Hagar the Egyptian
Hagar and Ishmael Banished by Abraham
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
“In the Biblical narrative in Genesis, Hagar was an Egyptian slave who belonged to Sarah, the wife of Abraham. When Sarah was unable to provide Abraham with a child, she proposed that her husband beget a child with her slave…By the time Hagar was pregnant, Sarah regretted the arrangement and began to treat her quite harshly. In fact, at her insistence, Abraham sent Hagar and her son, Ishmael alone into the wilderness.”
Genesis Biblical story of Sarah and Hagar
“They wandered in the desert heat until their water supply was finished. Then Hagar put the boy under a bush and wandered off alone, unable to bear the sight of her child’s death.” ‘Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water, and gave the lad a drink.’
“Though Hagar is not the main protaganist in the story of Abraham and Sarah, she plays an important role in the characterization of God. Though she is an outsider, a foreigner, a woman of no account, a discarded slave in the wilderness, it is yet she who “sees” God and names him in turn as the God who sees.”
All Saints - Robert Ellsberg
This last statement is so powerful and so true. I am regularly astonished at how often God communicates directly and most clearly to me from individuals who find themselves on the margins of society. It is their secret gift to us who find ourselves in the mainstream.
