Dear Sarai,
This letter is going to focus on just a short piece of
your life which I find in Genesis 15 and 16. I want to talk to you about what
happened with Hagar with regard to her getting pregnant. You will notice I use
your old name and that is because that is how you are known in these parts of
our scripture. We haven’t got to your name change yet.
I have to be
honest whilst I can understand the desperation with which you wanted and needed
a child, to protect yourself if, as was often the case in your society, your
husband died before you. You needed an heir to protect yourself and provide but
I struggle to understand how you could force your slave to be a surrogate for
you. Did you have no comprehension that Hagar was a person too? She was a woman
just like you, except for the fact she had no rights or freedoms as you had.
You were in a position of power and seemed to have abused that power for your
own benefit.
I wonder, in some warped way, if you felt you were giving
her a privilege. I can’t get my head around it, but then I look from a 21st
century place. In my society slavery is abhorred by most of us and has been illegal
for some time. It still exists in some
forms and we campaign against it.
How did you feel towards God who had made your husband a
promise he did not seem to be keeping? Did you resent this God who had taken
you and your husband on this huge journey and seemed to be promising so much
but at the same time seemed to be playing a cruel joke on you by denying you
your child? Sometimes I feel like God has a warped sense of humour.
I wonder what Hagar was like. I am guessing that she must
have been good looking with a range of excellent qualities for you to choose
her to bear a child for your husband.
What was the look on her face when you gave her to your
husband? Did you try and reassure her regarding what you were about to make her
go through? Did you in some way groom her? I ask these questions because I
cannot get my head around this despite trying to do so on many occasions.
Then you found out Hagar was pregnant and she showed you
how she felt. She had contempt for you. She was having his child, the child you
thought you couldn’t have. Did you regret what you had done then, giving her to
your husband? It seems like the plan you had hatched had not allowed for Hagar
being somebody with her own emotions who might display her feelings towards you
Abram seems to have realised what a mess it was and seems
to want to keep out of the situation. I wish he had intervened as it appears
you were abusive towards this pregnant woman. What did you do? It seems that
this was pre-meditated abuse in some ways and that makes it even harder. I
assume that when it says you death harshly with her (verse 6) it means you were
violent. This again I struggle with. It may have been the normal way of dealing
with slaves but it was not right. Hagar was a person and a pregnant woman at
that.
I am glad that the Lord found her on the way to Shur, but
I struggle with her being sent back into such an abusive situation. I do not
believe it is God’s will to send people into situations where they suffer harm
and abuse – what was it like when she came back? Did somebody step in to
protect her or was it that she came back with the submissive attitude that she
had been told to have?
One of the reasons I struggle with this so much is
because it appears to be saying the onus is on the person being abused to put
up with their situation. Yet this is intolerable and wrong.
When she came back did Hagar explain she had seen God and
remained alive? Did that create fear amongst you that this slave girl had had
this experience of encountering the Lord, your God. Was that why things seem to
settle down? Or was it that Abram did intervene because he realised this was
his child and he needed to take some responsibility?
How did you feel initially, when Ishmael was born? I guess
it must have been hard for you at that point.
You can tell that I struggle with you as a person, I
disapprove of so much you did. Yet at the same time you kind of give me hope
because you were so human and God still used you.
Oh I know a lot of it was cultural but that is still
doesn’t make what you did right. I feel somewhat torn in writing this too
because you are a woman, one of the few well known women of the bible. Yet, you
were a bully and a slave owner and I don’t think that we should forget that
part of your story. We may be able to move on from it looking at your other
qualities too, but this part should not be lost or excused and so I am glad it
is in the bible and they did not remove it.
It causes me again to wrestle with the text but I sort of
came up with a way to read this and deal with it a while ago. I read your story
as one where I have to accept what you have done whilst not condoning it and
move on to look at the wider picture, accepting that as with all of us you were
a mixture of good and evil.
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