In a story of power and pain, Hagar reminds us that God’s compassion extends to the unseen and unheard – and calls us to do the same.
This week’s Torah portion, “Lech Lecha,” contains two back-to-back stories about oppression and the vulnerability of the powerless in the face of the powerful.
The first occurs when Abraham takes his family down to Egypt to escape famine in Canaan. On the way, he recognizes his vulnerability because of his beautiful wife, Sarai. He asks her to pose as his sister so that Pharaoh will not kill him to take her as his own – adultery was considered worse than murder in the ancient Near East.
To save Abraham, Sarai is taken into Pharaoh’s harem and remains there until God intervenes, afflicting Pharaoh’s household and forcing him to release her. Sarai is redeemed, leaving Egypt with her husband and with wealth. The difference between her and the other enslaved women in Pharaoh’s house is that God intercedes on her behalf.
This story stands in stark contrast to what follows with Sarai’s Egyptian handmaiden, who has presumably come up from Egypt with them. According to the midrash, Hagar was Pharaoh’s daughter. When Pharaoh witnessed God’s protection of Sarai, he said, “Better that my daughter be a maidservant in this house than a mistress in another.” Unfortunately, to be a maidservant even in the home of Abraham is nonetheless still to live the life of a slave.
The story soon darkens. Sarai, barren despite God’s promise, commands Abraham to lie with Hagar so that she might bear a child. Hagar, who has no say in this arrangement, conceives immediately. The power dynamic shifts, and the Torah tells us that Hagar “despised her mistress.”
Sarai, feeling threatened, turns to her husband, who gives her permission to treat Hagar as she wishes. She deals harshly with her until Hagar flees. In the ancient world, this arrangement would have been acceptable so long as the surrogate remembered her role; Hagar’s defiance disrupts that social order.
AN ANGEL finds Hagar in the wilderness, instructs her to return and submit to Sarai, and promises her countless descendants. God has heard her suffering; she will bear a son named Ishmael – “God will hear.” In response, Hagar names God El Ro’i, “the God who sees,” because she feels seen at last.
Rabbi Avital Hochstein notes that through the name Ishmael, the angel points to the fact that Hagar has a voice, not only in the literal sense of something that makes a sound, but also in the deeper sense of something that is heard and recognized.
In contrast, the name that Hagar supplies, El Ro’i, describes how it feels to have her existence recognized, to be seen rather than to be invisible. The experience of being listened to infuses Hagar with a sense that “there is a value to my voice, to my words,” while the experience of being seen infuses Hagar with the sense that “there is value to my existence, my being.” This is the opposite of the way that Sarai made Hagar feel.
In the aftermath of this revelation, she returns to her life of servitude and submits to her mistress. While there is no happy ending for Hagar in her lived experience, she now has the inner, spiritual strength to face her suffering.
Drawing a moral lesson from a complicated subject
Because the Torah expects us to draw moral lessons from the behavior of our ancestors, commentators have long wrestled with Sarai’s actions. One midrash compares Hagar to the captive woman of Deuteronomy who may not be enslaved after her master lies with her. Was not Hagar also humbled and therefore deserving of compassion?
Nahmanides writes that Sarai transgressed by afflicting Hagar, and Abraham by allowing it. Their lack of compassion, he argues, anticipates the later enmity between the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac.
The Radak adds that Sarai burdened Hagar with intolerable labor and perhaps even physical abuse. “From a moral point of view,” he writes, “she should have treated Hagar in a manner befitting her status as a wife or legal companion of Abraham, and not afflicted her. The reason this story is preserved is to teach moral-ethical lessons and to warn us not to indulge in injustice.”
THE INJUSTICE continues. Years later, Sarai demands that Abraham expel Hagar and her son. God instructs him to obey. Abraham sends them into the wilderness with only bread and water. When they face death, God hears Ishmael’s cry and opens Hagar’s eyes to a well that had been there all along.
As writer Mat Wilson observes, “Despite the pain and trauma of her past and present, she is able to see what was before her the entire time...she remained receptive to a spiritual encounter that helped her open her eyes to possibilities she had not perceived.”
The stories of Hagar are deeply unsettling. Abraham and Sarai rise from powerlessness in Egypt to wealth and authority – only to oppress at least one member of their household. It is an uncomfortable reminder that power can breed indifference to suffering, especially within one’s inner circle. God, however, hears. Just as God will later hear the cries of Israel in Egypt, God listens to Hagar and allows her to feel seen. Her existence is acknowledged and affirmed.
In the wilderness, Hagar discovers that even when human beings turn away, God does not. She names the divine El Ro’i – the God who sees – and in doing so, she names a truth at the heart of our tradition: that no one is invisible.
As modern Jews who have returned to our homeland from every corner of the world, we too must confront what it means to move from powerlessness to power. The story of Hagar reminds us that sovereignty brings with it responsibility – to see, to hear, and to act with compassion toward those who remain vulnerable in our midst. To see and to be seen, to hear and to be heard – this is where redemption begins.
The writer, a rabbanit, teaches Talmud and Jewish law at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Matan, and Midreshet Torah V’Avoda in Jerusalem. She is the author of Uncovered: Women’s Roles, Mitzvot and Sexuality in Jewish Law.