Genesis 21 concludes the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Islamic tradition picks up on this and names Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arabic peoples. This story reveals something about the grim conditions for women in the ancient Near East and how common it was for even the people we think of as the good guys to use and discard them. It's another story of God's faithfulness contrasted with human selfishness and cruelty.
Previously, God had promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child and this would lead to a huge number of descendants. Actually, God had promised it several times, though the elderly couple had their doubts. Sarah had doubted it so much that she'd come up with a plan B, just in case God's plan didn't work out. She'd sent her Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, to Abraham with instructions to get her pregnant.
Abraham had gone along with the plan and the result had been a son named Ishmael. That had seemed to solve things, until Hagar realized that producing an heir made her more important to Abraham than Sarah was. Sarah realized it too and a deep hatred grew up between the women.
Then God's promise came true. Against all possibility, Sarah became pregnant. The idea was so absurd that it made her laugh and so, when the child was born, they named him Isaac, which means "laughter." But what was joyful for Sarah was bad news for Hagar and her son. Sarah realized that they didn't need this uppity slave and her son around any longer. She told Abraham to abandon the two of them in the desert and he didn't object to that any more than he had to getting the girl pregnant.
Abraham and Sarah don't come across very well in this story. They aren't just, or even kind, in their dealings with Hagar and her son. As far as they're concerned, she is just a means to an end, someone to be used and discarded. She's just a slave as far as they're concerned, a foreign woman, who can be treated as less than human. Abraham and Sarah aren't role models in this story, they aren't even decent human beings.
Fortunately, Abraham and Sarah aren't the heroes of the story, God is. While Hagar is our in the desert, waiting to die, God speaks to her and tells her that she and her son will live. God reveals a water well, which saves their lives, and makes then a promise that Ishmael will survive and will also become the ancestor of a great nation.
The contrast between God's character and that of the human characters is the heart of the story. In God's eyes, Hagar is much more than a foreigner or a slave. She is someone who has been oppressed by her culture and its people. As we will see over and over throughout scripture, God has a special concern for people like Hagar and Ishmael. While it would have been nice to see God give Abraham and Sarah a real dressing down, the story does reveal something about God's character that we'll see over and over. God acts to protect the helpless, comfort the afflicted, and embrace the despised and rejected. God cares about the down and out and that's the moral lesson I take away from this story.
God cares for the people who are ignored and stepped on. If we want to be followers of God, we should do the same.
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