Abuse in the Bible: Sarah & Hagar

Trigger warning: this article discusses sexual abuse.

One of the Bible stories that shows a clear picture of abuse is the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Many of us are familiar with Abraham, as his story is told in every kids’ Bible and often comes up in Sunday Mass readings. Abraham is known as the father of faith, one of the Old Testament patriarchs.

He and his wife Sarah were called by God to leave Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and immigrate to Canaan (modern-day Israel). While they spent the rest of their lives moving about Canaan as nomads, they ventured several times into Egypt. This is likely where Hagar joined their household as a servant or maid to Sarah.

The story of Hagar begins in Genesis 16. God has promised He will give Abraham and Sarah many descendants, but Sarah hasn’t borne any children to Abraham and she’s now very old. Desperate for a baby, she tells her husband to sleep with her servant. Hagar becomes a surrogate mother to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael.

Call It What It Is

Let’s back up for a moment and focus on part of this story that often gets overlooked. What is happening here is sexual abuse. Hagar has absolutely no say in this matter. She cannot tell Abraham she doesn’t wish to have sex with him. She is simply property in the ancient world. The power imbalance between her and Abraham means that she cannot say no to him, which means this is rape. While Abraham actually commits the abuse, Sarah is guilty of suggesting or encouraging it.

None of the commentaries I read on Hagar in researching this article, or any of the homilies I’ve heard on Sarah and Hagar, mention either rape or sexual abuse. Instead, they focus on the fact that having a “substitute wife” was a common practice in the day, as a married woman who couldn’t have children would be shamed by her peers. As we see in our day, the “common practice” of the culture around us does not make something morally justifiable.

While I admit sexual abuse is a hard topic to tackle from a pulpit (with an audience of mixed ages sitting in the pews), the overall silence on this issue has not done modern Catholic women any favours. When sin is glossed over in our stories, we are more likely to gloss over it in our lives.

Hagar Cannot Respect Sarah

Genesis tells us Abraham “slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. But when she realized that she was pregnant, she no longer respected her mistress. Sarai said to Abram, ‘This harassment is your fault. I allowed you to embrace my servant, but when she realized she was pregnant, I lost her respect. Let the Lord decide who is right, you or me.’ (CEB)” The RSV says Hagar “looked with contempt on her mistress.”

The general interpretation I’ve heard about this passage is that Hagar loses respect for her mistress because she is able to get pregnant when her mistress is not. While it is true that a woman’s worth in the ancient world was often determined by her ability to bear children for her husband or master, I think there’s an overlooked reason that Hagar’s opinion of Sarah changes.

It is difficult to respect your abuser.

To use modern language, Sarah has “pimped out” Hagar to her husband. And while this may have been a common practice in the ancient world, it doesn’t make it acceptable. It doesn’t mean Hagar was okay with it. Deep down in her spirit, she knew this was wrong, just as I did when my husband sexually abused me. 

I told myself we were married, we were supposed to have sex, I was supposed to meet his needs in the bedroom, but that really didn’t make his treatment of me there (or anywhere else in our home) okay. My body knew it wasn’t okay, even when my brain tried to rationalize this. And it’s this deep disconnect between brain and body, this deep awareness (even if she couldn’t articulate it) of the wrongness of this situation, that causes Hagar to view Sarah differently.

Sarah Abuses Hagar

Sarah notices this and begins to abuse Hagar. I don’t mean to vilify Sarah here. Like Hagar, she is often portrayed negatively in commentaries and homilies on this story. Her lack of faith is highlighted in her laughter at the angel’s promise and in her attempt to have a son by Hagar. However, Sarah was also in a difficult situation. 

As Marina Hoffman explains, “In a culture where childbirth is necessary for survival, Sarah has to contend with the social pressure to bear children. Sarah must relive the ongoing pain of her infertility every day and come to terms with what she assumes to be an abnormality of her body. And then she faces the additional disappointment that her childlessness has left Abraham’s divine promises unfulfilled.”

We know Abraham has complained to God about this; perhaps he also complains to Sarah. Perhaps she overhears him talking to others about how a servant will be his heir because he doesn’t have a son. Or maybe, every month when her cycle comes, she simply deals with her own disappointment, her husband’s disappointment, and the sense that God still hasn’t fulfilled his promise to them.

Hoffman adds, “The unfulfilled divine promise, and all the expectation that it created, surely made Sarah’s journey to accept her infertility all the more difficult and painful, as it required Sarah to surrender the expectation and hope that she will participate directly in fulfilling the divine message given to Abraham. … Rather than returning to the hope of bearing a child herself or renewing her trust that God will give her a child through her own body, Sarah abandons those possibilities and finds a new way of coping. She transfers her hope to Hagar. This transference of hope, though, is complicated and fraught with difficulties. It is tremendously difficult to let go of the hope of someday and somehow, and I imagine that Sarah must have struggled as she contemplated the decision to have a surrogate.”

Jewish scholar Marg Mowczko says, “The primary role of women in Israelite society was to have children. It was a great disgrace for a woman to be childless. It was also important that men marry and procreate, but they were not usually blamed for childlessness, and procreation was not considered to be their primary role.”

None of this justifies Sarah’s actions towards Hagar, but perhaps we can understand that struggles and despair drive us to do desperate things. Things we wouldn’t otherwise consider. Things we may later regret and feel guilty for, as I strongly believe Sarah did. Perhaps she treated Hagar badly not just because she felt Hagar’s contempt for her. Perhaps she treated Hagar badly because of her own self-loathing. She’d done something that seemed like a good idea at the time and now she knows it wasn’t and she can’t do anything about it so she’s angry–with herself and her handmaid (because she likely can’t show anger at Abraham, the other guilty party in this mix).

Hagar Leaves Her Abuser

So Hagar runs away from the abuse. She ends up near a spring beside a road going through the desert. Here, the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar and asks her what she’s doing. When she says she’s running away, the angel tells her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”

Before we take this verse out of context and apply it as Biblical advice for every woman who runs away from her abuser, I’d like to ask: Is Hagar safe here?

She’s a young, pregnant, Egyptian slave woman on her own in Canaan. A spring beside a desert road is likely the equivalent of a roadside motel if not a town or market. There will be travelers from all over here, and people of every type. Is Hagar safe here, on her own? Or is she likely to meet a worse abuser and be treated even more badly than she was with Sarah?

As Elisa Johnston says, “I don’t like that when she is out in the wilderness the first time, God sends her back to her abusive mistress. But perhaps this saved her life and the life of her child.”

I think Hagar’s situation and the angel’s advice to her can be translated as a warning to plan an escape from abuse carefully. That was not the right time for Hagar to leave. As women trying to get out of abusive situations, we need to do so with the utmost caution to ensure we (and our children) are safe when we do so. We do not want to end up in a situation where our abuser escalates his abuse (as too many news stories show) or where we end up in a worse situation because we tried to leave without adequate preparation or care.

While I strongly believe that no woman should put up with an abusive situation, I also recognize that we are each on our own personal journey. Some of us may recognize our abuse quickly and get out on the first try; others may take longer to see the abuse, and may take three or seven tries to escape our abuser. There is no one right answer; each of us must discern that answer, just as Hagar does.

Finding Strength in Abuse

Catholic Exchange suggests “there could be one more reason why Hagar is asked to return. In encountering God through the angel she has experienced a kind of liberation that is internal and spiritual, such that external enslavement can no longer rob her of her interior peace. Having met God, she is now ready to endure the trial of material slavery.”

It is true that sometimes, we learn and grow while being abused. Sometimes, the abuse can push us to become stronger, to deepen our faith, to face our own past trauma, to fight for healing and justice, to stand up for ourselves, or to accomplish other things. I do not say this is the case for every woman, or that anyone should be encouraged to stay in abusive situations because it’s God’s will for them to learn these lessons.

I’ve often questioned why God allowed me to enter an abusive marriage, why I wasn’t able to get out the first or second times I tried to do so, why I am still being abused by my ex-husband. I don’t have any answers, but in the midst of the questions, I can look back at the woman I was when I did finally escape, and the first time I tried to escape, and when I got married, and at who I am now, and I can see God’s hand in my life, in my growth, in my faith. I still have regrets about those years and my choices. I still wish my life were different. But maybe, like Hagar, there was some reason why I needed to go back and submit for a time.

While the angel tells Hagar to return to her mistress, he gives her a promise: “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” He also assures her that “the Lord has heard of your misery.” As a result, Hagar becomes the first person in the Bible to give God a name: “You are the God who sees me.”

Abuse can make a person feel unseen and unheard. Hagar’s thoughts, wishes, and opinions didn’t matter to her master and mistress. She was simply a useful body among numerous other people. And yet “despite how inconsequential Hagar was in her society as an enslaved and outcast minority woman, God faithfully found her in her distress. Both times, God saw her, and God was there, even when she had nearly given up” (Johnston).

The Story Continues

For the next fourteen years, we hear nothing of Hagar. Maybe she and Sarah fall into a status quo as they raise Ishmael. Maybe, knowing that she is seen by God, Hagar finds an inner peace as she raises her son in this dysfunctional family. Genesis tells us that when God gives instructions for circumcision to Abraham, Ishmael is circumcised at age 13. Soon after, God again promises a son to Abraham and Sarah. And then the next year, Isaac is born to Sarah.

The conflict resumes around Isaac’s second or third birthday. Genesis 21 tells us, “Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac” (RSV). The CEB translates this as, “Sarah saw Hagar’s son laughing.”

This is my favourite part of this story. I know a lot of awesome teenage guys with younger siblings who are very involved in those siblings’ lives. It’s easy to picture sixteen-year-old Ishmael giving two-year-old Isaac piggy-back rides or wrestling with him or playing some ancient Mesopotamian game with him. They’re joking and playing together as only brothers can.

However, Sarah doesn’t seem to see it this way, and neither did older Bible translators. The KJV and NASB translated “laughing” as “mocking.” Whether Ishmael was having fun with Isaac or having fun at Isaac’s expense is irrelevant, because Sarah goes to Abraham to say, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”

Abraham is understandably sad about this. Again, we can wonder at the family dynamic here, especially knowing that it repeats itself a couple generations later with Jacob and his four wives and twelve sons. Maybe Sarah has continued mistreating Hagar. Maybe Hagar has learned to stay out of her mistress’ way. Maybe they’ve found a way to get along in raising Ishmael, and now Isaac’s arrival has brought up old jealousies between them. Our own experiences will affect how we read between the lines in this story.

God Intervenes–But Not as We Expect

God steps in again here to tell Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the lad and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendants be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring” (Genesis 21:12 RSV).

This time, God doesn’t tell Hagar to stay and submit to Sarah. Many commentaries on this passage blame Hagar for “running away from her problems,” saying that running away never solves our problems and that doing so demonstrates her lack of trust in God. However, in this case, running away does solve her problem. She is going this time with her son at her side–a strong young man who will be able to take care of her, as a first-born son would be expected to do in that culture–and she does leave the abuse behind and start a new life with him.

God also doesn’t change Sarah. Many of us in abusive relationships have prayed over and over and over again that God would change our spouses. We hope for a miracle like St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Or we are reminded that St. Monica’s tears and prayers brought her husband to become a Christian on his deathbed. However, real life more often looks like Hagar’s story. God doesn’t impose what we want on anyone else. He doesn’t even impose what he wants on us.

And so Sarah is free to abuse Hagar, and Hagar is free to leave.

God’s promise to bless both Ishmael and Isaac because they are both sons of Abraham is also worth noting. In many ways, Ishmael is a “mistake,” the son who shouldn’t have happened. He represents Abraham’s and Sarah’s lack of trust in God’s promise. However, God blesses both boys. He doesn’t see the mistake. I often wondered if I was being abused because God was angry at me, because I’d made a mistake somewhere, done something he didn’t like. As Ishmael shows us, God even blesses our mistakes.

Hagar Leaves the Abuse Again

So Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away with some bread and water. They end up wandering in the wilderness, suffering from dehydration. Ishmael apparently succumbs first (maybe, as a young man, he tried to take care of his mother and insisted she have more water) and lays down under a tree. Hagar goes some distance away, as she doesn’t want to see him die, and Ishmael weeps.

And then “God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not; for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.’” (Genesis 21:17-18 RSV). The God Who Sees is also the God Who Hears.

We might ask why God waited until they were nearly dead to say, “Hey, I’m here to help.” One thing I had to learn when I left my abusive relationship was how to ask for help. Abuse had taught me that it wasn’t safe to ask for help, that nobody was there to help me, that I had to do it all on my own. When I left my abusive situation, I soon realized I couldn’t really do it all on my own and I had to ask for help. Whether I needed food, childcare, moving help, or a handyman, people were there for me–when I asked for it. 

Hagar and Ishamel were servants, used to helping others and taking care of themselves. While God sees and hears, he waits for us to come to him. Maybe Hagar and Ishmael kept stumbling forward, thinking they could do this, get to a spring, find their way, escape on their own. And when they couldn’t, when they cried out, then God was waiting for them.

Final Thoughts on Hagar’s Story

Hagar’s story is one of a slave being sexually and verbally abused by her master and mistress and then escaping that abuse. It takes her two tries (and the intervention of God) to leave her abusers. Most commentaries on this story focus on the character’s faith (or lack of faith), rather than the distressing family dynamics.

Unfortunately, as we can see in the Bible stories that follow, the conflict between Abraham, Sarah and Hagar creates ongoing trauma for their children and grandchildren. There is enmity between the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac. Further, Abraham’s grandson repeats his mistake of having multiple wives, and more abuse and conflict occurs as a result. Many of us in abusive relationships can also trace our generational trauma back several generations.

The Church needs to begin taking a more nuanced look at stories like Hagar’s. In today’s era of sexual abuse scandals, #metoo, and statistics that 1 in 4 women are being abused by their partners, it’s not okay to gloss over the way that Hagar was treated by the patriarch of our faith. We need to call out the sin in this story and yet also see that God saw and heard Hagar and intervened in her life to take care of her and her son.

Put Yourself in the Story

I hope I have helped you to take a new look at Hagar and to see her story with a fresh perspective. I’d like to invite you to dig a bit deeper into her story. Maybe you’ve found a few things that you have in common with Hagar, or maybe you’ve felt like she was a woman who lived a long time ago and has nothing in common with you and your life today.

Ask yourself:

• Can I freely say no to my husband when he asks for intimacy? (If you aren’t completely free to say no, then you also aren’t completely free to say yes.)
• Do I feel comfortable laughing and playing with my children, or do I feel judged by family members for doing so?
• Do I feel seen and accepted for who I am in my relationships?
• Do I feel heard by those around me, especially when I ask for help?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, thank God for your good relationships.

If you answered “no” to these questions, I invite you to further explore the stories and resources on this site.

In prayer:

• Take some time to meditate on Genesis 16:13. Do you feel seen and heard by God? Why or why not? What name would you give to God?
• Plan a visit to a church or adoration chapel. When you begin, pray, “My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here; that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence; I beg your pardon of my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.” (“Prayer Before Meditation” by St. Josemaria Escriva)