Hagar

Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)

Flight, or, according to others, stranger, an Egyptian, Sarah’s handmaid (Gen. 16:1; 21:9, 10), whom she gave to Abraham (q.v.) as a secondary wife (16:2). When she was about to become a mother she fled from the cruelty of her mistress, intending apparently to return to her relatives in Egypt, through the desert of Shur, which lay between. Wearied and worn she had reached the place she distinguished by the name of Beer-lahai-roi (“the well of the visible God”), where the angel of the Lord appeared to her. In obedience to the heavenly visitor she returned to the tent of Abraham, where her son Ishmael was born, and where she remained (16) till after the birth of Isaac, the space of fourteen years. Sarah after this began to vent her dissatisfaction both on Hagar and her child. Ishmael’s conduct was insulting to Sarah, and she insisted that he and his mother should be dismissed. This was accordingly done, although with reluctance on the part of Abraham (Gen. 21:14). They wandered out into the wilderness, where Ishmael, exhausted with his journey and faint from thirst, seemed about to die. Hagar “lifted up her voice and wept,” and the angel of the Lord, as before, appeared unto her, and she was comforted and delivered out of her distresses (Gen. 21:18, 19). Ishmael afterwards established himself in the wilderness of Paran, where he married an Egyptian (Gen. 21:20, 21). “Hagar” allegorically represents the Jewish church (Gal. 4:24), in bondage to the ceremonial law; while “Sarah” represents the Christian church, which is free.

Scripture References

Smith's Bible Dictionary (1863)

(flight), an Egyptian woman, the handmaid or slave of Sarah, (Genesis 16:1) whom the latter gave as a concubine to Abraham, after he had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan and had no children by Sarah. ch (Genesis 16:2,3) (B.C. 1912.) When Hagar saw that she had conceived, “her mistress was despised in her eyes,” v. 4, and Sarah, with the anger, we may suppose, of a free woman rather than of a wife, reproached Abraham for the results of her own act. Hagar fled, turning her steps toward her native land through the great wilderness traversed by the Egyptian road. By the fountain in the way to Shur the angel of the Lord found her, charged her to return and submit herself under the hands of her mistress, and delivered the remarkable prophecy respecting her unborn child recorded in vs. 10-12. On her return she gave birth to Ishmael, and Abraham was then eighty-six years old. When Ishmael was about sixteen years old, he was caught by Sarah making sport of her young son Isaac at the festival of his weaning, and Sarah demanded the expulsion of Hagar and her son. She again fled toward Egypt, and when in despair at the want of water, an angel again appeared to her, pointed out a fountain close by, and renewed the former promises to her. (Genesis 21:9-21) St. Paul, (Galatians 4:25) refers to her as the type of the old covenant of the law.

Scripture References