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Christen Holder Holder
Dr. Anita Johnson
English 18: The Bible as Literature
15 April 2012
Hagar and Ishmael: A story of Merciful Faith (Option 2)
The Biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael reinforce a consistent theme about faith and the
perils of disobedience followed by mercy for the repenting followers who turned back in
surrender of Yahweh's will and plan. It is portrayed with images from shared wealth to
depravity, and depicts a dramatic character development from self serving pride to humility in
the face of hopeless peril.
THEME: Surrender to Yahweh and Prosper.
The account of Genesis in the Bible "gets down to cases in telling how Yahweh selected
Abram through whom to create a special people." (Gabel 64) This message is clear in Genesis
17: 1-8 which states: "When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and
said to him, I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my
covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous. Then Abram fell on
his face; and God said to him, As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the
ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be
Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you
exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will
establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their
generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I
will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the
land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God." (Coogan 33-34)
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This established the first half of the them of God's covenant with the Jewish people as
described to be that: "The chief aim [of Biblical writers] was to use the past to teach a religious
lesson, specifically, that proper obedience to the deity leads to success in earthly affairs, with its
corollary about disobedience." (Gabel 55)
In exchange for this promise by Yahweh, God instructed Abraham in Genesis 17: 9-16
as follows: "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you
throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you
and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise
the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days
old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any
foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought
with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting
covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be
cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant...As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call
her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by
her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her."
(Coogan 34)
Accordingly, Abraham sought to follow God's instructions in reliance of his promises, in
essence obedient faith leads to blessings, while self driven actions outside of faith lead to
hardship.
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IMAGES: Wealth by birthright custom to depravity as a cast out.
It has been noted by those who study the Bible that "objectivity in dealing with the past
was of no interest to the writers of the bible. Perhaps they could not have even conceived of
such a thing. When they told their stories of the past, they did not for the sake of the past but for
the sake of the present - their present of course...for the profit of their particular audience in their
own time." (Gabel 64) This is evident in the almost reverse judgment or hardship that Hagar
endured by allowing Abram to conceive an heir through her despite his legitimate wife being
considered baron at the time.
Ishmael was a child birthed out of Abram and Sarai's taking matters into their own hands
to produce an heir, while Isaac was a child birthed out of faith blessed to be the promised heir by
Yahweh. This is expressed in Genesis 16: 1-6 which states: "Now Sarai, Abrams wife, bore
him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said 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. So, after
Abram had lived for ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abrams wife, took Hagar the
Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and
she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her
mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl
to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt.
May the Lord judge between you and me! But Abram said to Sarai, Your slave-girl is in your
power; do to her as you please. Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her."
(Coogan 32-33)
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Here we thus find Hagar moving from a position of obscurity to the mother of Abram's
heir, with increased status, followed by being cast out through Sarai's contempt which
descriptively show the consequence of taking matters into our own hands versus trusting in
God's plan and being patient with faith. The lesson is amplified in the following verses of
Genesis 16: 7-15 which states: "The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the
wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have
you come from and where are you going? She said, I am running away from my mistress
Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress, and submit to her. The angel
of the Lord also said to her, I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted
for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Now you have conceived and shall bear a
son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a
wild ass of a man,with his hand against everyone, and everyones hand against him; and he shall
live at odds with all his kin. So she named the Lord who spoke to her, You are El-roi; for she
said, Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him? Therefore the well was
called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered. Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram
named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore
him Ishmael. " (Coogan 33)
DRAMATIC CHARACTER: Self serving pride to humility facing a hopeless peril.
The story of the circumstance Ishmael's of conception and birth verses those of Isaac are
an example of "dramatic" irony. This occurs when the person reading the passages are given
two diametrically and irreconcilable opposing ways to live (i.e. by our own understanding to
make our own fate, or by faith and obedience to God.) The contrast between the audience's
complete perception and the actor's partial one generates the irony, which is always tinged with
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satisfaction from he observer's superiority, the observer's omniscience [hence God's point of
view to teach us a lesson." (Gabel 31)
An example of this is Genesis 17: 17-27 in which we truly view the character of Abraham
and his very human qualities questioning the efficacy of divine promises that his elderly wife
will bear a legitimate heir as follows: "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to
himself, Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety
years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, O that Ishmael might live in your sight!
God said, No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac.* I will
establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for
Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he
shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will
establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year. And when he had
finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. Then Abraham took his son Ishmael and
all the slaves born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of
Abrahams house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said
to him. Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.
And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.
That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised; and all the men of his house,
slaves born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with
him. " (Coogan 33)
That said, the text of the Bible also teaches us how one's character of jealousy can lead to
further hardship that could have been avoided if we had just waited for Yahweh to carry out his
plan. Thus in the passages of Genesis 21: 1-7: "The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and
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the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old
age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom
Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God
had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Now Sarah said, God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.
And she said, Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I
have borne him a son in his old age. (Coogan 39)
Despite these blessings and miracle of elderly childbirth, a new cycle began to fester
which teaches us that we do in fact face the consequences of our prior decisions when done in
haste. In Genesis 21: 8-16 the narration informs us that "The child grew, and was weaned; and
Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar
the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to
Abraham, Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not
inherit along with my son Isaac. The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his
son. But God said to Abraham, Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your
slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that
offspring shall be named after you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of
him also, because he is your offspring. So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread
and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and
sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the
water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat
down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, Do not let me
look on the death of the child. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept."
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The point was that despite Hagar's abiding in Yahweh, the sins of the father of the child "Abram"
taking matters into his own hands to conceive an heir had lasting consequences despite's God's
blessings. Hence, we see the character of humility and depravity in the same passage blended
with faith.
Accordingly in Genesis 21: 17-23 "God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God
called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for
God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with
your hand, for I will make a great nation of him. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well
of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. God was with the
boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in
the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. At that time
Abimelech, with Phicol the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all
that you do; now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or
with my offspring or with my posterity, but as I have dealt loyally with you, you will deal with
me and with the land where you have resided as an alien." (Coogan 40)
CONCLUSION
The story of Hagar and Ishmael reinforce a consistent theme that when an individual and
people trust in God and patiently wait for blessings by faith there are blessings, but that in haste
or fearful actions all suffer as a consequence. It showed images of obedience and humility in
those who tried to face the supernatural promises of God in the face of practical human drives to
have an heir and consequential legacy. In this we learned the character traits valued being
faithful, trusting, enduring and most importantly willing to get down on our knees to cry out for
help in a repentant attitude. This was the message the Biblical writers were trying to convey to
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the people of their time, and I find that there message was pronounced with clarity and anecdote
by characters they could identify with.
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Works Cited
Coogan, Michael, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the
Apocrypha. 4th Ed. NY and Oxford University Press, 2010. Print
Gabel, John B., et al. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction. 5th Ed. NY and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006. Print