The God Who Sees My Tears

Living Like Royalty (November 2024)

“Hagar gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: ‘You are El Roi (the God who sees me),” for she said, 'I have seen the One who sees me.”

(Gen. 16:13 NIV)

“Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness.” (Real question though: Why does classic biblical art always have the female characters’ clothes hanging off their shoulders?)

It never ceases to amaze me how complex the biblical narrative is.

As my favourite Bible teacher Beth Moore wrote, “For anyone who loves the process of discovery, the Bible is a goldmine.”¹

Case in point: Hagar occupies relatively little space in the biblical canon. Most Bible readers know her as Sarah’s Egyptian slave and the mother of Abraham’s son, Ishmael.

But Hagar is more than a slave.

More than an outcast.

More than a blot in Abraham and Sarah’s narrative.

She is the first person in Genesis to whom the angel of the Lord appears.²

She is the only person in the Bible to give God a name.

And on a spiritual level, her story serves as a prototype of every believer’s encounter with Christ.

Where Does Hagar Belong in Christian Theology?

Hagar appears in only three chapters of the Bible:

Genesis 16, where she becomes pregnant with Abraham’s son Ishmael and runs away to escape Sarah’s abuse;

Genesis 21, where Sarah, offended by Ishmael’s mockery of Isaac, demands that Abraham get rid of Hagar and Ishmael—and thus, the two are banished into the wilderness,

and

Galatians 4, where Paul contrasts the characters of Hagar and Sarah in his discourse on freedom in Christ.

What Does Hagar Symbolize?

In Galatians 4, Paul describes Hagar as “the slave woman” (v.22), highlighting her bondage and her correspondence to the covenant of the flesh (circumcision).

Paul’s purpose in this epistle is to remind the Galatians that circumcision cannot save them—only the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can do that. With this line of reasoning, Paul urges his readers to identify with Sarah and her son Isaac, who “was born as the result of a divine promise” (v. 23).

This presentation of Hagar makes sense in light of Paul’s thesis: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”³

However, if we relied exclusively on Galatians 4 to shape our understanding of Hagar, we would miss the significance of her encounters with God in Genesis 16 and 21.

The Bible is like a decadent chocolate cake with layers upon layers of rich, tantalizing sustenance. To read only the surface-level narrative is to miss the depth and breadth of spiritual truths that this unparalleled book possesses.

In her commentary on Hagar, theologian Andrea D. Saner affirms what Paul teaches in Galatians: “Hagar symbolizes living according to the flesh, insofar as she births Ishmael through natural means”⁴ (as compared to Sarah’s miraculous conception of Isaac). However, Saner argues that a closer look at Hagar’s narrative reveals that “she also symbolizes living according to the Spirit.”⁵

How is this possible?

Well, Well, Well . . .

After being cast out by Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 21, Hagar and Ishmael wander through the Desert of Beersheba until, bereft of water and hope, Hagar leaves Ishmael under a bush and moves a stone’s throw away, resigning herself and her son to death.

In that moment of despair, “God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying.’ . . . Then God opened Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well of water.”⁶

This is where the story becomes layered, like that chocolate cake I alluded to earlier.

In a literal sense, that well of water was God’s divine provision for Hagar and Ishmael’s physical needs. But on a spiritual level, the well also represents so much more.

Drawing upon the commentaries of early church fathers such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, Saner suggests that, when understood through a spiritual lens, this “well of living water” represents none other than Jesus Christ.⁷

This is certainly not the only time in Scripture we see wells serving a symbolic role in the biblical narrative, especially in relation to God’s divine covenant to Abraham.⁸

In his commentary on Genesis 21, Origen draws a parallel between Hagar and the Samaritan woman in John 4.⁹ Like Hagar, the Samaritan woman had been despised and rejected by the men who should have provided for her, and her soul thirsted for something that no water could satisfy.

Knowing this, Jesus initiated a conversation with her by asking her for a drink. Naturally, the woman was taken aback because Jewish men did not speak to women in public, especially not Samaritan women.

When the woman articulated her surprise, Jesus simply answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”¹⁰

He promised her, “Whoever drinks of the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”¹¹

Jesus was not offering this woman a cold drink on a hot day. He was offering her the incomparable hope of a new life.

Christ: Our Well in the Wilderness

With this vignette in mind, let’s circle back to Hagar in Genesis 21.

“Hagar’s legacy should be understood in relation to Christ,” Saner argues, “insofar as she represents a faithful response to God by the Spirit.”¹²

I believe all of us can see a reflection of ourselves in Hagar.

Before we encounter Christ, we are slaves to sin, “gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.”¹³

It’s not until we drink from the well of living water (Jesus Christ) that we are resurrected from a zombie-like existence of sin and suffering to the true, abundant life marked by a daily dependence on God.

Once we encounter Christ, we can celebrate Paul’s declaration in Galatians 4:7: “You are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”

The God Who Sees My Tears

There is so much more to Hagar’s story that we could unpack, but I’m guessing most of you don’t have time to read a 5,000-word essay this morning, so let me wrap this up with a personal commentary.

I didn’t choose to study Hagar this month out of a purely intellectual curiosity.

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