The Two-Hundred-Eighty-Seventh (A Tale of Two Wives)

This week, we’re going to do somewhat of a continuation from last week’s study.  We talked about asking ourselves what we are slaves to today in our lives, and we looked at the account of Israel being delivered from slavery in Egypt as a pattern for how YHWH delivers us from spiritual slavery.  We’re going to continue along those same lines this week, but we’re going to take a look at something much earlier in the timeline: the account of Hagar and Sarah.

We’ve covered the circumstances of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar before, but here’s a refresher.  Sarai had not been able to conceive a child for Abram, so in order for Abram’s lineage to continue, and so that Sarai and he could have a family, Sarai told Abram to have a child with her maidservant, Hagar (Genesis 16:1-4).  This was also after YHWH had promised Abram that He would give Abram descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens (Genesis 15:4-5).

From the beginning, the act of having a child with Hagar was contemptuous, although we’re not given too many details on why Hagar started despising Sarai.  Perhaps it was based on her newfound status of mother of the head of household’s, Abram’s, heir, but regardless, Sarai began treating Hagar harshly.  As a result, Hagar fled the family while pregnant with Abram’s son (Genesis 16:6-8).  The malak, or messenger, of YHWH found her in the wilderness running away, and this is actually the first appearance of this messenger in scripture.

Many believe this is actually Yeshua before He came in human form, and there is some credence to that belief.  Whereas in many places this Hebrew word, malak, is used to refer to messengers generally, whether from heaven (Genesis 19:1) or of man (Genesis 32:3), there are numerous places where a specific “messenger of YHWH” is referenced.  That is a study for another time, though.

Back to Hagar in the wilderness, the messenger of YHWH found her by a spring in the desert and, long story short, she was told to return to Sarai and submit to her (Genesis 16:9).  This commandment came with a promise, which was actually based on the promise YHWH had already made with Abram, to give him descendants too many to count (Genesis 16:10).  So, Hagar, a slave in Abram’s household, recognized that YHWH loves her and cares for her, and she returned and submitted to Sarai as commanded.

There are a few things to point out before we move on.  First, we must recognize that while Hagar was still a slave, YHWH sent His messenger to her in order to not only bring her back to Abram’s household, while still in slavery, mind you, but also name her son, Ishmael.  This name, by the way, means “God hears.”  In other words, despite being in bondage, YHWH still has a relationship with His people.  He still hears them and takes care of them.  Hagar also called YHWH something during this interaction, but we’ll get to that later.

The second thing to point out, which goes along with the first, is that YHWH sent Hagar back into slavery.  She had escaped, so to speak, yet rather than help her get to freedom, YHWH sent her back.  Why would He do this?  We’ll see later that Hagar does end up apart from Abram’s household, but why not just have her start that now?  

The key difference between the two is that in this instance of Hagar ending up in the wilderness, Hagar was leaving of her own accord.  Rather than being released from the bond of servitude, Hagar had taken it upon herself to leave the household while still being in bondage.  Not only was she attempting to free herself through her own actions, this was not a legal way for her to exit slavery.  Essentially, she would have been a criminal as an escaped slave.  As well, there was an essential part of YHWH’s plan, His promise to Abram, that had yet to be fulfilled, but more on that later.

The final thing to point out before we move on is where YHWH’s messenger found Hagar.  Yes, it was in the wilderness, in the desert, but it was also next to a spring.  In fact, this spring, or well, becomes named after this interaction between Hagar and the messenger, and the name means “well of the Living One who sees me” (Genesis 16:13-14).  This aspect of being found by a spring in the desert is something to remember as we go forward.

In the next portion of the account, we see YHWH establish the covenant of circumcision with Abram and all his household (Genesis 17:9-14).  Along with this, He renames Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah (Genesis 17:5, 15).  As a reminder from our previous studies, renaming is a key aspect of scripture.  Here, the renaming occurs as a sort of dividing line between Abram and Sarai’s sinful past, one in which they bore a child through a servant, and their future in covenant with YHWH.  The same type of thing occurs later in scripture as Jacob is renamed Israel by YHWH, and even later as a mixed multitude that joins Jacob’s descendants in their deliverance from Egypt is also renamed to Israel.  

A key thing to recognize with this covenant of circumcision is who it involved.  It was every male that descended from Abraham or was purchased by his household, generation after generation.  At the time that it was established, who did this covenant include?  That’s right, it included Ishmael, Abraham’s firstborn son, who was born to a slave.  It also included any male purchased from a foreigner (nekar, if you remember our study on sojourners, visitors, and foreigners and how they relate to YHWH’s people).

This was a covenant made between YHWH and Abraham and his household with a physical action that represented the promise that YHWH would fulfill.  That promise included both making Abraham exceedingly fruitful in his lineage and giving those descendants all the land of Canaan (Genesis 17:2-8).  Circumcision was required, otherwise the covenant would be broken and the promise would not be fulfilled.

To put a finer point on it, as long as Abraham’s descendants and those they purchased from foreigners were circumcised, they would multiply like the sand of the sea and possess the land of Canaan.  This covenant was irrespective of whether the person was a slave or free.  It only depended on 1) being a part of Abraham and his descendant’s household, and 2) being circumcised.  

If we skip ahead slightly, since we’re reviewing specifically Hagar and Sarah, we find that after Isaac is born, Sarah sees Ishmael mocking him and has had enough.  She tells Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael so he would not share in Isaac’s inheritance (Genesis 21:9-10).  An interesting thing to note about this situation is that Hagar happened to be Egyptian.  So, this interaction between Ishmael and Isaac was essentially a foreshadowing of when Israel came under bondage in Egypt.  Not only that, but as Paul pointed out, it was a foreshadowing of Israel’s remnant, the believers in Yeshua, being persecuted during Paul’s time (Galatians 4:29).

In Hagar’s case, Ishmael and her are cast out of Abraham’s household and they end up wandering in the wilderness of Beersheba (Genesis 21:14).  Her son and her are freed from bondage to Abraham, which means she is authorized to go now, compared to before.  Once again, she is visited by YHWH’s messenger in the wilderness, however this time she’s not told to return to the household.  Instead, she is given assurance that she and her son would be taken care of, and her eyes were opened to something that was there even while she was weeping for lack of water and the resulting impending death of her son (Genesis 21:15-19).

This time, Hagar was blinded to the living water she was right next to because she was so worried about the death of her son.  I’m sure the entire situation of her being kicked out by Abraham came as a shocking surprise to her, which made the situation even more distressing to her.  So much so that she had forgotten all about the God who sees her.

Isn’t that the same for us today?  The worries of the world and the physical sometimes narrow our thoughts and our vision to the point where we not only forget to call on YHWH for help but we also can’t see the help that He’s already given us.  Once we are reminded of YHWH’s promises and the assurance that He takes care of His people, just like Hagar our eyes are opened to YHWH’s provision.  We can see the path He wants us to take.

However, just being physically part of a people and taking physical actions does not equate to receiving the full measure of YHWH’s promises.  We’ve seen this time and time again in scripture through our studies, and Hagar and Ishmael are another example of it.  Ishmael was a son born out of the fleshly thinking of Abram and Sarai.  While YHWH had already made a promise to Abram, which later ended up including Ishmael, he was never intended to be a part of YHWH’s overall plan for mankind’s salvation.  YHWH still had to fulfill His promise to Abram through Ishmael, but only in the fleshly aspect of making nations and occupying a land because Ishmael was born according to the flesh.

The spiritual aspect, the matter of one’s heart, was always intended by YHWH to be fulfilled through Isaac.  Ishmael continued in the flesh, marrying a pagan Egyptian his mother found him (Genesis 21:21), but through Isaac was the aspect of faith which YHWH always has required of His people.  This aspect was shown in the event of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, which we’re all familiar with.

It is from this perspective that we have to view Paul’s connection of Hagar and Sarah to what he was seeing in the believers of Galatia (Galatians 4:21-31).  Without this context, we cannot understand Paul’s true meaning.  We have to start from the account in Genesis, analyze that account according to the message YHWH was giving through it, and then we can read Paul’s words and determine what he meant.  In fact, this is the only way to accurately interpret any of the writings of the New Testament.  Not starting from the New Testament and going backwards as a lot of Christians do today.

As we’ve said many times, YHWH speaks to us and shows us His expectations through patterns we can see in scripture.  Many believers look at this portion of Paul’s writings and come to the conclusion that he is speaking against following YHWH’s Law, given at Mount Sinai.  If you look at it from the perspective of starting in the New Testament and looking backwards to the Old Testament, that’s exactly the conclusion you come to, and it seems very clear that’s what he’s talking about.  

Unfortunately, this view does not align with other situations we see elsewhere in scripture, which means it cannot be an accurate view.  We see in Acts that Paul was confronted about people believing he was teaching against following the Law (Acts 21:18-22).  Rather than Paul confirming that’s what he was teaching, he instead went and purified himself according to the Law and intended to make a sacrifice according to the same Law (Acts 21:23-27).  Did he just go along with the crowd, so to speak, so he wouldn’t cause a stir?  Absolutely not!  Paul had no hesitation with confronting others, as we saw with his confrontation of Peter which he recounts in his letter to the Galatians (Galatians 2:11-14).

So, if Paul was truly against following YHWH’s Law, as some claim he is writing about in Galatians, he certainly would have confirmed what the apostles were saying rather than going to purify himself and give a sacrifice at the Temple.  So then, what slavery is he talking about in Galatians?  He associates it with Mount Sinai and the covenant given there, saying that it bears children into slavery, and even connects it with the Jerusalem of his day, which was occupied by Jews that were still giving sacrifices, just as he was trying to do when people accosted him.  Even more, he associates those same Jews, who were persecuting the believers at the time, with the son born of the flesh, Ishmael.

Paul was saying that just as the covenant that Ishmael was a part of, the covenant of circumcision, focused on physical action, the Jews during his time that were persecuting believers were also focused on the physical action of the Law given at Mount Sinai.  They were attempting to use that Law to receive YHWH’s promises by their physical actions rather than what was in their heart.  Paul was saying that they were a slave to that Law, not that the requirements of the Law had passed or had been abolished.

If this is still a little confusing to you, perhaps it would help to remember what happened with Isaac and how it made him a child of promise, as Paul states believers are today.  Yes, Isaac was almost sacrificed by Abraham according to YHWH’s commandment, but in Isaac’s salvation was the promise Paul is referring to.  YHWH promised to send His Son to be sacrificed just like Isaac was going to be, but nowhere in that promise did YHWH tell Abraham to no longer follow the physical covenant of circumcision.  He did not remove the physical expectations He had for Abraham once the spiritual application of Yeshua’s sacrifice was given and promised to him.

If you look closely, this promise at the altar was slightly different than the one given with circumcision.  YHWH restates the promise to multiply Abraham’s descendants and also gives a variation on the promise of his descendants possessing the land of Canaan (Genesis 22:15-17).  He states instead that Abraham’s descendants would “possess the gates of their enemies,” which means occupying enemy cities since larger, fortified cities all had gates at the time.  Because of Abraham’s obedience however, YHWH adds something key, and it’s the promise Paul is talking about when writing to the Galatians.

YHWH promises that in Abraham’s seed, meaning in one of his offspring, which is Yeshua, all nations would be blessed (Genesis 22:18, Galatians 3:16).  Paul is making the distinction that being a child of promise like Isaac is related to being blessed by Yeshua’s death through its atonement for our sins.  The slavery reference was to sin, not to YHWH’s Law, and Yeshua’s sacrifice means we are free from the bondage of sin resulting in death.  The other thing to recognize by Paul’s statements here in Galatians 4 is that he’s tying into his discussion of unbelieving Jews being removed from the olive tree, which he wrote in Romans 11.  He quotes Sarah in telling Abraham to expel Hagar and her son, meaning the unbelieving Jews, who were still focused on physical actions for righteousness, were expelled from the inheritance provided by Yeshua (Galatians 4:30).

The last thing to point out regarding Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac is a key connection between Hagar’s interaction with the messenger of YHWH and Abraham’s interaction with him.  It’s not obvious in the English translations because different words are used, but the same Hebrew word which Hagar named YHWH is the one Abraham called the place of his almost-sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 16:13, 22:14).  While English translations say Abraham called it “YHWH will provide,” the Hebrew word for provide here is actually raah, which means “to see.”  Both Hagar and Abraham, in completely different situations, had a moment where they recognized that YHWH sees them.  In Hagar, it was a moment of disobedience where she was running away, and in Abraham, it was a moment of obedience where he was about to carry out one of YHWH’s commandments to him.

I want to end with that note, because it’s so important for us to carry that forward in our lives.  In our moments of disobedience, not only does YHWH see us but just as with Hagar, He tries to turn us back to obedience.  On the flip side of the coin, He also sees us in our moments of obedience when it’s a hard choice for us to make given the circumstances.  It may look like the only option is disobedience because we can only see the situation from a worldly perspective, but YHWH will always provide a way for obedience to Him (1 Corinthians 10:13).

We hope you have a great week!  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!  

-Rob and Sara Gene

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The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life

(1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)