It’s a crippling thing to feel invisible. A demeaning experience. A feeling Hagar knows all too well.

Hagar is an immigrant, a slave, and a concubine; she is as far outside the preferred social clique as one can be. It’s a well-known Hebrew paradigm to infer connections via similar-sounding words and her name, Hāḡār, is clearly reminiscent of the Hebrew for outsider: Haggēr.¹ Hagar’s life is presented as a constant battle with her mistress – and owner – from the opposite end of the social spectrum: the socially well-placed, highly-treasured wife of the community leader, whose name is Princess (śāray). ‘Outsider’ versus ‘Princess’: Hagar never stood a chance.

She occupies the lowliest, least visible, layer of society. No-one sees a slave.

In fact, Hagar’s oppression extends well beyond her death. In the New Testament, Paul looks to encourage the Jews to embrace their Messiah, of whom their scriptures had long spoken, for them to realize that the covenant of Christ released them from their enslavement to the covenant of Law by which they were condemned. To that end, Paul draws analogy of the contrasting circumstances of Hagar and Sarah.² Hagar – and her son – were born into slavery; Sarah – and her son – were born free. Paul emphasizes that the hope of the gospel is characterized by the state of freedom, as offered by Christ’s covenant of grace, not slavery to any law.

Tragically, it is common for Christian commentators to misinterpret Paul’s argument for the supremacy of freedom over slavery to be a divinely authorized ad hominem denouncement of Hagar herself. This is likely based on the original error by Augustine, who over-extended Paul’s metaphor to say Hagar represented the state of sin,³ a mistake inherited by Wycliffe,⁴ which later became a standard for Christian commentary. Similarly, historians report that “the standard Christian interpretation of the text” is to view Sarah’s mistreatment of Hagar as “necessary,”⁵ which is frankly obnoxious in the light of God’s care and favour towards the oppressed. Thus Hagar’s mistreatment rolls on to this very day, as those over-keen to identify as “Team Sarah” pile on by heaping deprecating comments on Hagar under the misconception that they are faithfully duplicating the Pauline view. They do not see Hagar either.

But God sees her.

Nameless Concubine

Hagar’s story opens in a manner consistent with her status. Sarai, wife of Abram, is struggling to conceive, and decides to employ Hagar, her slave, as a surrogate womb. Sarai says to Abram:

“You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. (Gen 16:2)

Sarai controls herself better than Rachel will; she doesn’t angrily blame her husband for her infertility, as Rachel does;⁶ instead Sarai sculpts a plan to solve her problem. That said, her words do not excel either. Hagar isn’t important enough in Sarai’s eyes to be worth mentioning by name, she is merely “my slave-girl.” Sarai doesn’t see the person Hagar, she just sees an additional womb by which she may obtain a child. These comments also reveal a lack of faith: Sarai speaks as if God won’t deliver on His promise that Abram will have a natural heir,⁷ and thus she needs to compensate for God’s shortcomings. There’s a subtle echo of Eden here. The Woman has taken the lead – again unadvisedly so, since this plan, as Eve’s, countermands God’s promise – and the husband, in this case Abram, is as uselessly silent and capitulatory as Adam.

Hagar conceives with Abram. This is a wonderful example of how God favours the downtrodden. For all that the firebrand Deborah emblemizes the “Mother in Israel” role more keenly than any other, the first Mother in Israel is Hagar the immigrant slave, as others note.⁸

Hagar, elevated to equality with Abram’s wife (arguably above her, via her fertility) subsequently despises Sarai. This seems genuine misconduct on Hagar’s part, and Sarai vents her anger on Abram. Abram, in a manner worryingly reminiscent of Pontius Pilate, abdicates any responsibility.

“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” (Gen 16:6)

Abram’s language matches his wife’s: he won’t see Hagar as a person either, she is ‘the slave’ in his speech too.

Abused Slave

Sarai’s demeaning of her Egyptian slave has a particular poignance, and guilt. Famine had once forced Abram and Sarai to flee to Egypt,⁹ where Sarai had been taken into Pharaoh’s palace because she was beautiful – Abram had lied that Sarai was single, fearing he would otherwise be killed. Thus, Sarai had been a helpless foreigner in a powerful Egyptian household. It must have been a terrifying experience, and God ultimately freed her. But, we might expect to see Sarai display empathy for the powerless immigrant precisely because of her experience in Egypt.¹⁰ Not a bit of it! Sarai disdains Hagar as less than fully human from the outset and mistreats her at the first opportunity. It’s a grim insight into the human soul.

There’s a wider parallel too. The harsh treatment (‘ānâ) Hagar receives as an Egyptian slave in an Israelite household mirrors the harsh treatment Israel will receive as slaves in Egypt.

Then Sarai dealt harshly (‘ānâ) with her, and she fled from her. (Gen 16:6)

Then the Lord said to Abram,

Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted (‘ānâ) for four hundred years. (Gen 15:13, also Ex 1:11)

Was Sarai’s mistreatment of Hagar part-trigger for God to educate Israel by later placing them in Hagar’s role, to be mistreated by her nation? We can’t know. Either way, Hagar flees into the desert from her oppression, just as Israel will and, heightening the parallel, they both flee to the same place: Shur.¹¹

God of the Oppressed

At this point the biblical account does a surprising thing: the focus stays on Hagar. We might expect to see Hagar’s flight to the desert as her exit from the text, while scripture follows Abram and Sarai’s lives. Instead, the ‘camera crew’ of Bible focus leaves Abram and Sarai, and follows Hagar’s eviction.¹² Carol Newsom comments:

The moral sympathy of the story seems to be with Hagar and Ishmael, even though the author knows our primary identification has to be with Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac.¹³

Hagar is the Leading Lady here, not Sarai; this is Hagar’s story.

Why? Again, because God is primarily the God of the oppressed, as Israel often have been. God will go with the Israelite slaves into the wilderness of Shur when they flee the affliction of the Egyptians. Consistently, therefore, God also traveled with the Egyptian slave-woman into the exact same desert as she flees the affliction from the household of ‘Israelite’ Abram.

This educates us as to the identity of “God’s people.” On surface level, we might say God’s people are the children of Abraham, physically and spiritually, which is true.¹⁴ Salvation is of the Jews in that context and thus Sarah is an important matriarch. But the subtly richer truth is God is primarily the God of the oppressed. The poor are always in His sight, as Hagar’s story, the precedent of myriad others, aptly demonstrates.

The idea that God doesn’t discriminate by nationality doesn’t originate in the New Testament, but in the Old.¹⁵ God says “You are My people” to Abraham, yet without contradiction Hagar’s story clarifies that there is no discrimination by race or bloodline. Abraham and Hagar were both pinnacles of faith, which is how God’s people are identified.

Underscoring that, Hagar is the first person ever to receive a visitation of the angel of the Lord.¹⁶ Indeed it’s the first mention of the word angel (mal’āḵ).¹⁷ Hagar’s angelic visitation is many years prior to Moses’ experience at the burning bush, or the angelic visit to Lot in Sodom or even to Abram at the oaks of Mamre.¹⁸ Hagar is first.

God also promises Hagar that she will have innumerable descendants. Abraham is rightly renowned as the father of the faithful; he is the focal source of three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Viewed through that lens, there is no greater patriarch. But the key promise on which Abraham’s greatness lies, the promise of countless descendants, was also made to an immigrant slave-woman named “Outsider” (Table 1).