“Hagar, you’re awake.” The voice is like bells and trumpets. The sounds of the desert around Hagar seem to coordinate with it like music. The trickle of the spring, the buzz of the beetles, they are tuned to the voice of this man. The sound is so pleasant that Hagar closes her eyes and her mother’s face appears like before in the dream.
“Where have you come from, and where are you going?” The man says.
Hagar surveys the man standing above her. He reaches a hand down to where she is sitting in the water from the spring. She takes his hand, anticipating being pulled to standing, her arm waiting for the tug, instead the man sits down beside her in the water, still cradling her hand. He takes his other hand and begins to scoop water and dribble it over her belly as she had done before, as if it is now his turn to complete the task. She watches his face, his calm. This is the I Am, she thinks, and he’s sitting beside me.
“I am running from Sarai.” She says, now as if she is speaking to a fellow servant in the cooking tent. The I Am nods, this is information he knows, she realizes. She sees herself more clearly now, she is running from the mistress that she loves and the camp where she grew up. She looks around her at the desert and it’s barren, she looks in the direction of Egypt and sees nothing for her.
“You must go back.” The I Am says, just as Hagar seems to be realizing it herself. She must go back. She carries Sarai’s child. She is Sarai’s after all, her servant. She must go back.
“You have to keep serving Sarai, Hagar,” the I Am says. The drops of water fall over her belly and roll down the side, reminding her that she has served her mistress faithfully, to the point of lending her womb.
It had seemed like something so easy at the time, the next step in the promise that the I Am had for Abram and Sarai. Sarai and Hagar had their hands in water when they decided, like both her and the I Am did now, the creation of the plan like the creation of life, set in water until birth. Hagar would birth Sarai’s baby, it was simple, it made sense.
The conversation between Hagar and Sarai was more matter of fact than anything. Sarai had turned to Hagar and spoken the words like she was dividing tasks for their next meal. “You will have my baby.” She said to Hagar. “It’s the perfect plan. You are my most trusted servant, like a sister to me. You are the one who will carry the child of promise, it must be what the I Am has intended all along.” Hagar thought the plan was perfect. She was the best one to carry Sarai’s child, she was the closest to her.
Hagar remembers looking at their hands in the water next to one another, working in tandem, like they were two halves of a whole. Hagar’s hands submerged each garment, scrubbed the soiled spots, and passed them to Sarai’s hands which wrung the garment and laid it on the rocks without a second thought. They were dance partners in the dance of washing clothing. They would be partners in child-rearing, one unit, one’s womb would be the same as the other.
“Yes.” Hagar had said to Sarai in response. “I’ll have your child.”
Hagar and Sarai had always been close. Ever since Hagar had left Egypt, taken up residence with Sarai’s caravan and given her life over to the strange task of wandering and waiting for direction from the God of Abram and Sarai, the I Am. It was a whole new life for Hagar, much different than the life within the Egyptian halls that had looked the same each day. But Hagar treated Sarai like her beacon, her way forward. Each day, she rose with the task of nothing but serving Sarai, whatever Sarai might need.
It worked, for a little while. Hagar fell into the rhythms of life, the harshness of the wilderness, the endless tasks that were required of her, the procuring of water from a deep well, when the Nile used to be so near or the lack of medicinal herbs at her disposal. But it didn’t matter to Hagar, Sarai’s NorthStar kept her moving, learning and loving her work for the first time. She trusted her hands now more than she had ever before. She was doing menial tasks in the Egyptian palace, with ranking as low as one could have. Out in the desert, she was asked for input on how to season a meal, discipline a child, even how to mend clothing. Her Egyptian background proved to be quite useful in the tents of the women, who would ask her to mix pastes for their cheeks or teach them how to paint their eyes with kohl. They treated Hagar with a respect she had never received before.
Hagar began to see herself as she saw her mother, as the leader, as the trusted source and for the first, time understood why her mother might have loved her position.
There was a lightness in living Abram and Sarai, there was joy there and a peace that Hagar had never experienced before. They trusted this I Am. Hagar wondered about him. The lack of a constant roof kept Hagar always looking up at the sky, wondering about the stars, wondering about their maker.
“The I Am has promised that our descendants will be as numerous as those stars,” Sarai said as she walked up to Hagar one night just as the darkness was about to fall on their camp as it did each evening, slowly and then all at once, like a blanket being shaken out and then dropped in place. This night, the stars shone almost as brilliantly as the day, with the help of the moon of course, their celestial confidant. Hagar marveled at its beauty.
“That’s a lot of stars.” Hagar whispered, more to herself than to Sarai.
“A lot of descendants.” Sarai said. The promise had been one of the first things that Hagar had learned about this strange new life. The I Am had promised Abram that he would be the father of a great nation, although he was yet to have any children. Hagar thought of her little statues of gods she had kept in her room back in Egypt. The god of the sun, Ra, had been her favorite, although Hagar had never had a conversation with him.
“Does Abram really talk to the I Am?” Hagar couldn’t resist asking.
“He does.” Sarai said.
Hagar looks over at the I Am, sitting in the spring next to her. Now he has spoken to her, too. “The descendants. What about them?” She says to him. She thought she carried the son of promise. Would she be the one with the descendants?
Hunger rumbles through Hagar’s belly, the sudden biting kind. The I Am stops moving the water and gives Hagar a handful of dates. She looks around, trying to find where they might have come from, she sees no date tree. She bites into one, the sugar from the soft flesh slides through her veins, clarifying her mind.
“You will have descendants, Hagar, too many to count.” The I Am gestures to her stomach. “You will name this baby Ishmael, for I have seen how hard it had been to serve Sarai. I have seen your misery.”
My misery, Hagar thinks. He is right to use that word. Hagar had never called it that before, but it was a perfect fit. Her life had turned into a longstanding, complicated and painful sort of misery.
Shortly after Sarai and Hagar spoke under the stars, Sarai began to have fits. They came on suddenly and evaporated just as quickly, lasting a few days. Hagar remembers the first one. Hagar had finished washing the cookware from dinner and was setting up for the next day’s breakfast. She had just turned toward her tent when she caught Sarai’s shadow in the corner of her eye. She was startled. Her mistress went to bed much earlier.
“Your hair is too long.” Sarai said to Hagar. She had never mentioned it in the negative before. “You have to cut it.”
Hagar wasn’t sure if Sarai was dreaming or talking with someone else, so she waited quietly in the dark.
“Hagar, do you hear what I am saying?” Sarai said again, her voice heavy with sleep. “We will cut your hair in the morning.”
Hagar’s hair was long and curly, beautiful and very dark. It reminded her of her mother and she had always considered it her own to tend. She curled a lock and figured Sarai was sleepwalking. She would forget by morning.
Morning came and Sarai came to Hagar with a sharp stone.
“I will cut it for you.” Sarai said, Hagar watched as the long curly locks hit the sand. That day, she walked around camp as if she had awoken in a place she had never been, suddenly dropped from somewhere else.
Sarai apologized a few days later.
“I had begun to bleed that night I spoke to you.” She told Hagar. “I couldn’t stand it, the thought that I was going to go another month without bearing a child. The blood mocked me, so I lashed out. I’m sorry about your hair. It will grow, I’m sure.” Sarai touched the rough ends that lay on Hagar’s shoulder.
Each month, however, was the same. It was as if the Sarai vacated her body each time she menstruated, each time she realized she wasn’t pregnant. Sometimes she would turn mean, other times she was simply sullen. Hagar began to track Sarai’s menstruation by the moon and disappear as much as she could whenever the fits began.
When Sarai proposed the plan that Hagar bear her child, Hagar couldn’t think of any other option. Years had gone by without any sign of Sarai’s fertility. She was old now, too old to bear children even for someone who had a fertile womb, but the fits of grief and anger continued.
Their hands in the water, washing in tandem, had signaled hope for Hagar. Maybe the child would settle Sarai. Maybe Sarai would be who she used to be. Hagar agreed to sleep with Abram. The only thing she remembers from that night is the look that he gave her when she entered his tent. It was of mutual agreement. They would sleep together for Sarai. They both loved her, they both felt responsible for her happiness.
Hagar became pregnant. Instead of the pregnancy making Sarai happy, Sarai just became more sullen, her fits lasting longer, as if the child confirmed that it was Sarai’s womb that was faulty all along.
Hagar so despaired in her pregnancy that she became bold. Nothing had worked to appease her mistress. Maybe haughtiness would. She started by subtly being disobedient, pretending she hadn’t heard what Sarai said, or wandering off and hiding instead of completing her tasks. She wore her belly like a medal and carried her head high, much higher than she had before.
It all came crashing down.
Hagar and Sarai were in the cooking tent preparing an evening meal. It had been a day of gathering roots and Hagar had been standing and bending through most of it. Hagar’s feet were throbbing, and the hunger was eating her insides.
“Hagar, bring me the roots.” Sarai said, stirring the pot that had just began to boil. They sat in a basket closer to Sarai than they were to Hagar. Hagar paused, letting the tension between them rise to the same point as the water.
“They are closer to you, mistress.” Hagar said putting just enough emphasis on the word mistress to sound sardonic, something she would have never done before she had gotten pregnant.
Hagar heard the water fly before she saw it, it sizzled and cracked like the fire itself was leaping from its place. She turned just as the last drop landed an inch from her toe. Sarai stood there, holding the empty pot at the angle in which she’d thrown its contents. Her eyes widened like she had been caught in the act. She dropped the pot and fled.
After dinner, Hagar was summoned behind the cooking tent for lashings. They were delivered by Abram’s head servant who was gentle with her, as much as he could be. He lashed the back of her hands, barely enough to leave a mark. “The mistress says that you are being disobedient and that you need a proper punishment.”
After that, Hagar ran. It had become too much. She didn’t know how to heal the relationship she had with Sarai. She didn’t know how she ended up where she was. The desert seemed the best option. Maybe Egypt.
Now she sat here with the only God who had ever spoken back to her.
“You will give birth to a son.” The I Am says. “He is not the child of promise, not the one that I will give to Abram. He will be a wild donkey of a man, against everyone that he meets, but he will be free, Hagar, and he will also have descendants that number the stars.” He looks in her eyes and she knows he is about to leave. He places his hand gently on her hair. “You have done well outside the walls of Egypt as your mother said you would. You are a faithful servant, and I am proud of you. Now, go back to your mistress.”
He stands, shaking the water from his legs and extending his hand down to her like earlier. This time he pulls her to standing. Her legs feel strong, her strength is restored. “You see me.” Hagar says, pulling her wet robe away from her knees with her free hand. “You see me when no one else sees me. Thank you.” She kisses his hand, the one still in her grasp, releases it and turns toward home.
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Sarai, in her old age, would eventually birth a son, Isaac, who was the rightful son of promise that God had been telling Abram and Sarai about. From their lineage, Jesus would be born, much much much (much) later.
Hagar, of course, is not forgotten, her son Ishmael, whom she had with Abram, does indeed go on to also be the father of a nation.
God, in all of his goodness, saw Hagar when no one else did, and (twice) met her in the desert to speak with her. He is truly the El Roi, the God who sees.
The ending, the last sentence gave me chills. Very meaningful.
This is a beautiful account of how pain can alter relationships and how expectations are often so distorted from reality. The author gradually shows us how Sarai's pain eventually becomes Hagar's pain. Sarai's expectations of God were unmet in her mind, her expectations of Hagar taking his place. So much can be gleaned from studying this story!