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HAGAR
Egyptian handmaid of Sarai, the wife of Abram. At Sarai’s insistence, Abram took Hagar as his concubine, and she became the mother of his son Ishmael (Gn 16:1-16; 21:9-21).
When God commanded Abram to leave Mesopotamia, he promised to make a great nation of him and to give the new land to his seed (Gn 12:2, 7). After ten years in Canaan and still childless, Sarai suggested to Abram that he take Hagar as his concubine and have children by her. It was the custom in northeast Mesopotamia that, when a wife failed to produce an heir for her husband, she could give him a slave for that purpose. Any son born of the union of husband and concubine was considered the child of the wife (cf. 30:1-6).
During her pregnancy, Hagar became disrespectful to Sarai. Sarai dealt so harshly with Hagar that she fled to the desert. An angel of God appeared to her at a well in the desert and told her to return to Abram’s house, promising that she would have a son, Ishmael (“God hears”), who would be a wild and quarrelsome man. Hagar then named the place Beer-lahairoi, meaning “the well of one who sees and lives.”
Ishmael was born when Abram was 86 years old, and 14 years later God gave Abraham and Sarah the promised son, Isaac. At the time of Isaac’s weaning (at approximately three years of age), a feast was held. At the weaning feast Ishmael mocked Isaac (Gn 21:9), and Sarah in anger asked Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Abraham hesitated until God spoke to him and told him to do so (v 12).
Hagar and Ishmael left to wander in the wilderness of Beersheba. When their water was exhausted, God miraculously rescued Hagar and Ishmael from death and assured Hagar that Ishmael would be the father of a great nation (Gn 21:17-19). Ishmael lived in the wilderness of Paran, became a hunter, married an Egyptian, and became the father of the Ishmaelites.
In an allegory developed by Paul (Gal 4:22-31), Hagar represents the old covenant of Sinai. As Ishmael was Abraham’s son by human arrangement, the Judaizing Christians who would bind all Christians to the law of Moses are like Hagar’s children born in slavery. Sarah, the freewoman, represents the new covenant of Christ. As Isaac was Abraham’s son by faith in the divine promise, Christians who are free of the fleshly ordinances of the law are spiritual children of Sarah. The contrast is between salvation by works, which is bondage to the law, and salvation by grace and faith, which is freedom.