I love reading the story of Hagar, a courageous and marginalized woman. Her story in Genesis 16 captivated me for a couple of reasons.
Hagar, the Egyptian slave-girl of Sarai was offered up by Sarai to Abram, to bear children against her will. And then, harassed by Sarai once she conceived, fled to the wilderness.
There, the Lord’s messenger finds her. To begin with, he appears as an angel and later in verse 13, ends up as though he were God himself.
One of the most baffling phrases occurs in verse 10, where the divine messenger addresses Hagar and says, “Return to your mistress and suffer abuse at her hand.”
Really Lord, whose side are you on?
The Lord doesn’t take sides, does he? We often want God on our side, but the Lord refuses to take sides (remember the angel of the Lord who Joshua encountered?). We are left with two options - flee or get on God’s side, whatever that means.
And then the messenger proceeds to declare a poetic blessing on her seed.
At the very end of the chapter, occurs the most crucial epiphany of all - Hagar names the messenger now turned Lord as “El-Roi” (God who sees me); the first ever occurrence in the Bible where God is named by a human.
Chapter 17 follows immediately with the Lord identifying Himself to Abram as “El Shaddai”.
And here’s my epiphany or my sacred imagination if you will - the redactors in arranging chapter 17 as is, seem to suggest this - Hagar in naming the Lord for the first time ever, forces God to identify Himself with a name for the first time ever.
Epiphany 2020