Hagar's Horrible Story

Meet Hagar:

The girl, not the kid.

She gets the award for "Most Unfortunate Genesis Character," which is impressive when you consider that the snake from Eden got its limbs ripped off and Lot had his angel-raping city destroyed by fire from the sky.  But while most characters suffer one or two misfortunes, poor Hagar'slife is just one big unfortunate mess.  When she was born, God apparently shone down upon the shiny new bundle of joy and said, "Yup, fuck that chick."  Then, as if that weren't bad enough, her parents gave her the same name as an incompetent viking in a mediocre comic strip.  So yeah, life pretty much sucked for her from the get-go.

 When we meet her, Hagar is the handmaiden of Sarai, whom you may remember as the evil harpy woman Abram was desperately trying to get rid of in an earlier post.  Through the story of Hagar, we learn that Sarai is even more of a keeper than we originally thought her to be.  See, by this point Sarai is seventy-six years old and she's finally accepted that she's not going to be having any babies any time soon.  The problem is, God has promised them so many kids they'll found their own nation, and they're getting a little up there in their years without any luck in the baby-making department.  So Sarai (again, seventy-six) turns to her husband one day, presumably while knitting and watching the ancient equivalent of Wheel of Fortune (which is like a stoning or something, I guess), and says:

"Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her." - Genesis 16:2

So yeah, she gives him permission to bone her maid so they can have them some babies.  Keep in mind that Abram is eighty-six years old at this point.  Then notice how there's no reference to anybody asking Hagar if she'd like to get knocked up by a man who is so old he's partially fossilized.  Commence screaming.

Have you gotten it out of your system?  Okay, good.  Abram forcably takes Hagar to be his second wife and inevitably she becomes pregnant.  The Bible pretty much judges the worth of a woman by her ability to breed, and so she gets a bit of an ego from it, eventually believing her status to be equal to Sarai's.  Sarai, being the heartless kindly old matron she is ... puts the girl in her place by doing something so awful she runs away.

"And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face." - Genesis 16:6

Poor Hagar, having dared to believe she was something more than a serving wench only to be torn down by Abram's screeching shrew of a wife, runs off into the wilderness.  No doubt she's cursing the awful people who did this to her and regretting ever leaving her family in Egypt to try and persue that circus career, or whatever leads a young Egyptian girl like Hagar to become a handmaid for some obscure, dusty old biddy in the desert.  Then this happens:

"And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wildnerness, by the fountain on the way to Shur.  And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou?  and whither wilt thou go?  And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai." - Genesis 16:8

Really, God?  You're going to play the angel card?  You're going to convince this poor girl to return to a home where her husband considers her lower than dirt so she can give the self-important jerk a son?  Ha!  I'd like to see you convince her!

"And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.  And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude."

Babies, babies - it's always babies!  I'll give you tonnes and tonnes of babies if you agree to go back!  I'll give you tonnes of babies if you worship me!  It's like you think women enjoy being pregnant or something, God.  You're such a man.

For some reason it actually does work (I suspect fear of being smote was involved, and that tends to go a long way) and Hagar does return to Abram.  She has her baby and names him Ishmael, as God directs.

If you're thinking that that wasn't so bad, that there have been worse stories of individual misfortune thus far, well, that's because it's not done.  Oh, it begins and ends at Genesis 16 and then moves on to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, tricking you into thinking you read something that wasn't really all that terrible in comparison to what's around it.  But it's just faked you out.  Yes, the freaking Bible has faked you out.  Hagar's story picks up again in Genesis 21, after Sodom is smitten for being rape-happy, Lot sexes up his daughters and Abram and Sarai have undergone their name changes to Abraham and Sarah.  And then it gets awful.


The second part of the story, like so many tales of the Bible, begins with God being a jerk:

"And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.  For Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him." - Genesis 21:1-2

God decides all of a sudden that Sarah, now so old that if she lived in the modern world she'd constantly have to swat away archaeologists, is going to have a baby and so he "opens her womb," meaning that he makes it possible to conceive.  Let the implications of that sink in for a moment.  God has promised Abraham and Sarah a lot of babies, but for some reason he hasn't allowed Sarah to conceive.  Sarah and Abraham, getting antsy, decide to knock Hagar up to try and get the ball rolling.  God, knowing full well that they're doing it because he hasn't made a move to fulfill his promise yet, lets it happen.  If he wants Abraham and Sarah to wait until they were antiques before having their first baby, he could close Hagar's womb and prevent her from conceiving at all.  But he doesn't.  He lets this happen.

Keep this in mind.

Sarah has a son as well, Isaac, and naturally that makes things a little awkward in the family circle.  After all, Isaac is the son God promised Abraham and Sarah, whilst Ishmael is their attempt to get that promise fulfilled early.  It's exactly what happens when the elder sibling feels usurped by the younger, who sudden becomes everybody's darling, except worse because that younger sibling is also the fulfillment of a literal divine promise.  Ishmael, being a teenager now, reacts with the strongest weapon in a teenager's arsenal: passive-aggressiveness.

"And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which had been born unto Abraham, mocking." - Genesis 21:9.

So, all offended that this teenager dare sass her precious little holy baby, Sarah goes to her husband and tells him to straight-up banish Hagar and Ishmael, the child that - and I can't stress this enough - she suggested they have in the first place.  She's like the archetypal evil stepmother on a literally Biblical scale.  God, proving again that he's a jerk on a massive scale, approves the banishment:

"And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." - Genesis 21:12

With that, Abraham loads Hagar up with some bread and a bottle of water and sends her on her way.  Remember - and I can't stress this enough either - that this whole thing would have been perfectly preventable if God hadn't been such a procrastinator and had given Abraham and Sarah a son at a reasonable age!

What comes next is positively heartbreaking (and I'm not a mushy person).  Hagar leaves the home of this awful family for the second time with hardly enough food to sustain herself and her child.  Eventually, she runs out of water:

"And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.  And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child.  And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept." - Genesis 21:15-16

She puts her son (whom she is carrying despite him being 14, but we'll overlook that) in a shrub and goes to sit far away so she doesn't have to watch him starve to death. Then she cries her eyes out.  This whole situation is actually so sad it moves God.  God actually gets his holy butt off of his cloud and floats down to offer aid.  Aww, there's going to be a happy ending after all!

"And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?  fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation." - Genesis 21:17-18

... What is with you and giving people a shit tonne of babies, God?  Do Hagar and Ishmael get a home?  A place to belong?  You know - food?

"And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer." - Genesis 21:20.

So, no.  But hey, at least he gets babies.

After reading this story, I was left wondering what the point of it was.  Ishmael doesn't really serve any purpose to the narrative beyond getting booted out of his father's inheritance to make way for Isaac, so how does this tale remain relevant in the modern world? 

The answer, as with Canaan's story, is racism.  Think of the world today, particularly what's going on in the Middle East.  Now guess who, according to legend, is a descendent of Ishmael?  I'll give you a hint: Ishmael and Isaac never got along.  Now, if Isaac represents the Jews, Ishmael represents ...

Muslims!  Yeah, according to Islam, Muhammad was a direct descendent of Ishmael, who, according to the Qu'ran, was God's promised child, not Isaac.  I probably don't need to explain any more, but you can bet idiots quote this story all the damn time as an excuse for why Muslims (often misidentified as Arabs) and Jews (and, by extension, Christians) are allowed to hate on each other.

Good thing religion preaches so much peace and love in between all these terrible racism-varifying stories or we might be a bunch of intolerant bigots on our hands, huh?  Oh, wait ...