And the Angel of Jehovah said to her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.
Hagar has run into the desert to escape Sarai's harsh treatment, and the Angel of the LORD finds her there. Why would God send a mistreated woman straight back to the mistress she fled?
The one who gives this command is not simply a heavenly messenger. Writers point to the wording of the chapter itself as proof of who is present.
This expression, "the Angel of the LORD" [Jehovah], occurs over 100 times in the Old Testament. It means messenger or agent. Sometimes it describes an angelic messenger, and sometimes it refers to the Lord Himself. The context makes it clear which is meant. In Genesis 16:7, for instance, the context clearly proves the Angel of the Lord is the Lord Himself.
And of everyone tangled up in this chapter, she is the only one God addresses.
We are not dealing here with the broad principles of moral good and evil, or with God's ordering of the world. We are dealing with man's ways inside the calling of God — man's, or woman's, workings and plannings, and the result left in God's hand. Hagar was the only person here who was in any way right, apart from despising her mistress, for which she suffered. And it is to her that an Angel, a messenger from Jehovah, speaks. He speaks to no one else in the chapter.
The instruction has two halves, and the second is the harder one.
There was only one course open to her, as the angel tells her: "Return to your mistress and submit to her." She was not only to return. She was to stop despising her mistress, and instead submit to her. A wrong attitude had made things hard for her. Changing that attitude into one of submission would of course make Sarai's attitude toward her more favourable.
Hagar was not the author of this mess. She had been handed to Abram, and she was pregnant and alone. God's answer meets both sides of that.
At this point the Angel of the Lord stepped in. By the customs of that time Hagar clearly had no choice in the matter, and God is a God of pity and of judgment. Even if she had been rude to her mistress, she was not to be left in the wilderness in her need. Only, on returning she was to be subject and submit to her mistress. Looking at her personally, apart from what she pictures, she was as much sinned against as sinning. God stepped in, and His intervention held the scales of justice even.
Sarai had tried to solve her own bad idea by force, and Hagar tried to solve hers by running. Neither works. The results of a wrong step have to run their course.
"The bondwoman" cannot be got rid of by harsh treatment. When we make mistakes and find ourselves having to face the results, we cannot undo those results by acting with a high hand. We often try this method, but we are sure to make matters worse by it. If we have done wrong, we should humble ourselves and confess the wrong. And we should wait on God for deliverance… So Hagar had to return, and give birth to her son.
The same writer draws the lesson wider: "Grace forgives the sin and restores the soul, but what is sown must be reaped."
God addresses her by her position — Sarai's maid — and that title governs everything He then says to her. Her place in the house also pictures something larger.
In the Lord's judgment, Hagar's despising of her mistress is very much out of place. When He meets her in her wanderings, He knows her only as Sarah's maid. He sends her back with this command: "Return to your mistress and submit to her." She may receive promises about the son who is to be born to her. But she is Sarah's maid still, and submission is her only duty. The law, too, has its hour. It may fill the house of God for a time, just as Hagar and her son now fill the house of Abraham for fourteen years. But to the heirs of the promise, even the age of the law was only a servant.
after-note: DELETE
- Found. The Angel of the LORD is the LORD Himself. Of everyone in this chapter, He speaks only to the runaway maid.
- Faced. Flight settled nothing. What was sown had to be reaped. Neither Sarai's harsh hand nor Hagar's distance could cancel the cost of one wrong step.
- Sent back. God returns her to the exact place she fled — not because the treatment was right, but because the way forward for her ran through it.
- Submitted. The command has two parts: return, and stop despising. Changing her attitude was the one thing in her power, and the thing most likely to change Sarai's.
- Held even. She was as much sinned against as sinning. God does not excuse her contempt, and He does not abandon her in the desert — pity and justice arrive in the same sentence.
And the Angel of Jehovah said to her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.
Hagar has run into the desert, pregnant and with nowhere to go, and the first words spoken to her there are a promise, not a rebuke. Two questions follow: who is this "angel of the LORD," and why does the chapter's greatest promise fall on a runaway servant?
The title "angel of the LORD" does not always point to the same person. Writers say the context decides it.
This expression, THE ANGEL OF THE LORD [Jehovah] occurs over 100 times in the Old Testament, meaning messenger or agent. Sometimes it describes an angelic messenger, and sometimes it refers to the Lord Himself. The context makes it clear which one is meant. The context of Genesis 16:7, for instance, clearly proves The Angel of the Lord is the Lord Himself. None but a Divine Person could speak such words.
The same writer notes how long the world waited for a moment like this.
Two thousand years of human history had rolled by before we have any record of angelic ministry. The first time, the angel of the Lord met Hagar — in truth the Lord Himself. Her child Ishmael was to be the father of a multitude that should not be numbered. This lifts the scene out of what is purely personal.
Genesis 16 is full of people making plans. God addresses only one of them, and it is not Abram or Sarai.
We are not dealing here with the large principles of moral good and evil, or with God's ordering of the world. We are dealing with man's ways inside the calling of God — man's, or woman's, workings and plans, and the result left in God's hand. The only person who was in any way right was Hagar, apart from despising her mistress, for which she suffered. To her an Angel — a messenger from Jehovah — speaks; not to anyone else in the chapter.
Others had used Hagar, and she had answered her mistress with contempt. One writer weighs both sides of her case.
At this point the Angel of the Lord intervened. By the customs of that time, Hagar had no say in the matter, and God is a God of pity and of judgment. Looking at her as a person, apart from what she pictures, she was as much sinned against as sinning. By stepping in, God held the scales of justice even.
A great promise does not release Hagar from the duty she ran from. The promise and the command travel together.
In the Lord's judgment, Hagar's contempt for her mistress is badly out of place. When He meets her in her wanderings, He knows her only as Sarah's maid. He sends her back with this instruction: "return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand." She may receive promises about the son who was to be born to her. But she is Sarah's maid still, and submission is her only duty.
The promise was not poetry. Commentators trace it in visible history, and note that it began at once.
Flesh has its privileges quickly. Already was the beginning of what Jehovah's angel prepared Hagar to expect, "I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude." Jehovah listened to her affliction, and could not forget Abraham. Ishmael was to be a wild-donkey of a man. His hand would be against every man, and every man's hand against him, and he would live facing all his brothers (Gen. 16:10-12). As we may easily see, this too has come true exactly, from that time until now.
A countless family is not the same as the promised line. Writers link this to how God later sorts Abraham's descendants.
From Romans 9:6-9, it would seem that Ishmael sets forth the unbelieving mass of Israel. There we read, "For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but 'Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.'" The unbelieving mass of the nation are children of Abraham according to the flesh. Only the believing remnant are the true seed according to promise. Still, even the children according to the flesh would be great on the earth.
- Who speaks. No created messenger could say "I will multiply." Commentators hold that here the angel of the LORD is the Lord Himself — the first such meeting on record.
- Who is heard. The promise falls on the one person God addresses in the chapter: a used, resentful runaway who was, as one writer puts it, as much sinned against as sinning.
- What she is given. A future she could never have arranged: descendants beyond counting, promised to a woman who owned nothing.
- How far it reached. The words came true in plain history. No one has ever counted the family of Ishmael, and the character named in verse 12 has held ever since.
- What it does not give. Multiplied is not the same as heir. God promised the child of the flesh greatness on earth. But the line of promise ran through Isaac, and He sent Hagar back a servant still.
And the Angel of Jehovah said to her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, because Jehovah hath hearkened to thy affliction.
Hagar is a runaway slave, pregnant and alone in the desert, when a voice stops her and names her unborn son. The name carries a message — God had listened to her suffering — and it raises a question: who was speaking to her?
The one who meets Hagar carries the title "the angel of the LORD." Yet the promises He makes are God's own to make:
In these verses that speak of the angel of the Lord (vv. 7, 9, 10), the angel is clearly the Lord Himself. It is He who multiplies Abram's descendants. The term "angel" means a messenger, and Malachi 3:1 speaks of "the Lord whom you seek" as "the messenger of the covenant."
Hagar's mistress had treated her harshly. God's answer neither excuses her nor abandons her:
At this point the Angel of the Lord stepped in. By the customs of that time, Hagar plainly had no choice in the matter. And God is a God of pity, and of judgment. Even if she had been rude to her mistress, she should not be left in the wilderness in her need. Only, on returning, she was to be subject and submit to her mistress. Looking at her as a person, apart from what she stands for, she had sinned, but she had been sinned against just as much. God stepped in and held the scales of justice even.
This sets the true God apart from the idols people trust:
Can idols hear, or can they also look after people? No, the true God of heaven alone could hear and see when Hagar had run away. He is the same today. He hears you and sees you in the way you go.
The name points back to what God has just done. Hagar answers it by giving God a name of her own:
And not only this: God foretold the future of the coming son. He gave the boy his name and marked out his character. His name means "God hears." Hagar spoke of God as "You are the God who sees me," or "You are the God who reveals Himself" (New Trans.). The well where the angel appeared to her became known as "The well of the Living who was seen." So even poor Hagar gained blessing from this painful episode.
Besides Jesus, only a handful of people in Scripture were named before they were born, and Ishmael is one of them:
Five other people in the Bible were named before their birth: Isaac, Genesis 17:19; Ishmael, Genesis 16:11; Josiah, 1 Kings 13:2; Cyrus, Isaiah 44:28, and John the Baptist.
Years later Hagar is in the wilderness again, this time with a dying son. The name given here becomes the ground of her rescue:
The mother gave in to despair. She laid her son down to die at a distance from her. But "God heard the boy's voice," and His angel tells Hagar to hold him by the hand. Had not Jehovah called his name Ishmael, because He had heard her affliction? ... She may have forgotten God's promise that a countless multitude would spring from her, and that Ishmael would live in the presence of all his brothers. But God remembered him, and declares that He will make him a great nation.
Being heard is not the same as being chosen. Ishmael receives a promise and a future, but not the covenant line:
Before he was born, Hagar ran away because her mistress treated her harshly. The angel of the Lord appeared to her and told her to return to her mistress. Her descendants should be countless, and she was to call her son's name Ishmael, which means 'El shall hear.' ... Abraham prayed that Ishmael might live before God. But Ishmael pictures the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. So although God answered that He would bless Ishmael, and multiply him greatly ... yet the covenant should be established with Isaac.
- Heard. The name Ishmael records what God did before the boy was born. He listened to the affliction of a slave woman nobody else heard.
- Seen. The One who heard is the Lord Himself, under the title "the angel of the LORD." Hagar answers by naming Him the God who sees her.
- Sent back. Being heard did not lift Hagar out of her situation. God sent her back to submit to her mistress, and held the scales of justice even.
- Proved. Years later Hagar forgot the promise. In the desert God heard her son's cry — the name held even when her faith did not.
- Not the heir. God heard Ishmael and made him a great nation. Yet the covenant went to Isaac. To be heard by God is real mercy, but it is not the same as being the child of promise.
And he will be a wild-ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell before the face of all his brethren.
Hagar has run from Sarai into the desert. There the angel of the LORD promises her a son — and then describes the man that son will become, in words that sound like a warning. What does it mean to call a man a wild donkey? And how has that word held up over the centuries since?
The same message gives the boy a comforting name and tells Hagar what he will become.
Hagar was not to be the mother of God's promised child to Abram. Yet the Lord cares about her and about her expected child. He tells her to name the child "Ishmael," which means "God will hear" (v. 11). But the boy's character would match the fact that he was born from a union of opposite parents — the father a free man, the mother a slave. He would be contentious, his hand against all other men, and of course they would therefore be against him. This has been one of the characteristics of the Arabs from that time... Abram learned by experience, and all this history teaches us that a wrong union leads to trouble and sorrow.
The phrase is not a general insult. The Hebrew names a specific animal, and the New Testament later explains why that animal fits this child.
He was to be a "wild man." The word really means a "wild donkey." In the light of Galatians 4, this is significant, since "the son of the slave was born according to the flesh." Romans 8:7 tells us that the mind of the flesh "is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot." Man after the flesh has lawlessness stamped upon him, and the wild donkey is a fitting picture of him.
Scripture describes this animal elsewhere. The description matches how Ishmael's descendants lived.
No one ever drew a sharper picture than the one Scripture gives of Ishmael's descendants in the words quoted here. "Who has let the wild donkey go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift donkey, to whom I have given the arid plain for his home and the salt land for his dwelling place? He scorns the tumult of the city; he hears not the shouts of the driver. He ranges the mountains as his pasture, and he searches after every green thing" (Job 39:5-8). Such exactly are the Bedouins. No sober Christian supposes a perpetual miracle as to Ishmael, but that what God said of that race is as sure as what He said of Israel.
The verse did not just come true once. It stayed true while other nations changed beyond recognition.
The meaning of Genesis 16:12 is as plain as it is striking, and as applicable today as for thousands of years past. This is not true of any other notable people. Compare the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Israelites. Every one of them has gone through change after change. How little, if at all, has the Bedouin changed?
The last line of the verse settles something. Nobody would be able to remove this troublesome presence.
Man in the flesh is not only lawless in regard to God but antagonistic in regard to his fellows. The one characteristic springs out of the other. There could be no peace where Ishmael was. Worse still, there was to be no shutting him out and no getting rid of him. The decree was, "he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen." Hagar was a picture of the covenant of the law, given at Sinai. Now that did not abolish the man after the flesh. It only laid restraint upon him.
Ishmael had his father's love and the outward mark of God's covenant. Neither one changed him.
Abraham's heart yearned over Ishmael. His cry was, "Oh that Ishmael might live before you!" More than that, Ishmael was circumcised, so he outwardly carried the mark of the Covenant (Gen. 17:18, 25). Yet none of it worked... He remained wild, stubborn and quarrelsome — a fitting picture of the flesh.
The verse describes a temper, not only a tribe. One writer turns it into a warning for anyone quick to quarrel.
Do not be fault-finding or quick to criticize. Do not quarrel with unscriptural expressions from others, but be extremely accurate in your own statements and quotations from Scripture. Do not be an Ishmaelite (Gen. 16:12) among the people of God, for "the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness" (2 Tim. 2:24-25).
- Cause. Ishmael was born to a free man and a slave. The writers trace his character back to that "wrong union," which "leads to trouble and sorrow."
- Character. "Wild man" means "wild donkey of a man." He is untamed, deaf to the driver's shout, a picture of the flesh with "lawlessness stamped upon him."
- Conflict. He is lawless toward God and hostile toward people. "The one characteristic springs out of the other," so "there could be no peace where Ishmael was."
- Continuance. Abraham's prayer did not change him, and neither did circumcision. The law "did not abolish the man after the flesh. It only laid restraint upon him."
- Confirmation. The verse is still "as applicable today as for thousands of years past." Egypt, Assyria and Israel all changed. And the Bedouin? Hardly changed at all.
And she called the name of Jehovah who spoke to her, Thou art the God who reveals himself, for she said, Also here have I seen after he has revealed himself.
Hagar is a pregnant runaway slave in the desert, mistreated and heading nowhere, when God finds her and speaks. She answers by giving Him a name, which raises two questions: who was the "angel of the LORD" she met, and how much did she come to know of Him?
The title "angel of the LORD" does not always mean a created being.
This expression, THE ANGEL OF THE LORD [Jehovah] occurs over 100 times in the Old Testament, meaning messenger or agent. Sometimes it describes an angelic messenger, and sometimes it refers to the Lord Himself. The context makes clear which one is meant. Genesis 16:7 is one example: the context there proves that The Angel of the Lord is the Lord Himself.
So the verse says she named "the LORD who spoke to her." She was naming God Himself.
Translators have rendered her words in more than one way. One writer sets the options side by side, with the meanings of the son's name and of the well:
The angel also foretold the future of the coming son, giving his name and describing his character. His name means, "God hears." Hagar spoke of God as "You God see me," or "You are the God who reveals Himself" (New Trans.). The well where the angel appeared to her became known as "The well of the Living who was seen." So even poor Hagar gained blessing from this painful episode.
Those renderings come from older translations; the ESV has "You are a God of seeing." Hagar had not seen a form or a face. One writer weighs what her words actually claim:
Hagar was so impressed by this intervention of God that she called Him "the God who sees." "For," she adds, "Have I also here seen Him who sees me?" She had not seen God in person. But she recognized Him in the words He had spoken to her, and she was clearly subdued. We cannot be certain whether she was born again. Yet no one is ever the same after meeting the Lord of glory.
Hagar is no hero here. Her trouble was partly her own doing, and she was not looking for God when He came.
In her own story Hagar is an example or picture — hardly a type — of how divine grace deals with a helpless and despairing sinner. She ends up in the worst misery and danger, partly by her own fault and partly through injustice and misfortune. Yet a God of compassion remembers her and sees her. She is dying of thirst, though a well of springing water stands at her side (Gen. 21:19). She does not seem to remember God or seek Him. But He sends His angel with the gracious question, "What ails you, Hagar? Arise."
Commentators differ on how much Hagar grasped. One writer weighs her words and finds them limited:
She was the slave woman, and knew nothing of the freedom of grace. She might look after God, but all she reached was this: "You God see me." The simple awareness that God sees us never goes further than this: that He is a Judge who notices our ways in order to deal with them, or, at most, a guardian who protects us in the hour of difficulty and danger. But love, liberty, rest, joy in God are never known through the bare truth that God sees us.
Another finds more in the name of the well:
How blessed to learn that God heard Hagar's cry! For her refreshment He provided the well Beer-lahai-roi, "Well of the living who was seen." God not only sees me. He has revealed Himself in grace so that I may see Him.
Readers take this verse two ways. First, as a restraint, when nobody else would know:
He can slip off to questionable places of amusement, and nobody be any the wiser. Nobody the wiser? "YOU GOD SEE ME" (Gen. 16:13) was a great deterrent and safeguard to the writer in his youthful days. God sees, God knows, God notes.
And as comfort, because the God who sees is not indifferent:
Can idols hear, or can they also look after men? No, the true God of heaven alone could hear and see when Hagar had run away. He is the same today. He hears you and sees you in the way you go. And not only that, but He loves you too.
- Sought — Hagar was not looking for God; He found her, "a helpless and despairing sinner" who "does not seem to remember God nor seek Him."
- Spoke — the "angel of the LORD" who met her was the Lord Himself, not a created messenger.
- Seen — she knew Him by His words, not by sight. Her son's name means "God hears"; the name she gave God says that He sees.
- Stored — the meeting left a landmark: the well "of the Living who was seen," where God revealed Himself in grace.
- Settled — God's seeing restrains us when no one else is watching. It also comforts us, because the God who sees hears and loves.