Unfortunately, Hagar is also among the first biblical women to experience “use, abuse, and rejection.” ….AS SHE IS  COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD IN CHIRSTAIN AND JEWISH TEXTS.

 Not only is Hagar marginalized by her status as a slave, she is further coerced into serving as a surrogate for the barren Sarah. But Hagar’s success only alienates her mistress: she flees from Sarah’s harsh treatment into the desert, where an angel of the Lord intervenes and commands Hagar: “Return to your mistress and submit to her” (16:9). A similar scenario develops after the birth of Isaac, many years later. Sarah, apparently fearing that Hagar and Ishmael will contrive to rob Isaac of his primogeniture, orders them banished. Spurred on by a word of divine intervention, a displeased Abraham complies (21:9-14). Hagar and Ishmael depart, woefully underprovisioned, and they escape death in the desert only when God intervenes. Hagar thus has the misfortune to be the vector of all sorts of malfeasance, neglect, and even inhumanity: Sarah envies her and despises her son, while Abraham stands waffling in the wings, eventually condemning his concubine to exile and, quite possibly, death.

But there is a more disturbing observation to be registered. It is bad enough that Hagar bears the brunt of Sarah’s wrath and Abraham’s cowardly indifference, but Hagar seems to have another enemy in these stories: God. It is God who rescues her, yes, but it is also God who orders her to return and submit to Sarah’s enmity and mistreatment; and it is God who sanctions the plan to send Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. The hostility of God towards an arguably innocent slave woman is what undergirds the terror and tragedy which have disturbed many readers today.

However, this is not how all Christian thinkers of the past thought.  Some saw that Ishmeal was the first person in the bible to be named by God, and Hajar was the first person in the bible to be visited by an angle.  One of the great Christians who defends Hajar is the father of Prodestant Christianity itself; Martin Luther.

Let us examine how he sees the relationship between Hajar and Abraham, and Hajar and God. 

Many of Luther’s comments on Hagar’s conception and on her subsequent contempt for Sarah are not at all new. He echoes the traditional observations about the weakness of women (both Sarah and Hagar), Hagar’s servile nature, and Hagar’s haughtiness and pride.  Somewhat more originally, Luther opines that Hagar’s flight represented her attempt to force Abraham to declare his affection for her and his expected firstborn-a sort of countercoup to revenge herself against Sarah. But the plot of Hagar’s story was ultimately directed by God, who brought Hagar to repentance. What Hagar had to learn was that her “affliction” (that is, her subordination to Sarah) was not a sign of God’s wrath or neglect, however much it felt like that, but rather something pleasing to God. Once Hagar learned to trust God, everything changed; indeed, she became an example for us. As Luther writes, “most of us are like Hagar,” not only in displaying pride towards our perceived inferiors but also insofar as we, too, have been led to faith and repentance. The confession of faith whereby Hagar “names” God is, therefore, also “the hymn of the whole church,” “a hymn for the instruction of every one of us,” and an act of “true worship” on the part of “saintly Hagar.”

Having registered Luther’s encomium for Hagar, we may make two further observations on Genesis 16.

 Summarizing the effect of Hagar’s angelic visitation, Luther wrote this sentence: “After this revelation, Hagar, who had been rebellious and impatient of the yoke, has become an entirely different person.” Luther’s affirmation of Hagar’s repentance here is neither unprecedented nor particularly surprising.  Luther sees Hagar’s transformation as real and compelling, so his statement here could fittingly be taken as a hallmark of his overall portrait of Hagar. For Calvin (Luther’s contemporary)  who was more impressed by the teachings of Paul, it is at best the highwater mark of his otherwise wary approach to a suspected hypocrite. Indeed, as we will have even more reason to believe in a moment, Calvin’s austere approach to Hagar and Ishmael may well constitute his reaction against what he may have perceived as Luther’s lapse from Paul’s teachings.

A second observation also underscores Luther’s fundamental sympathy for Hagar. Luther could not have foreseen how Calvin would use his words, but he assuredly saw how St. Paul might be used to denigrate Hagar after the fact. Luther’s response was unyielding:

“I certainly conclude that Hagar should be counted among the saintly women. The fact that Paul compares her to Sarah and calls her a maid who has no place in the home is in no wise a hindrance, for in Scripture even the saints frequently symbolize the ungodly…. Thus Hagar, justified and sanctified by the Word of God, symbolizes the ungodly without detriment to herself.”

Luther hereby initiates a rescue effort on behalf of Hagar and Ishmael for which few precedents can be found, and it is all the more marvelous that he rescues them from no less a canonical threat than the Apostle Paul himself.ss Never mind what Paul says, argues Luther: in her own person, Hagar belongs to God.

Luther’s account of Hagar’s exile in Genesis 21 also begins with some familiar moves: Hagar sinned through pride; Hagar incited Ishmael to covet the primogeniture; Ishmael’s mockery was no trivial matter; Abraham bore a misplaced loyalty to Ishmael; Ishmael deserved to be driven out. These are all traditional observations, though for Luther they are merely prolegomena to the point he began to make in chap. 16, namely, that what seems like tragedy and divine abandonment is in fact God’s way of teaching people to trust in God alone. This is Luther’s well-known doctrine of the Deus absconditus-the God whose presence is far nearer than we expect, albeit revealed only under a humble guise. Accordingly, one may expect Hagar and Ishmael to learn valuable lessons about faith and trust and humility through their exile, and so they do.

What one does not expect, however-at least, not in light of exegetical tradition-is that Luther’s sympathy for Hagar could possibly run as deep as it does. His comments take this unexpected turn when he comes to describe the actual eviction of Hagar at Gen 21:14. There Luther introduces a degree of pathos and poignancy which is simply astonishing, and he rings the changes on this theme for nearly twenty pages of the Weimar edition.

This is surely a sad story if you consider it carefully, although Moses relates it very briefly. After Abraham is sure about God’s will, he hastens to obey…. He simply sends away his very dear wife, who was the first to make him a father, along with his firstborn son, and gives them nothing but ein sack mit brott, und ein krug mit wasser…. But does it not seem to be cruelty for a mother who is burdened with a child to be sent away so wretchedly, and to an unfamiliar place at that-yes, into a vast and arid desert?

Luther does not shirk from describing just how barbarous Abraham appears here: “If someone wanted to rant against Abraham at this point, he could make him the murderer of his son and wife…. Who would believe this if Moses had not recorded it?”  But Abraham is actually no less anguished than Hagar here; within a few pages Luther has everyone in the narrative weeping, and the readers of the text as well.

“It is surely a piteous description, which I can hardly read with dry eyes, that the mother and her son bear their expulsion with such patience and go away into exile. Therefore, Father Abraham either stood there with tears in his eyes and followed them with his blessings and prayers as they went away, or he hid himself somewhere in a nook, where he wept in solitude over his own misfortune and that of the exiles.”

“Trial follows upon trial, and tears force out other tears.” Nonetheless, Abraham and Sarah are acting not according to their natural feelings but in obedience to the divine command in vv 12-13. And so Abraham and Sarah urged Hagar and Ishmael “to bear this expulsion patiently; for, as they said, it was God’s will expressed by a definite word that Ishmael should leave home and . . . wait for God’s blessing in another place.”

All this sadness, then, is not without purpose. Hagar and Ishmael were guilty not only of pride but also of presumption-the presumption that Ishmael’s being born first automatically gave him sole rights to what God promised Abraham. The purpose of Ishmael’s exile, Luther writes, “is to let him know that the kingdom of God is not owed to him by reason of a natural right but comes out of pure grace…. Ishmael and his mother must learn this lesson, since both wanted to proceed against Isaac on the strength of a right.” Over here Muslims would part ways from Luther, however, the overall point of Hajar’s piety remains.  Fortunately, Luther thinks, Hagar and Ishmael did learn this lesson, and, having done so, they were changed and rewarded. Indeed, as Luther’s commentary proceeds, it seems as though he could not find enough loose ends to tie up by way of recompense to Hagar, her husband, and her son. With respect to her son, Luther argues that “the expulsion does not mean that Ishmael should be utterly excluded from the kingdom of God.” Indeed, so well did the contrite Ishmael learn to forsake self-reliance that Luther calls him “a true son of the promise.” More astonishing still, he

“undoubtedly developed into a well-informed and learned preacher who, after he had been taught by his own example, preached that God is the God of those who have been humbled…. After Ishmael had become a husband, he [brought] … his wife and her relatives and parents to the knowledge of God. Among the uncircumcised heathen he established a church like Abraham’s church…. God caused him to become great. . . in the word and spiritual gifts; for, says Moses, God was with him.”

Finally, that Ishmael settled nearby, in Paran (21:21), further indicates to Luther “that Ishmael was reconciled with his father Abraham and his church, although his descendants, as usually happens, gradually deteriorated.”

Once again, like mother, like son. Here is how Luther describes the transformation of Hagar in Genesis 21:

“Because the Word of God is never proclaimed in vain, Hagar, too, is first awakened from death, as it were, by the angel’s voice. Then she is enlightened with . . . the Holy Spirit, and from a slave woman she also becomes a mother of the church, who later on instructed her descendants and warned them by her own example not to act proudly.”

But Luther is still not finished. He thinks that after Hagar’s chastisement she returned to live not merely near Abraham but with him, “for the opinion of the Jews that Keturah is Hagar pleases me.” Embracing this bit of rabbinic teachings  here means  that Luther thinks Hagar bore Abraham another six sons (cf. Gen 25:1-2) .

All the same, no degree of happiness ceded to Hagar by way of denouement can possibly arrest the attention of the modern reader nearly as much as Luther’s account of one other dimension of the trial endured (albeit in somewhat different ways) by both Abraham and Hagar. If it is true that the ending of this story is happier than one would expect, it is equally true for Luther that the trials which preceded the ending were harsher, and the stakes far higher. Luther’s depiction of the exile steps beyond the accounts of his predecessors and anticipates a particularly modern anxiety. That Hagar should have to forsake her pride and presumption is understandable, but that she should be driven away from Abraham also suggests for Luther a terror, a trial, and a temptation far more horrible. To leave Abraham was, for Hagar, to leave the church of her day, indeed, to leave the kingdom of God. What else could this mean but that God was abandoning her unto reprobation? In short, why should Hagar not believe that God hated her? Again, Muslims would disagree to leave any place is equal leaving God, however, this is what Luther thought.

Having raised this problem, Luther faces it head-on. Truly, it was God’s intention to kill Hagar, spiritually, that he might raise her up. But here Luther sees Satan at work, too; Satan typically stirs up lies and “very sad thoughts” in the afflicted, and Hagar wandered aimlessly in the desert, having fallen into a deep stupor. Consequently, to comfort and correct Hagar a divine remedy was required, namely, an angelic visitation. “And here,” writes Luther,

we are also warned about the purpose: it is not because God hates Ishmael and Hagar that he allows them to be cast out so pitifully. That phony explanation is the fabrication of the devil! God’s plan is that they should be humbled and should learn to trust in God’s grace alone, not in merits or some carnal prestige.

“God did not hate Hagar, Luther proclaims, but all those who have had their faith tested will understand perfectly why she might have thought he did.”

Finally Luther exclaims, perhaps defensively, “I am not inventing these things, but the very situation and Moses’ earlier narrative clearly suggest these circumstances.”

Hajar alone receives an allegorical interpretation by St. Paul, which then became licensed (approved) view of Hajar in Christianity.  If one wants to understand the issue properly one would have to resist the impulse to follow St. Paul as Martin Luther so every well did.

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