesis 22 story of Yahweh’s “testing” of Abraham. Like me, you may squirm when your eyes pass over the respective pages in your Bible. What sort of God would tell an elderly father to sacrifice his son? The ironic answer, of course: the kind of God that would save Abraham’s son, but not God’s own. Jesus will later die on a cross.
If the Isaac-on-the-mountain story bothers you, you may find the less familiar, companion narrative in the preceding chapter even less appealing. That’s the OT lesson appointed for this Sunday in the Lectionary [Genesis 21:8-21; 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, Year A]. No one, perhaps even including Yahweh, comes out of this story favorably.
As the story begins, one has to feel for Abraham’s wife, Sarah. She has, after all, been the dutiful spouse — well, sometimes. Technically speaking, Yahweh’s promise is to make a great nation out of Abraham — not Abraham and Sarah [see Genesis 15:1-17]. Nevertheless, as we saw in last week’s lesson, at Yahweh’s bidding, Sarah picked up and followed her husband into unknown territory. Yet, as we also saw last week, when Yahweh’s promise of a child was delayed, Sarah took matters into her own hands, “giving” her slave-girl, Hagar, to her husband. The result was a first-born son named Ishmael.
In the opening verses of this week’s OT lesson, we see that now — just as had been predicted by the mysterious visitor in last week’s story — Sarah has been blessed with her own son, Isaac. Also, In this week’s text, we see that Ishmael does the unpardonable — at least in Sarah’s eyes — he plays with his half-brother, Isaac [Gen. 21:9]. Sarah flies into a jealous rage. There will not be two heirs to Yahweh’s promise. She’s back to doing things her way and so, she petitions Abraham to get rid of the rival (and his mother, of course).
We tend to feel sorry for Hagar; she’s a pawn in her mistress’s world. Yet if we look just a little deeper, we see that Hagar had a hand in causing the ill will directed toward her by Sarah. Earlier, when Hagar found out that she was pregnant, she couldn’t resist mocking the barren Sarah [Gen. 16:4].
We might feel sorry for Abraham, out-maneuvered as he always seems to be, by the two women in his life. Or we might see him just as a dolt. Either way, “Father Abraham” appears weak.
As for Yahweh, the jury’s out. Yahweh tells Abraham:
Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you [Gen. 21:12].
“Slave woman” — Yahweh won’t even pronounce her name. We wonder why Yahweh appears to have such little regard for these two (Hagar and Ishmael) who seem caught in the middle of Abraham and Sarah’s earlier decisions. Is Yahweh merely allowing Abraham and Sarah to face the consequences of their earlier actions? All well and good, we might say, but must others also be made to pay for the couple’s transgressions?
This week’s story continues then, with Abraham doing as he’s been told. He gives Hagar some provisions, including a single skin of water, and shoves them out the backdoor of the household. The text is quite specific: Abraham sets the provisions on Hagar’s shoulders [21:14]; why waste a good donkey? And so, Hagar trudges off, with Ishmael in tow, into the “Desert of Beersheba.”
“Good luck; don’t forget to write!”
When the water runs out, Hagar puts her son under one of the bushes for some shade, and she moves off some distance, saying to herself that she cannot bear to watch the boy die [21:16]. And then, Hagar begins to sob. Way to go, Abraham/Sarah/Yahweh! You’re rid of the problem. Happy now?
Those of us who are put off by the familiar chapter 22 story of a God who seems intent upon causing Abraham great distress — forcing Abraham to choose between Yahweh and Isaac — are likely even more puzzled/offended by this less familiar precursor story in chapter 21, in which God not only seems to allow persons to suffer, God seems to choose some over others without an adequate explanation. Or could more be going on here?
According to the text, Yahweh hears the cries of the boy, sends an angel to Hagar from heaven, who tells her to lift up her son and take him by the hand, for Yahweh intends to make him into a great nation [21:17-18].
Foreshadowing the Abraham-Isaac story found in the next chapter — in which, at Yahweh’s bidding, Abraham will look up and see the ram caught by its horns in the thicket [22:13], thus providing Abraham (and Isaac) with an “out” — in this week’s text, Yahweh opens Hagar’s eyes and she sees a well of water [21:19]. Her son is saved! Unlike Mary, the mother of our Lord, Hagar is spared the sight of a dying son. Ishmael will grow up and mature. He will marry and create a great lineage.
As I alluded above, if I were writing the History of the victors, I might have omitted this chapter 21 narrative. Israel’s progenitors come out badly, and even Yahweh can’t come out unscathed. Why include the story?
Well, for those of us who feel that Holy Scripture is divinely inspired, the retort might be, “It suited Yahweh’s purpose to include it.” Yet, that still begs the larger question: “What was/is Yahweh’s purpose?”
Perhaps Yahweh’s purpose is to draw attention to Hagar — this non-Jewish, slave-woman. Scholars point out that as parenthetical a figure as she appears to be, Hagar is the first person in the Bible to be visited by an angel from Heaven [Gen. 16:7]. She’s the only woman to receive God’s promises of descendants [16:10]. Scholars note that she is the only person in all of Holy Scripture to give God a name — El-roi — “the seeing God” [16:13]. She’s also apparently the first woman to weep over a dying child. And yet, as favored as Hagar appears to be, she seems rejected by God. Why?
As Sam Wells, former Dean of Duke University Chapel, points out, the fact that God seems to reject her is the key to the story for those of us known as Christians [Be Not Afraid: Facing Fear with Faith, Samuel Wells, Brazos Press (2011), pp. 127-9]. As Sam posits, Hagar is in the midst of the story of God’s covenant. She is a person who embodies Israel’s exodus and its exile. Indeed, Hagar is the person whose suffering seems to be required if Israel is going to live.
Yet, on the other hand, Hagar is the person whose own suffering is brought about by the character flaws in those who were Yahweh’s chosen people. Hagar is a person who was cast out and, in her moment of deepest agony, called out to God, wondering why she had been so forsaken.
As Sam so poignantly indicates, Hagar was “despised, rejected, and acquainted with grief.” Heard that before? It is as if God, the true author of Holy Scripture, desires that we remember Hagar since her story of exodus, exile, and rejection by woman, man, and even God, is the story of Jesus, who cries out with the 22nd Psalm while he is on the cross. For the God who inspires all Scripture, Hagar is, therefore, a foreshadowing of Christ.
As Sam so ably argues, for Christians this story is included in the Bible — I’d add, “warts and all” — so that we can remember that Jesus looks more like Hagar than he does like Abraham. In that light, this week’s OT lesson teaches us that there can be no good news, no salvation, indeed, there can be no gospel if the effort to win it requires treading on and exploiting Hagar, and those like her.
Perhaps to our chagrin, Jesus is most often found among the Hagars of the world, among those who are despised, scorned and rejected, among those who are marginalized. He is found among the weak and the vulnerable. Indeed, as the New Testament teaches us, Jesus is quite comfortable among those whose futures, like Hagar’s, cannot be reconciled with the hopes and plans of those who have power. A sad reality, yet to be taken up by mainline Protestant denominations (“MPDs”), is that Jesus is, therefore, found among the one million or so unwanted unborn who will be dispatched to the wilderness this year in America — not that the MPDs are looking for Him there.
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