Hagar

Genesis 16 & 21

SIW 10.05.2026

When I was asked to talk about a biblical woman who inspires me, I had never really thought about it but I eventually settled on Hagar and I have 7 minutes so lets dive in!

The Egyptian pharaoh gave Hagar to Abraham to be a slave to his family before he left Egypt. Hagar became the maid servant of sarah. So straight away we have a woman given away like livestock and forced to live in a family of a different culture, then that family left her homeland and took her with them.

Sarah had been trying to get pregnant for many years and had not been successful so she said to Abraham, hey how about you try getting Hagar pregnant because the child of a slave automatically became the property of the slave holder. Sarah saw this as her chance at a child.

There was no IVF in those days so Hagar had to accept a relationship with Abraham that she surely didn’t want so that she could achieve a pregnancy. I would call this assault. I would also say that Abraham and Sarah were callously using her for their own purposes.

When Hagar does become pregnant she starts to get sassy with Sarah and mock her, finding a way to have some sense of power when she has no power. We do this, don’t we? And it’s a very human thing to do but its not smart. The tension between the women grows until Hagar feels that she needs to leave the camp.

So she has jumped from the frying pan to the fire, from the safety and provision of Abraham and Sarah's household to alone in the desert, reflecting on her choices. And of all the uncomfortable things in life, knowing you did it to yourself is often the worst.

While Hagar is out there in the desert, an angel comes and tells her to return to Abraham and Sarah. The angel says that if she will submit to Sarah, she will have descendents too numerous to count.

I will remind you here that Hagar is not a Jew, she hasn’t traditionally followed the same God but she understands that God has seen her and had mercy on her and she names Him, El Roi, the god who sees.

I don’t know about you but I have followed the same God all my life and sometimes I still don’t recognise him or his work. What a great moment that must have been for her and what insight she had.

Hagar returns to Abraham and Sarah and the baby Ishmael is born.

Life goes on for about 10 to 12 years and Sarah miraculously becomes pregnant, Isaac is born and it should all be happy times but Sarah becomes worried that Hagar’s son Ishmael will become the heir so she has asks Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away.

Abraham isn’t overly happy about sending his son into the desert but that is what he does. Hagar and Ishmael go into the desert with a bag of water, which is soon finished and Hagar, not wanting to watch Ishmael die, tells him to lie under a bush and then walks away.

It is at this point that Ishmael cries out and God sends an angel who leads them both to a well. Their lives are saved and they go on to travel through the desert.

Ishmael becomes an archer and Hagar finds him an Egyptian wife, which would suggest that she eventually got to go home, not as a slave but as a free woman, the mother of an accomplished man.

Ishmael goes on to have 12 sons who all become tribal leaders and Hagar became the matriarch of the Ishmaelites, the modern nomadic Arabic people.

To recap, Hagar is isolated, marginalised, used and abused, and then cast into the desert to die. Through all of this, God is watching, helping, talking to her. It is reassuring to see that his eye was on her and He sent help and comfort to her. I think it is also worth noticing that Hagar was not part of the established religion so there is a lesson there in how we treat people, who we think are right, wrong, holy or worthy. We see a woman who was loved by God and who God honoured.

I think we all can find something in Hagars story that we identify with and I think it shows us the great depth of hope that is available for us when things are grim.