She began to fear for the unborn child she carried. This was her child, not Sarai’s or Abram’s. If she died, this child would die too. She was the only one who could keep them both alive, and suddenly, inexplicably, she wanted the child to live. Abram’s God, Elohim, had promised Abram a child. Perhaps he would help her for the child’s sake.
No sooner had she thought of Abram’s God than she was reminded of the taunting words she had spoken that had so angered Sarai. The Elohim was perhaps to be reckoned with in all of this. What if Abram’s God saw her as cruel and spiteful?
For the first time she admitted reluctantly that she had been pleased to see the torment in Sarai’s eyes. She had known that her smug delight would crush Sarai worse than a millstone dropped on her. Now she felt small twinges of remorse for what she had done. It had not been necessary for her to gloat so over getting pregnant. For a moment she saw herself as the evil one who had deliberately spoken hurting words, and she wished for a chance to make things right.
Gradually the storm began to abate. Hagar could see her surroundings, first faintly and then more distinctly. She still had to keep her mantle pressed against her face in order to breathe, but the heat was lifting and the sand no longer stung her skin. She realized that the night had passed, and it must be midday. There was a dull orange look about things. She stirred from her cramped position and tried to shake the sand from her clothes and hair.
Just as she began to move out from the niche in the rock, she was smitten once more with a terrible wrenching thirst. She tipped her water skin up to her mouth, but nothing came. She ran her tongue around the rim and found it dry. She had lived through the worst of the storm, but she could not live long without water. She knew nothing of the wells in this desert, and there was no oasis or clump of trees in sight. She saw nothing but rolling sand, thornbushes, and here and there a small acacia.
Abram would no doubt call upon his God for help, but what God would help a woman? Hathor had proved useless, and Abram’s God was probably not a God for women or Egyptians. She remembered how surprised she’d been when she first heard that Abram’s God actually spoke to him. Abram talked to Him as though he were a friend. What harm would it do to at least call out to Elohim and see if He would help? She thought of the child and instinctively put her hands on her stomach. For the child she must try.
The wind had died down, and in its place was heat rising from the sand and pushing up from the south in hot gusts that made the sand rise periodically in small puffs. Hagar spread her mantle on the sand as she had seen Abram do and knelt upon it with her face touching the earth. She had seen men bow before Pharaoh in the same way. “Elohim,” Abram had said, “was the Creator of all things.” He created the sand, and He created the water she so desperately needed.
Her prayer was simple: “Oh Lord God, named Elohim, creator of all things and friend to Abram, I carry Abram’s child and both of us will die without water. Do You see me? Can You give me water in this desert?”
That was all. She sat back and looked around. There was nothing. The same treeless expanse. The same dry heat. She slowly stood to her feet and shook the sand from her clothes. On impulse she climbed the rock that had sheltered her and looked around. At first she saw nothing, then her eyes settled on a round stone a short distance away. It had been covered by sand until the wind had blown it clean. Hagar had seen such stones on the way up from Egypt. They usually covered wells, but most wells were owned by tribes who would not welcome a stranger making use of them.
Hagar didn’t hesitate to climb down and investigate. She feared that if it was indeed a well, the rock would be too heavy to move. She knelt down and pushed, then tugged and pulled until the large stone moved just enough for her to grasp the rope that hung from a projection inside the well. With trembling hands she fastened her water skin to the rope and then tried to move the rock far enough to lower the skin into the well.
It was impossible. The rock would not move. She sat back on her heels. There was a faint stirring in the thornbush that grew beside the well, and at the same time she had the feeling that someone was watching her. She stood up and looked around. If the owner appeared, he could refuse to let her have even one drop of the precious water. There was no one.
She knelt down again and in feverish desperation pushed at the rock. To her surprise, it moved quite easily, almost as though someone were helping her. With trembling hands she fastened the water skin to the rope and lowered it into the well. She almost laughed when she felt it hit the water. She quickly pulled it up and stood drinking the water in great gulps, ignoring what ran down her face and spilled over her clothes.
She was about to lower the skin again when there was a movement behind her and a voice said, “Hagar!”
Hagar whirled around to see who had spoken. Who knew her here in this wilderness? Who could speak her name?
There, half hidden in shadow, was a figure leaning against the rock. She strained to get a closer look, to be sure someone was really there. In the desert with the blowing sand, people often imagined they saw unusual things. She backed away and listened in astonishment. “Hagar,” she heard Him say, “I know you are Sarai’s maid.”
She strained to see just who had spoken. Who knew so much about her? As she backed away she heard Him ask, “Where have you come from?”
“I’m running away,” she said with a defiant toss of her head. “I’m running away from my mistress.” She turned and started walking, and to her surprise, the person didn’t try to stop her.
He asked, “Where are you going?”
For a moment there was silence as she looked at the vast expanse of wilderness before her. She saw no path and no sign of a living thing, only blowing sand and silence. She hesitated. The anger that had made her flight possible had abated. She realized that she was hopelessly lost in a desert with wild beasts, blistering heat, and no other water.
She turned and saw that the stranger was still there, still hidden in the shadows. She wanted to ask him for help, but was too proud. He seemed to read her thoughts. “Hagar,” he said, “you have no choice but to return and submit to your mistress.”
At those words Hagar’s face clouded. Her eyes flashed with frustration and anger. “Never … I can never submit to Sarai. It’s impossible. You don’t know how I’ve suffered.” She paused, but sensing that He was not convinced, continued with even more anger, “She hates me for no reason. I can’t go back. I won’t submit.”
For a moment there was silence. When the stranger spoke again, it was with great tenderness and compassion. “Hagar,” he said, “the Lord has heard all your troubles. He knows all that has happened to you.”
Hagar was astonished. This stranger was no ordinary person. For a moment she wondered whether the heat or the desert sand had conjured up such a vision. As she leaned forward, peering into the shadows, the figure stepped out, and she was aware of His eyes, only His eyes. They were most astonishing. She had never seen eyes that radiated such strength and infinite compassion.
She had barely regained some composure when He spoke again, this time with authority that made her wonder whether He might not be the God of Abram. “Hagar,” he said, “you will bear a son and shall call him Ishmael because the Lord has heard you.”
“A son, I am to have a son,” she whispered as wonder and joy rose within her.
He held up his hand, signaling that there was more. “I,” He said, “will make of your descendants a great nation.”
“Ishmael,” she whispered. “I am to call his name Ishmael, ‘God hears.’”
As though to guard against too great an expectation, he continued to speak rather sadly and yet matter-of-factly. “He will be a wild, impulsive man,” he said. “He will be against everyone and everyone will be against him.”
Hagar started to speak, to object and question, but again the hand was raised. He hadn’t finished. “And,” he said, “he will live near the rest of his kin.” The message came to an end, and the stranger looke
d long and tenderly at Hagar then turned and slowly walked away.
Hagar stood, watching him go. Could she have imagined it all in a delirium caused by the heat?
Her eyes followed him as he went toward the east. She noticed that his sandals cast up small puffs of sand. “No mirage or vision would have done something like that,” she reasoned.
She watched as he walked steadily on, then suddenly he vanished, leaving only the wide expanse of empty sand and sky. “I have seen Abram’s God and lived,” she said in amazement.
The great rock stood solid and strong just as before; the sand had already begun to cover the well stone as she knelt and ran her hands around the rim. “I shall name this well, the Well of the Living One Who Sees Me,” she said.
As she stood up, a great wind began to blow. It puffed the sand in small peaks and spirals and made a noise like a rushing, mighty wind. There was something strong and joyful about it, though it blew her clothes taut against her and made walking almost impossible.
Hagar hardly noticed the strength of the wind for the joy and delight that rose up within her. “He knew me,” she murmured over and over again. “He saw me and saw all my troubles.”
She had only a vague idea of where she was or how to find her way back. Perhaps when the stars came out, they would help her. She would have to go north, since the desert and wilderness had always been to the south of where they were camped.
While finding her way back was difficult, it was not as difficult as the order to submit. The word held layers and layers of meaning. No Egyptian was ever known to submit to anyone. She, a princess, would find it harder than most. Submission went against her very nature.
As she hurried along she made plans. “If indeed it is a boy that I carry, I will name him Ishmael. I will tell Abram that we must name the boy Ishmael. When he asks why, I will tell him about the heavenly being and how He said Elohim had heard me, and so I must name the child ‘God heard me.’”
Hours later Hagar found Abram with some of his most trusted men out looking for her. He was obviously worried and distraught, and he said Sarai was back at camp, weeping with grief. Only when Hagar told him of the astounding encounter with the heavenly being did his eyes dance with delight. “So,” he said, “Elohim isn’t just concerned with the affairs of men, and He does hear a woman’s prayer, even an Egyptian woman’s prayer.”
When the child was born on Sarai’s lap as was the custom, Hagar asked quickly, “My lady, is it a boy?”
“It’s a boy,” Sarai said, “and we will name him Asa.”
Hagar was about to object, but she remembered that the stranger had told her to go home and submit to Sarai, and so she said nothing. However, when the child was carried in to Abram, he said, “This child shall be called Ishmael because God heard and answered, and we must remember forever that God hears even a woman and sees her trouble.”
Hagar loved the child as she had never loved anything before in her life. She had not known the meaning of love. Her most precious moments were spent with the small greedy little face pressed into her breast, depending on her for his very life. She delighted in each thing the child did but hid her delight so Sarai would not grow envious.
When the child wrapped his small fingers around one of her fingers or studied her face with wide, serious eyes and then finally smiled a half-crooked smile, she wanted to run and tell everyone. She wanted to brag outrageously when she saw how clever he was, but she wisely held her peace.
Sarai delighted in the child. She seemed to have totally claimed him as her own and took pride in his handsome little face, his first words calling her Ummi, and his affectionate nature.
Yet several things clouded Sarai’s joy. She resented the fact that Abram’s God had spoken to Hagar when He had never spoken to her. It did not help that the girl had gotten with child so soon. Even all that she could have accepted but to have Abram say the child’s name was to be Ishmael, the name Hagar had given him, was impossible.
She wanted to find fault with Hagar, but the girl was totally different. She was always pleasant, never rebellious as she had sometimes been in the past, and she seemed to have left her old arrogant nature back in the desert.
Sarai could find no fault with her. Even at times when she noticed Abram glance at her with approval, Hagar never seemed to notice. It was as though Hagar carried some wonderful secret that gave her peace and a quiet joy.
Sarai could not imagine what the secret could be, but Abram knew. He knew, and he pondered the ways of Elohim. He couldn’t understand all of it. He really hadn’t thought Elohim would notice and take so much trouble for a woman, and an Egyptian woman at that. “Well,” he finally decided, “it’s like I told Hagar, we only know about Elohim by noticing what He does. He always surprises us just when we think we have Him figured out,” he said with a laugh. “Ishmael, we’ll never forget this lesson.”
With all his joy in the child, Abram could not bear to see Sarai with Ishmael. He could not endure seeing the subtle change that seemed to have taken possession of her. Having no child of her own was like a thorn that would keep her wound fresh and bleeding.
The child seemed to notice the difference too. Ishmael was serious and obedient with Sarai but laughing and playful with Hagar. He didn’t relax with Sarai but was always the good child, the proper child, when he was with her. Sarai bragged on his ability to please. Sometimes Abram saw her watching him with a sad, thoughtful look, and at such times she would call the child to her and demand, “Who is your dear mother?”
The child would look at her with his serious large eyes and say, “You are my mother.”
“Who do you love most?” she would ask, studying him with profound seriousness.
He would always give her the answer she wanted. “You, Ummi, it is you I love most.”
She would gather him into her arms and hold him tight with tears of relief coming to her eyes.
For thirteen years life moved on at the same leisurely pace with no difference from one day to the next. In that time not much thought was given to Elohim or his promises. Each person seemed to have settled for some form of compromise. Abram was pleased with the development of his son Ishmael, Sarai no longer grieved openly over her barrenness, and Hagar was content seeing that each day Ishmael was being groomed to inherit all that his father owned.
Then quite suddenly everything began to change. It started one cool spring night when Abram, unable to sleep, walked out under the stars and sat down on a projection of rock where he could see both the starry heavens and the campfires of his shepherds on the distant hillsides. The air was fragrant with new budding and blossoming things and the pungent odor of damp earth working its magic on roots and seeds.
As Abram sat and meditated, he began to study the stars. They were brilliant. They hung so low, they seemed like a giant tent cloth covering his world. His eyes wandered over them, and he realized once again how impossible it was to try to count them. How difficult it was to think his descendants would ever be that numerous.
As he pondered these things he slowly became aware of a familiar presence. He looked around and saw no one. He felt a rush of wind and then dead stillness. He held his breath and waited. Every nerve was tense. His fingers opened and closed, his feet shifted slightly on the smooth rock, but there was only the unusual silence. Then in the midst of the quiet he heard a voice and the sound of the voice was like thunder.
“Abram,” the voice said, “you have known Me as Elohim, but now you will know Me as El Shaddai, the almighty God.”
Abram felt such a power and presence of majesty that he fell prostrate on the ground with his face in his hands.
The voice went on to reaffirm the agreement and covenant that would make Abram the father of many nations. “You will no longer be Abram,” the voice said, “but Abraham, exalted father.” The name was spoken with such force that it seemed to echo and reecho all around him.
Abram was about to speak and ask what his part of the contract was to be
when the voice continued: “Abraham, you must obey Me. As a permanent sign of this covenant between us, you and all your posterity must be circumcised. Each male must have his foreskin removed on the eighth day after birth. This will be proof that you and those who come after you accept the terms of this covenant.”
Then the El Shaddai added, “And as to Sarai, your wife, she will no longer be Sarai, meaning ‘contention,’ but Sarah, meaning ‘princess.’ And I will bless her and give you a son by her. She will be the mother of nations and kings.”
Abraham got to his knees but still could not uncover his eyes. He was awed by the solemnity of the moment but also embarrassed and appalled to find himself secretly laughing at the ridiculousness of the promise. Sarah, a mother at her age? Surely I have heard wrong, he thought. Then he said, “Oh Lord God Elohim, I do believe in Your blessing to Ishmael.”
There was silence, and when the voice spoke again, it was with great might and power, “I am El Shaddai, the Almighty. As I have said, Sarah will bear you a son and you are to name him Isaac, ‘laughter.’ It is with him and his descendants I will sign my covenant forever.”
Abraham was immediately concerned for the son he had come to love so deeply. “What of Ishmael?” he asked.
El Shaddai continued, “As for Ishmael I will bless him also, just as you have asked Me to do. Twelve princes will be among his posterity, but My covenant is with Isaac, who will be born to you and Sarah next year at this time.”
With that the presence was gone as quickly as it had come, and Abraham was alone. He got slowly to his feet and looked around. The same stars shone out of the dark blue curtain of the sky, and the same fragrances and soft breeze filled the air around him. He brushed off the dust from his robe and stood thinking aloud.
“Laughter, so he is to be called laughter.” Then he marveled, “He already has a name. It seems the almighty God can even make an old man and his wife fruitful.” He laughed again, but this time it was with joy.
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