God as the Emancipator of the Downtrodden: Reflections on the Oppressed Life of Hagar, the Maidservant of Sarah

Tonight, my Anglican schedule of Bible reading directed me to read this pathetic and pitiful story of Hagar, the enslaved servant of Sarah, who was wronged and unjustly treated not just by Sarah but by the man whom Jews, Christians, and Muslims proudly call, ‘Our Father of Faith”, the patriarch Abraham himself. However, the story did not end with the ignominious narrative of patriarchal oppression of a marginalized woman Hagar and her helpless child Ishmael.

The story reveals to us a God who is always on the side of the oppressed, a God who made provisions for Hagar so she will live—and her child too. The story unveils to us a God who provided blessings to the oppressed woman Hagar and her child Ishmael by making them a great nation and by taking care of them even though they were thrown out by Abraham in the midst of the hot Mid-East desert sun. The narrative of Hagar shows to us a God who emancipates the marginalized and the oppressed and has given them a blessed future under the shadow of His protection, so that God becomes an avowed enemy of such a person who oppresses the poor, the lowly, and the downtrodden.

I will start this essay by quoting at length pertinent texts found in Genesis 16: “Now the angel of the Lord found Hagar crying bitterly by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, ‘Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid, where have you come from and where are you going?’ And she said, ‘I am fleeing from the oppression, beatings and cruelty of my mistress Sarah’… The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count’… Then Hagar called the name of the Lord God who spoke to her, ‘You are indeed a God who sees me and knows my pain’; And Hagar added, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him, and how gracious of Him to listen to all of my complaints!” (From the Rabbinic Torah Translation Society [Genesis 16:7-13])

Hagar was an obscure Egyptian slave woman, whose abject poverty brought her into the household of Abraham. She was such an ordinary woman, as the Scriptures describe her skin as very dark. She was neither beautiful nor remarkable in her personality. Though the story started with oppression, God’s mercy broke through all Hagar’s pain and healed her. The Lord sided with Hagar against her oppressors and promised her posterity and prosperity for her and her child, Ishmael. She claimed God as her Refuge and Protector in her times of pain and sorrows. What we can clearly notice in the Genesis 16 narrative is that there is a God who cares for those people who are oppressed by the unjust political and economic system. Hagar being defended by God is a portrait of the equality of all humans before God. We worship and serve a God who cares equally for each and every one of us. So the first thing to remember about Hagar’s story is this great truth that God’s loving concern is not exclusively with the self-proclaimed “chosen people” but for all His creation. God is no respecter of persons and He hears the complaints of everyone especially from the poor and the oppressed.

From the Genesis narrative, we notice clearly that this slave girl, Hagar, is triply oppressed because of her race (as the despised Egyptian), because of the nature of her job (as a slave-girl) and because of her gender (as a woman in a patriarchal Canaanite society). Hagar was not from the Hebrews, the race that self-proclaimed itself as the “chosen people of God” (such an insolent self-proclamation—as if God would like to play favorites or be unfair with other races), but Hagar was a discriminated Egyptian slave woman. She was a servant-girl of Abraham and Sarah and they were her overbearing masters. As an Egyptian alien and as a helpless girl, Hagar was the lowest class employee of Abraham’s rich household. Gender-wise, being a woman itself is enough reason for societal discrimination. A woman born in a Canaanite society is already considered as a kind of jinx and misfortune—how much more discriminating would it be for a woman who was also a slave and whose ancestry is alien! Such was the state of Hagar as not just oppressed but as an extremely marginalized woman in a patriarchal Hebrew society of her day and age.

Hagar was an “invisible” slave in Abraham’s household. Her presence and her existence did not matter at all to them. Hagar was seen and yet not seen by Abraham and Sarah. If she cries, nobody is there in the household to take it seriously. She then would withdraw herself to obscurity in the silence of her pain and in the loneliness of her solitude. Her value was strictly in her usefulness for Abraham’s household. There is no love for her in the tent of Abraham. If any guest comes to the house, her face should not be seen outside: she must be veiled at all times, from head to toe as slaves in ancient Canaanite society were dressed. She might have thought of reacting, replying, responding, but she had no right to react nor to respond. If this is what happened in the house of Abraham who is called “Our Father of Faith”, what would then be the situation of other houses in that patriarchal society? Yet this invisible woman, this unimportant member of the marginalized, invisible and discriminated people, occupies an important place in the story of God’s relationship with us human beings, especially with women, as the Genesis narrative would show from Genesis Chapter 16 onward.

When Sarah, the barren wife of Abraham hit upon a cruel and self-serving scheme of using Hagar as a surrogate mother for the former’s benefit, the Biblical narrative shows that Hagar was never consulted regarding this matter. Sarah wanted to have a son, but she was barren so she used the poor slave girl Hagar for her own purpose. Hagar therefore became a mere tool or toy in the hands of her mistress as it is written that Sarah took her aside and gave her to Abraham and Abraham had sexual relations with Hagar in the tent of Sarah! This is a story of objectification of women and trafficking of women in ancient times as narrated in the Bible. Hagar was treated as a commodity: the will, the free decision and heart of the slave girl Hagar had no value for her selfish masters. It was not the dream of the servant Hagar to have sexual union with a very old man Abraham and to bear a son of Abraham in her womb. She was a mere tool of both Sarah and Abraham so that they can get an offspring from Hagar’s surrogate motherhood, so that the Abrahamic household will have a male heir as dictated by the patriarchal society of which they are part of. If our material wealth are lost we can regain them someday, but the dreams and future of a teenage girl cannot be restored back to her. Her masters had strength, power, and influence, but she was alone, powerless, and helpless! Her consciousness urged Hagar to react – but she could not react, as there was no right to react in the society of her day and age. Hagar did not have any option except to run away from the oppressive home of Abraham and Sarah. Hagar was afflicted, beaten, hurt, and inflicted wounds of insult after insult and so she could not take these blows of cruelty no more, therefore she ran away from that house of false prestige and societal pretensions.

When God sees oppression, He then enters in such a situation, rescuing the oppressed from the inhuman clutches of the oppressor. God saw the runaway slave Hagar. When God sees Hagar, He was not only seeing her, but also the multitude who are suppressed, persecuted, repressed, tortured and downtrodden. God knew well where Hagar is. God knows each one’s location; nobody can hide away from the All Seeing Eye of the God of Justice. God knows the whereabouts of 6 billion people of the population of this world. God’s unbounded love, care and concern is expended on each and every person in this world. When God saw Hagar, He also saw the faces of all the oppressed in this world. As the Psalmist himself said: “In my distress, I called upon the Lord Yahweh, and cried unto my God: He heard my voice out of his holy temple, and my cry came before Him, even into his heart” (Psalms 18:6)… God is the Creator of the entire ongoing cosmos, and the Judge of all human actions. Hagar only knew the God of her master Abraham by hearing His name uttered by the mouth of her unjust masters. She was not a member of the privileged Hebrew worshiping sect of Abrahamites. However God heard the cry of Hagar and respected her person and her existential worth—never asking Hagar if He belonged to this religious clique or not. God is always the God of humankind and never a God of a sect, of a religion, of a race, of a superpower, or of an ideology! The God of Mercy always graciously hears the cries of the afflicted.

I have discovered another beautiful facet in the narrative: God calls Hagar by her name. God knows Hagar intimately—even as He knows each one of us by our own names! Silent tears cried in the privacy of our innermost chamber reach to God’s listening Ear as well as the hushed prayers of the brokenhearted. It is with Hagar where we can read the first mention in the Holy Scripture of an angel’s appearance in the book of Genesis. Hagar is the first human in the Bible to be visited by an angel from God. She who was a woman was the first person to be comforted by an angelic visitation! God regarded Hagar as a valued and precious person, when she was ignored, marginalized and dismissed by everyone else in her community as an unimportant, irrelevant and invisible woman. God found in Hagar a valuable gem while the patriarchal society of her times only found in her a worthless pebble.

The angel of the Lord asked Hagar: “Hagar, where from you came and where do you go?” (Genesis 16:8a). Her reply was simply truthful and authentic: “I flee from the face of my mistress.” (Genesis 16:8b). God deeply cared for Hagar’s welfare. The God of Mercy promised a bright posterity and prosperous future for her. God’s plan is higher and more comprehensive than we could ever plan or imagine for our own selves. A prophecy from the angel concerning her future child and her upcoming descendants (through her child) had given her comfort and joy in the midst of her distress and sorrows. It is a solace to this pregnant slave-girl to think that she is under the protecting shadow of the God Who loves and takes care of all the helpless and the abandoned. The angel gave the name of her child, with a beautiful and meaningful name: “Call him ‘Ishmael’, which means God always hears your afflictions.” (Genesis 16:11). This future name of the child in her womb is an assurance not just to Hagar but to all downtrodden masses that the God of Mercy and Loving-kindness is always ready and at hand to hear the cries of the afflicted. God gave Hagar all the promises that He likewise gave to the posterity of the household of Abraham. Then Hagar gave God with a new name which was taken from her intimate experience with His mercy and love, “El La-hai-Roy” which means “The God Who Sees Me” (See Genesis 16:14). It was the most significant day in her life to give two names or titles for God which were birthed by her profound and inner experience of God’s goodness and love in her life. Hagar is the only person in the whole Bible who dared to give God not just one name or title, but two: “El Ha Shem Ishmael” (The God Who is a Hearing God) and “El La-hai-Roy” (The God Who Sees Me).

When Hagar, the slave girl saw the Lord face to face, she was seeing her self-worth as a woman. Apparently, and on the face of it, it seems that of her present situation, nothing much changes for Hagar at all. But the difference is that now Hagar knows that this God of Mercy knows and cares for her. Now, she fully knows that this God of Tenderness loves her and that she definitely matters to God. And these realizations have given her the firm resolve to endure all difficulties in life. This realization of a God Who loves her despite her alien nationality, her enslavement and Abraham’s abandonment of her and her child gives her immense hope where hope was nowhere to be found. This meeting of a God Who loves her unconditionally gave purpose to her hitherto meaningless and marginalized life. Hagar now knew that she is valuable and precious in the sight of God. Out of this meeting with God, Hagar was now a different person. She now knew herself, her self-worth and who she is in the heart of God. Though she was still doing the same menial jobs in her master’s house, she fondly calls to her mind and heart all those beautiful promises and assurances that God made to her. She was now confident about her calling: such a calling may be low to others but God looked upon her work with favor, approval and respect.

Again we see Hagar in the wilderness, now she had a small child in her hand. Sarah called the shots and challenged the pliant Abraham: “Cast out this bondwoman, oh Abraham!” (Genesis 21:10). Again, Hagar is in tears, and sufficiently mortified by this second-time abandonment. In this distress, God graciously appeared for the relief of the abandoned mother-and-son. The angel once again assured Hagar that the God of Mercy heard the voice of the lad, and the angel assures her that God will never abandon them. God has heard the voice of the lad and his mother, just where they are; in the desolateness of the wilderness and in the poverty of the barren desert. No problems are too difficult for the Merciful Lord of the Resurrection and of Second Chances to deal with, therefore we who are like Hagar must stop mourning and seek in the Tender Risen Lord Who can make all things new and Who can “save us even to the uttermost” from even in our most adverse circumstances. (Hebrews 7:25). This wilderness was not the Golgotha of Christ, but this was the Golgotha and Calvary of Hagar and her pitiful son Ishmael. Jesus, the Messiah told St. John, the Evangelist, “Behold this is your mother” and He likewise told our Blessed Mother Mary, “This is your son”. Jesus created a beautiful community of the hurting and the downtrodden at the foot of the cross. Likewise in the Arabian wilderness, Hagar and Ishmael formed a new community—The Arabian race, a new race that was also promised by God prosperity over the face of the earth (See Genesis 16:11-12). God protected the orphaned mother and the abandoned lad. A beautiful community is formed out of orphans and of the abandoned showing to us that the God of Mercy is the Father of the fatherless, Mother of the motherless, Parent of hapless foundlings, Protector of widows, Defender of the abandoned. (Psalms 68:5).

Because of Hagar’s intimate relationship with God in tears and in weeping, God as the Emancipator of the oppressed has fully liberated her and rescued her from shame and ignominy of that pretentious house of Abraham. The purpose of our inner communion with God in times of our trouble and disgrace is to find solace in having such a Merciful Helper near us. In the words of the Psalms: “God is our Refuge and Strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalms 46:1). To briefly summarize; what we learn from Hagar are these beautiful and precious truths: a.) Despite all the things that I have gone through, whether they be painful or joyful, I have a sure place in the merciful and loving heart of our God of Mercy and Compassion. b.) God promises future hopeful prospects for all those who are suffering and for all those who thought that their lives do not have any hope. c.) In the midst of the parched desert we are in, when we simply open our eyes in faith, we will see the Spring of Life, which is our reason to live, a goal to continue on with life, and a hope to joyfully anticipate. d.) And most of all, God will always stretch His mighty arms to defend the oppressed and embrace them right where they are—healing them of all the pain they have experienced in life and rectifying the injustices and inequities committed by the oppressors against them; for God is always the God who sides with the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed…

To close our reflections on the life of the oppressed servant girl Hagar and the provision of God’s liberating love that frees her from the oppressive situations surrounding her, let us now sincerely pray for the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and Lumads of our country that God will fight on their side against those heartless people who continually oppress them. We pray that God will give the the Lumads principled courage so that they will continually strive to protect their basic freedoms especially their intrinsic right for self-determination, the right of their ancestral domains, and the right to live unimpeded in the sacred land of their own ancestors. Let us pray that as believers of a God Who is the Liberator of the oppressed, we will be on God’s side in defending the Lumads from their oppressors who are hiding within the greedy, unjust and cruel echelons of State and military power. Amen, a thousand times Amen!