The Abraham Story Part 12: God Hears the Cry
Notes
Transcript
God Hears the Cry
God Hears the Cry
7 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 He said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”
She replied, “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai.”
9 The angel of the Lord said to her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her authority.” 10 The angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your offspring, and they will be too many to count.”
11 The angel of the Lord said to her, “You have conceived and will have a son. You will name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your cry of affliction. 12 This man will be like a wild donkey. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him; he will settle near all his relatives.”
13 So she named the Lord who spoke to her: “You are El-roi,” for she said, “In this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?” 14 That is why the well is called Beer-lahai-roi. It is between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar gave birth to Abram’s son, and Abram named his son (whom Hagar bore) Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
But just back to this conversation we were just having about the melody, we've packed all of the failure narratives in Genesis 1 through 9 into one short sequence here, which leads me to think that this conflict is gonna come to some crisis and that God's gonna get involved. And so, lo and behold, the next scene is about this oppressed immigrant being led out to the desert.
And she's crying and weeping and wondering if anybody hears me. And her cry is heard. Think Cain and Abel. The cry, God hears the cry of the innocent blood. And so God is going to meet the oppressed one.
And in opposite of the flood, what he's going to do is provide water and a promise of seed in a place where there was no water and where there was no seed. And so this becomes our, not our flood moment, but it's the de-creation of Hagar and also her re-creation of the promise of a family and life out the other side of this tragedy.
Because this whole scene in the wilderness represents a de-creation and re-creation of this poor woman.
God meets her and, out of this death and very painful situation, he's gonna give a promise of new life. And then on the flip side, the next chapter, which is 17, is also gonna involve a de-creation and re-creation of Avram and Sarai.
The transformation is gonna be so profound, they're gonna receive new names. And so these two scenes, actually, they're next to each other for a reason.
All the main characters that just hurt each other in the previous story are gonna go through their own transformations right here.
"And the messenger of Yahweh found her." All of our English translations say "the angel of Yahweh." That's fine. What's interesting is that the English word "angel" is spelling, in English letters, the Greek word that was used to translate the Hebrew word. In other words, when Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek saw this Hebrew word for "messenger," they translated it with "angelos," which means messenger. It can be human or spiritual, in this case a spiritual being, but you lose the concept of messenger, which is the, this is a title for these beings and their function. So it's a messenger of Yahweh. "The messenger of Yahweh found her by a spring of water," which are usually in gardens, but in this case, "in the wilderness." And you know that spring, it's "on the way to Shur," which you learned in Genesis 10 is basically halfway to Egypt.
She's running home.
"And he said, 'Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where are you coming from?
Where are you going?' And she said, 'From before the face of Sarai, my mistress, I am fleeing.'
And the messenger of Yahweh said to her, 'Return to your mistress and oppress yourself,'" or it could be translated, "allow yourself to be oppressed under her hand."
"And the messenger of Yahweh said to her, 'Multiplying, I will multiply your seed.'" It's terrible English, it's wonderful Hebrew. In English, when you want to emphasize the intensity or meaning of a verb, you put just two of them next to each other. So our translations mostly say, "I will certainly multiply," which is a good interpretation. "'I will certainly multiply your seed so that it cannot be counted because of its multiplication.'
And the messenger of Yahweh said to her," notice the three speech introductions. It's like he never stops talking. So that's a structuring device. "And the messenger of Yahweh said to her, 'Look, you're pregnant and will give birth to a son. And you will call his name Yishmael,'" which means ’El yishma‘, will listen or will hear.
"Because Yahweh has shama‘-ed." Call him Shama‘ Yishmael, because Yahweh has shama‘-ed of your oppression. "
'As for him, your son, he will be a donkey of a human. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him, and against the face of all his brothers. He will reside.'
And so she called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, 'You are El Roi.'" Roi means one who sees me. (Beautiful Expression of God)
"She said this because she said, 'Have I also seen here the back of the one who sees me?' Therefore, she called the well, Beer Lakhai Roi," which is Hebrew for Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.
And, oh, look, "it's between Kadesh and Bered." Again, go read Genesis 10, and you'll know that it's halfway to Egypt.
"And Hagar gave birth to a son for Avram, and Avram called the name of his son, the one whom Hagar birthed, Yishmael. And Avram was a son of 86 years when Hagar birthed Yishmael for Avram."
You can read this story and you get some basic ideas very, pretty easily. God meets Hagar in her pain, in her exile, self-imposed exile.
God's meeting her in the person of the messenger in the desert. When you go to the desert, there's no water. And so the idea of God meeting, because of the violence done to her, think Genesis 3, 4, and 6, you have this exile of Hagar into the wilderness.
And God meets her with water, listening and hearing with a promise of blessing.
"Multiplying, I will multiply.
Your seed won't even be able to be counted." I feel like I have heard that before. I heard it in the last chapter.
In the last chapter, God's promise to Avram was, "I will multiply your seed like, numerous like the stars." So what wasn't specified in that chapter was, well, what if you produce a lot of seed? Will all of them be multiplied? Is it just the chosen line is multiplied? But that wasn't really specified. It didn't need to be specified. What we're gonna find out is that Yishmael won't be the chosen line to produce the snake-crushing seed of the woman, but he's Avram's seed.
And so he's in on the blessing.
We're watching Avram begin to become the father of many nations, which doesn't mean all the nations are the line that will produce the snake-crushing seed of the woman, but all of them will experience the blessing because they're his seed.
Yahweh Hears the Cry
Yahweh Hears the Cry
Notice that God meets Hagar in the wilderness by a spring, and they have this conversation, and God comes looking.
"Hagar, where are you going?" Does that ring any bells? Remember when God came to Adam and Eve? "Where are you? Where are you?" When God came to Cain after killing his brother. "Where's your brother?" So, Where are you going?" This is dialogue. It's like God comes in these moments after something terrible has happened, and he comes just so gently and inviting. It's just an interesting portrait.
The story of Yahweh hearing the cry of the oppressed and intervening to deliver and judge violent evil is an important template at work in Genesis 16. The hyperlinks to Genesis 4 and 6 portray Hagar among the righteous sufferers whose outcry reaches up to God.
At the spring (ןיע) , Yahweh hears of the oppression (ינע) of Hagar, and sends his messenger to deliver the righteous ( Gen. 16:7, 11).
10 Then he said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!
What have you done? The voice of the shed-blood of your brother is crying out (קעצ) to me from the ground
13 Then God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them; therefore I am going to destroy them along with the earth.
An end of all flesh has come (אב … ץק) up before me
20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is immense, and their sin is extremely serious. 21 I will go down to see if what they have done justifies the cry that has come up to me. If not, I will find out.”
The outcry (הקעז) against Sodom and Gomorrah is great ... the outcry (הקעצ) has come up (האב) before me.
1 The two angels entered Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in Sodom’s gateway. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them. He bowed with his face to the ground
And in Genesis 19:1, Yahweh sends his messengers to deliver the righteous.
This theme of the outcry of the oppressed rising up to God is at work in this story as well. Avraham and Sarai are portrayed as “doing violence” and “oppression” to their Egyptian slave. In each case of this design pattern, Yahweh enacts some kind of judgment against human evil.
And then you get this threefold speech. It's rather troubling. On one level, it's go allow yourself to keep being oppressed. And know that in the midst of your oppression, I'm going to provide blessing for you.
And that blessing will take the form of Yishmael. And ultimately, he will separate from his brothers.
we replayed the sins of Genesis 3, 4, and 6. And now we're replaying, as it were, the consequences of, or the aftermath of Genesis 3, 4, and 6. God comes looking, asking questions. It was a prediction of both blessing but separation of the family.
And then the story concludes with her calling the name of Yahweh.
God meeting people in the wilderness, and them saying, "I've seen the back of the one who sees me?"
Who else sees God. Moses. “Show me your glory." And God's like, "You'll die. But you can see my back because that's pretty cool too."
I personally am still wrestling with things in this passage. Things I won’t get into. but you can feel like there's something really important going on.
So she names the well. Notice the well is brought up at the beginning and then right here near the end. And it's the well of life.
God provides life in this moment of tragedy and in a place of desolation and death.
And she gives birth to a son.
If you remember, it was a number of sessions ago, from Genesis 1 and 2, there's two modes that God uses to create. He can create by controlling the waters. And he can also de-create by providing too much water.
But then God can also create by providing water where there was no water and creating plants and seed and life where there was no life. And then de-creation would be withdrawing that and then providing it.
And so it's as if Avram and Sarah's violence and evil has killed her, killed the relationship. It's brought about death and tragedy. And so we're watching Yahweh re-create Hagar here in the wilderness through this blessing.
It's a very creative use of the melody here, and it's really beautiful.
One thing I don’t understand yet if I ever do is why did YAHWEH say to Hagar go back to oppression. And that oppression is gonna culminate in chapter 21, when she finally is free to leave. In a since I know that is my modern morality reading back into the passage. But I don’t understand it.
I think it's okay to let stuff in the Bible bother you.
I don't think we're being honest, actually, if we don't.
There are some things I do know
1. God Sees and Hears Hagar
1. God Sees and Hears Hagar
Before commanding her to return, the Angel of the Lord speaks kindly to her. He calls her by name (something significant in itself — it's rare for someone in her position to be named), and He listens to her pain. Hagar becomes the first person in Scripture to name God, calling Him El Roi, meaning "the God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13). She’s also the first person in the Bible to receive an annunciation — a promise of a child — much like Mary in the New Testament.
This shows us that God deeply cares for Hagar. He isn’t dismissing her pain — He’s meeting her in it, affirming her worth and giving her a promise about her son, Ishmael (which means "God hears").
2. A Bigger Story Is Unfolding
2. A Bigger Story Is Unfolding
God's command to return isn't a blanket endorsement of abuse or oppression — it’s part of a larger narrative. God promises to make Ishmael a great nation (Genesis 16:10), and that promise requires her to go back for a time. Hagar's return isn't the end of her story — it's part of the formation of two peoples (Israel and Ishmael's descendants), and God's hand is on both.
Later in Genesis 21, after Isaac is born, Hagar and Ishmael are sent away again — this time by Sarah. But again, God provides for them, reaffirms His promise, and protects them in the wilderness.
3. Application and Careful Reading
3. Application and Careful Reading
This passage doesn’t suggest that all suffering should be endured or that abuse should be tolerated — and it’s vital to say that clearly, especially when dealing with real-world situations. God's encounter with Hagar is unique, specific, and part of His unfolding redemption plan.
But what it does show is that God sees the unseen, hears the unheard, and works even in the darkest places. He meets people on the margins and weaves their stories into His promises. Hagar, a slave and foreigner, becomes a profound example of how God shows up in the wilderness.
What we're watching is now within the family of Avram, and Sarai, the same thing that happened in the family of Adam and Eve and of Noah, and it's this division.
It's the sin of misdirected desire, bad building plans, and just all, this thing starts to crack apart. And so what we're gonna watch God do is, you know, do, give the blessing that he can, but now with a very compromised people and situation. It's sort of like triage. God's on, in triage mode, trying to insert blessing.
But he's not gonna undo what these people did. They're his partners, and he's gonna let their choices create the consequences that they do because God's got a thing about letting humans rule the world together. And if we make a mess of it, he lets us. And so he won't undo, but what he will do is meet people where they're at and plan for what evil has been done to transform it into blessing. And I think that's what this scene is about here.
Future Egyptian Enslavement
Future Egyptian Enslavement
This is the first time the Genesis 2 melody of the water in the dry land as a new creation beat, this is the first time that happens. Oh, okay. That's good. So you have the oppressed Egyptian who flees their oppressors into the wilderness, and God meets the oppressed one in the wilderness, providing surprise water. So this is all gonna be inverted in the book of Exodus, where the Egyptians are the oppressors. And all these springs in the wilderness, right, in Exodus and Numbers, they're all actually inversions of this little scene right here, which is pretty cool.
This story is remarkable because it follows the first mention of the future Egyptian enslavement of Israel in Genesis. The wordplay linkages are significant.
13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions.
13 Know for certain that your seed will be immigrants (Heb. ger / רג ) in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved to them, and they will oppress (Heb. ‘anah / הנע ) them four hundred years. 14 But also that I myself will judge the nation whom to which they are slaves, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.
Genesis 16:1,6
1 Abram’s wife, Sarai, had not borne any children for him, but she owned an Egyptian slave named Hagar.
1 Now, Sarai ... had a slave-girl ... named Hagar (Heb. ha-gar / רגה = “The Immigrant”)
6 Abram replied to Sarai, “Here, your slave is in your power; do whatever you want with her.” Then Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away from her.
And Sarai oppressed (Heb. ‘anah / הנע ) her, and she fled.
11 So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh.
And [the Egyptians] set over [the Israelites] captains of slave-labor, in order to oppress (הנע) them.
Long before the Egyptians deceived the Israelites and oppressed them, Avraham deceived Pharaoh and Sarai oppressed an Egyptian. The fact that this story precedes the exodus story means that the Egyptian slavery of Avraham’s descendants becomes a tragically ironic reversal: Egypt does to Israel what Israel first did to Egypt.
There is some connection here to the laws about the treatment of immigrants in the covenant code, and the relationship to the Cain story (see Exod. 22:21-23).
21 “You must not exploit a resident alien or oppress him, since you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt.
22 “You must not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you do mistreat them, they will no doubt cry to me, and I will certainly hear their cry.
21 You shall not wrong an immigrant (רג) or oppress him, for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not oppress (הנע) any widow or orphan. 23 If you intensely oppress (הנעת הנע) him, and if he does cry out (קעצ) to me, I will surely hear his outcry (הקעצ) ; 24 and my anger will be hot (יפא הרח) , and I will kill you (גרה) with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless
Here are more links to the divided brothers pattern.
Genesis 16:12 "He will be a donkey of a man (םדא ארפ) " which recalls the “divided” (דרפ) motif of Noah’s sons from Genesis 10:5, 32.
Genesis 16:12b “He will dwell against the face of all his brothers” is recalled in Genesis 25:18, when Yishmael (Ishmael) settles in the east.
There is an important foundation being laid here for the “righteous non-elect” of the covenant family who dwells in the east. Just as many of the non-elect peoples in Genesis 10 will later turn up as righteous gentiles or wicked gentiles, the same is true here with Yishmael. He and Hagar are the recipients of divine blessing ( Gen. 16:10 inverts Gen. 3:16 and restates Gen. 15:5, but now applied to Yishmael!). And while future conflict between Yishmael’s descendants and Avraham’s other future sons is anticipated, the oracle isn’t entirely negative. Yishmael is included in the blessing of Avraham nonetheless.
Genesis 15-16 Replays Genesis 2-11 and 12-14
Genesis 15-16 Replays Genesis 2-11 and 12-14
The story has portrayed both Avram and Sarai as humans who repeat their folly. Now, as the sequence of Genesis 15-16 replays the key elements of Genesis 12-13, both Avram and Sarai replay the folly of humanity from Genesis 1-11. And so, for the second time, we expect there to be some kind of divine judgment that confronts the sin of foolish, violent humans and stems the tide of their destructive choices. This is precisely the theme of Genesis 17.
Ishmael in Islamic Tradition
Ishmael in Islamic Tradition
Ishmael is the son of Abram (Abraham) and Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian servant (Genesis 16). God makes a promise to Hagar that Ishmael would become the father of a great nation (Genesis 16:10; 17:20). He is seen as the ancestor of many Arab tribes, and he lives apart from Isaac (Genesis 25:12–18), fulfilling God’s word.
The Bible does not directly connect Ishmael to the founding of Islam — the religion doesn’t emerge until many centuries later.
☪️ Islamic Tradition
☪️ Islamic Tradition
In Islamic tradition, Ishmael (Isma'il) is highly honored. Muslims believe:
Ishmael and Abraham together built the Kaaba in Mecca (Qur'an 2:125–127).
Ishmael is considered a prophet and an ancestor of Muhammad, the final prophet in Islam.
The story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) is believed by many Muslims to have involved Ishmael, not Isaac, though the Qur'an doesn’t name the son explicitly.
So, from an Islamic perspective, Ishmael is viewed as the forefather of many Arab peoples and the spiritual ancestor of Islam through Muhammad.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17SB37ZABqJYTxdiZSXiSgboUl4E_0c0fgYoTlF-c6nA/edit?usp=sharing
Bibliography
Bibliography
https://bibleproject.com/classroom/abraham
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https://bible.org/article/melchizedek-covenantal-figure-biblical-theology-eschatological-royal-priesthood#P8_421
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https://bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Shem-was-Melchizedek-Masoretic-chronology-Messiah-Jesus-Christ-priesthood.htm
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