Thoughts on Sarah and Hagar

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar;  so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Abram agreed to what Sarai said.  So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.  He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.


When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.  Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."


"Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.  (Genesis 16:1-6, NIV )

There's been a bit of discussion about Sarah and Hagar lately on the discussion board for our EfM group. One really outstanding thing about online EfM is that the dialog doesn't stop at 9:30pm on Sunday night when the class ends. Some, like this one, can go on for weeks with people contributing and reading the contributions of others as new thoughts or available time permit.
 
It seems hard to find a justification for Sarah's treatment of Hagar. Turning her out, as Abraham gave her implicit if not explicit permission to do, was tantamount to a death sentence for both Hagar and the child Hagar conceived by Abraham but with Sarah's permission and connivance. The child would have been considered Sarah's as soon as Sarah held the child "on her knee", a ceremonial adoption. For all intents and purposes, Ishmael would have become Sarah and Abraham's son, not Hagar's.
 
I can't help but think that had Hagar not gotten what Southerners call "uppity" things might have gone better. Being "uppity" means acting in a way that is above your station, like an employee acting like a boss or a chauffeur using the limo for his own parties and purposes. Hagar's pregnancy would have been hard enough for Sarah to bear, knowing that Abraham still had potency while it was her, Sarah's, fault that they had no children to fill the tent and most of all, to inherit Abraham's flocks and herds. It had always been whispered that Sarah was at fault because in that day, it was believed that a man's sperm contained babies just waiting to be implanted and incubated in the womb of a woman. That was why Onan's "crime" centuries later was considered severe enough for God to kill him on the spot. Onan had literally "killed" children when he ejaculated on the ground instead of impregnating his sister-in-law who would have raised the child or children as her dead husband's heir.
 
Regardless, Sarah's story at this point brings me conflicted feelings. On one hand it is hard to understand how one woman could be so cruel to another, how one woman with the power of life and death over another could exercise that option in such a cold, hard way. Sarah herself had put Hagar in the position in which the servant found herself and yet Sarah was ready to terminate that situation.
 
But then, I can empathize with Sarah. Like The Mouse That Roared, you have to be careful how you treat people because even a mouse can become a lion given the right circumstances. And the story tells us that Hagar was roaring. After all, she was pregnant by Abraham, carrying Abraham's heir while Sarah was just a withered bag of bones with a barren womb and no hope of changing that. Clearly Hagar felt she had the upper hand but I wonder if, in some perverse way, Sarah didn't already have what T-shirts a few years ago proudly proclaimed as "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill."  Sarah and Hagar may have been sisters under the skin but that didn't prevent them from engaging in both sibling rivalry as well as "I'm the boss so you'd better...."
 
Poor Hagar. She was caught in the middle of a situation not of her own making but she chose to use it to her advantage.  Poor Sarah. She did what she thought she had to do to protect what Abraham had built but she didn't figure on Hagar figuratively biting the hand that fed her -- and the unborn child -- probably better than she would have been fed otherwise. Poor Abraham -- caught in the middle and blamed for (a) not sticking up for the underdog and (b) doing what his wife wanted in the first place.
 
For some reason, this story brought to mind the protesters outside Planned Parenthood clinics -- clinics that do perform abortions but which also provides contraception information and assistance. As I see the people pacing back and forth, some reading a Bible or praying, some carrying signs I wouldn't like a young child to see, I wonder how many of those Sarahs were willing to adopt a child that is already born and in the foster care system for whatever reason. maybe some of them have -- but it's a thing I always wonder.
 
As a child whose mother decided to walk out of her life when she was six months old, I am eternally grateful to the Sarah (whose name was really Alberta) who heard the cry for help from my father (a long-time friend of the family) who was in the service and found himself with a small girl child on his hands and no way to care for her. I was lucky but I hear stories of others who weren't so lucky, people who had no Sarah.
 
I also think of the children who wind up with parents who divorce and then fight over who has custody. I also think of kids whose divorced parent remarries and whose step parent really doesn't want a reminder around of a previous relationship. the ones who really suffer are the Isaacs and the Ishmaels and they are the ones least able to control or even cope with the situation and come out unscathed.
 
It's a sad story. It happens over and over. The circumstances may differ but the situation is still the same -- who has power over whom, what they do with that power, and who pays the price. Nobody escapes untouched.