Her story, told honestly
Hagar
Hagar is the Egyptian servant of Sarah, mistreated and cast out, yet met twice in the wilderness by God. She gives God a name no one else in Scripture gives Him.
“And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?”Genesis 16:13
Her story
Her story. Hagar was Sarah's handmaid, given to Abraham so that Sarah might obtain children by her. When Hagar conceived, she looked on her mistress with contempt, and Sarah dealt so harshly with her that she fled into the wilderness (Genesis 16:6). There, alone and pregnant by a spring of water, the angel of the LORD found her and asked, "Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?" He told her to return and submit, and promised that her son would become a multitude. Hagar answered by naming the LORD who spoke to her: "Thou God seest me" (Genesis 16:13). She bore Ishmael. Years later, after Isaac was born, Sarah demanded that Hagar and her son be cast out, and Abraham, grieved, sent them away with bread and water into the wilderness of Beersheba (Genesis 21). When the water was gone, Hagar laid the boy under a shrub and sat apart, saying, "Let me not see the death of the child," and lifted up her voice and wept. But God heard the boy, opened her eyes to a well of water, and promised again to make of Ishmael a great nation.
What her life shows
What her life shows. Hagar's story shows that God sees the afflicted, the used, and the cast out. She was a foreign servant with no power, mistreated by the very family of promise, and yet the God of Abraham did not overlook her. He met her not once but twice in the desert, both times when she was at the end of herself. She is the only person in the Bible to name God, and she names Him El Roi, the God who sees. Her life honestly exposes the sin done to her; the household of faith did not treat her well, and Scripture does not pretend otherwise. Yet it also shows a God whose compassion reaches beyond the covenant line to a grieving mother and her thirsty child. "God heard the voice of the lad" (Genesis 21:17). For every person who has felt invisible, unwanted, or wronged by those who should have loved them, Hagar's story testifies that heaven is not blind and heaven is not deaf.
Where it points to Christ
Where it points to Christ. Hagar's God who sees is the same God who in Christ looks upon the lowly and the outcast, drawing near to those the powerful pass by. Jesus went out of His way to the Samaritan, the leper, the Gentile, the woman at the well, showing that the God who found Hagar in the wilderness still seeks the afflicted. Her cry answered by a well of water anticipates the One who offers living water to the thirsty, that they might never thirst again (John 4:14). Paul does use Hagar in an allegory of the two covenants (Galatians 4:22-31), yet even there the deeper note of the Genesis account stands: grace to the undeserving and mercy to the outsider. The gospel is good news precisely because God sees those whom the world refuses to see, and He sent His Son to seek and to save them.
Questions people ask
What does "Thou God seest me" mean?
After the angel met her in the wilderness, Hagar named the LORD El Roi, saying "Thou God seest me" (Genesis 16:13). It confesses that God had truly seen her affliction when no one else did, and it remains one of Scripture's most tender revelations of God's character.
Was Hagar treated unjustly?
Yes, and Scripture does not hide it. Sarah dealt harshly with her (Genesis 16:6) and later had her cast out. The Bible records this wrong plainly, and it shows God caring for Hagar and Ishmael anyway, hearing the boy's cry and providing water (Genesis 21:17-19).
Did God abandon Hagar and Ishmael?
No. God met Hagar twice, promised to multiply Ishmael into a great nation, and was with the boy as he grew (Genesis 21:20). Even outside the covenant line traced through Isaac, God's compassion reached them.