Woman at the Well, Part 2: Naming God
Only one person in the Hebrew Bible names God, and it's not who you'd expect. This article is in honor of those we refuse to see.
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The Birth of Ishmael
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave whose name was Hagar, 2 and Sarai said to Abram, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. 4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Your slave is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” 9 The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit to her.” 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her,
“Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael,[a] for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.12 He shall be a wild ass of a man,with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him,and he shall live at odds with all his kin.”
13 So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi,”[b] for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”[c] 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi;[d] it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him[e] Ishmael.
Footnotes
[a] 16.11 That is, God hears
[b] 16.13 Perhaps God of seeing or God who sees
[c] 16.13 Meaning of Heb uncertain
[d] 16.14 That is, well of the living one who sees me
[e] 16.16 Heb Abram
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Literary device of the day: allusion
Today we meet the snooty cousin of the inside joke, better known as allusion. Notice the spelling, friends. Although this English major stuff is magical, no one is trying to trick you.
Allusion is when an author calls another text to the reader’s mind to compress meaning into the story they’re telling. Just like an inside joke created at another time adds humor to a current interaction, a well-played allusion transports meaning from one text to another. Of course, like inside jokes, allusion only works if the reader “gets it.” So that no one feels left out of John’s allusions, we’ll be taking a look at one of the ancient stories he alludes to in the story of the woman at the well. I suggest you look for connections between the stories as you read, because they are no accident.
Genre alert!
The other stories we’ve covered so far are from the gospels, the first four New Testament books. Those books seek to convince the reader of the good news of Jesus. Our story today is from Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. Genesis contains the most ancient of the Bible’s stories, probably passed along orally for hundreds of years before they were written down. Some consider Genesis history. Others lean toward legend. Those who take a two-handed approach may see it as a combination. Regardless of its precise genre, the question I find fascinating is what made these stories in Genesis powerful enough to survive until today?
Most scholars agree much of the Hebrew Bible was compiled in written form during and after the Babylonian exile beginning in 586 BC. The exile had cost the people of Israel their land, temple, and king, each promised by God. Traumatized, doubting, and lacking these tangible proofs of God’s faithfulness, as Peter Enns puts it, they “turned to the next best thing: bringing the glorious past into their miserable present by means of an official collection of writings” (9). Enns continues that it all came together because Israel needed to declare, “This is who we are, and this is who we worship” (10).
A little backstory
It’s all coming back to identity, isn’t it? I’m sensing a theme that carries on even in the following backstory. Do you remember the name Jacob from last time? To add to the odd tidbits we’re collecting about him, today we meet his grandparents. At Hagar’s point in the story, their names are Abram and Sarai, but God soon renames them Abraham and Sarah. These are the names you might be more familiar with, so though it’s cheating a bit, that’s what we’ll call them.
God begins a special relationship with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. God sends Abraham to a new land and promises him in verse 2, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.” So at the ripe age of 75, Abraham packs his stuff and moves with his wife, nephew, and their servants (12:4). Adventure ensues, but God takes care of Abraham and Sarah, and again promises land and enough descendents to fill it (13:16). By chapter 15, though, aging Abraham is beginning to wonder where these offspring are, and worries a servant will become his heir. It is then that God appears to him in a vision and forms a covenant with him, cutting a deal that promises protection, reward, and as many descendants as there are stars in the sky (15:5). This was before light pollution became a thing, so it’s a lot of descendants.
It seems Chapter 16 should begin with a birth announcement. Instead, we hear, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children” (vs.1). This is no auspicious beginning for a man who’s been promised enough descendants to light up the night sky. There is, however, an “Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar” so Sarah suggests Abraham sleep with her (v 2). Her suggestion was in accordance with ancient surrogacy customs that enabled a wife to give her maid to her husband and claim any resulting children as her own (Coogan et al. p. 33). Poor Hagar has no choice in the matter but to comply. In addition, she is only a “slave-girl.” She won’t be a “slave-woman” until chapter 21, where you can find the rest of her story. Hagar is old enough to conceive, though, and when she realizes she’s pregnant in verse 4, “she looks with contempt on her mistress.” This dirty look implies a status shift only possible in a society that affords value to a woman based on her fertility. In Sarah’s eyes, the system is rigged, and there’s no way she can win. As a complete woman with many fine features, she would like her value to be placed elsewhere than her uterus. Sarah angrily turns to the patriarch in her life to tell him so. “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” (vs. 5). Wanting nothing to do with it, Abraham’s privileged response is, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Sarah then “deals harshly with Hagar,” and Hagar runs away.
An encounter at a well
Hagar is hurting. She is used, pregnant, and beaten. She flees, but where can she go? She winds up near a “spring of water in the wilderness” in verse 7, so maybe there’s life here, after all. The angel of the LORD, so named by our narrator, finds her. I imagine her collapsed by the spring, sobbing, and then looking up, terrified to see this being. Her name is the first thing out of his mouth, which affords her a dignity never given by Abraham and Sarah (Davidson, 211). To our chosen ones, she is only “slave-girl.” The angel of the LORD then asks for her story, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” Somehow Hagar finds her voice, “I am running away from my mistress Sarah” (8). Of course, the poor girl doesn’t know where she’s headed, so the angel answers the second part of the question for her. Confoundingly, he tells her “Return to your mistress” and then promises she will be the mother of so many that “they cannot be counted for multitude” (vs.10). Is anyone else seeing stars? This promise sounds a lot like the one given to Abraham, and it’s the only time one like it is given to a woman (Davidson, 211). Then, the angel of the LORD names the baby she carries and assures her that God has “given heed to her affliction,” vs. 11. Hagar is having a very big day.
Naming God
How does she feel about it? Petrified? Furious about being sent back to Sarah? No. She feels seen, perhaps for the first time in her life. The narrator reveals in verse 13 that this is actually the LORD, the same God who has created the covenant with Abraham. Hagar has her own name for God, though. She calls him El-roi, “The God Who Sees” while wondering “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” (vs. 13). No one else in the Hebrew Bible names God. (Trible, 17-18). According to Gerhard von Rad, “Name-giving in the ancient Orient was primarily an exercise of sovereignty, of command” (83). Naming someone is a proclamation of power. When God gives people new names, no one argues. But this is no all-powerful God giving a name to a human. This is a powerless Egyptian slave-girl, outside of the covenant, naming the Almighty based on a personal interaction with God. What enables her to do this? Because Hagar feels seen by God, dignified in a way she may never have been before, she sees God and feels emboldened to name who she sees. Anstey believes it begins with telling her own truth, which then leads her to speak the truth about God (12).
God does not object to this naming. It is impossible to overstate how unexpected this all is. It makes far more sense that God would first appear to one of God’s chosen ones, probably Abraham. It makes far more sense that the first (and only) one to name God in the Hebrew Bible would be a chosen recipient of the covenant. Hagar is marginalized by her ethnicity, gender, and class. It would be challenging to create a character who is more on the outside than she, and yet she is the one who has this monumental interaction with the LORD.
In naming God, Hagar becomes a theologian (p. 12). She doesn’t just keep her thoughts to herself, by the way. Anstey points out that Abraham indeed names Hagar’s baby Ishmael, just as God tells her in verse 11. The name means “God hears,” and somehow Abraham hears, too, when Hagar tells him the baby’s name. Hagar’s spring becomes a well in verse 14. It has a name, too, which means “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” It seems that the community to which Hagar returns has also accepted her theology, at least enough to attribute the well’s name to her story (Anstey, 15). Anstey suggests that perhaps this is why Hagar must return to her dysfunctional community. Her perspective of the living God who sees her is necessary for developing a clear picture of God in the beginning stages of relationship with both his chosen ones and, seemingly, the ones outside the promise, too.
What does it mean that Hagar the handmaid’s tale meant enough to the Israelites that it exists for us today? And what does it mean that John decides to allude to it in his gospel? And what does it say about who God is? I have thoughts, but you’ll have to wait until next time. Until then, I’m more than happy to hear what you think. Comment or reach out on social media. If Hagar and the Samaritan woman can be theologians, so can we.
Works Cited
Anstey, Matthew P. “Seeing Hagar the Theologian: The Interpretation of Genesis 16.” Into the World You Love; Encountering God in Everyday Life (2007): pp.17-35.
Davidson, Jo Ann. “The Well Women of Scripture Revisited.” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2006. Pp. 209-228.
Enns, Peter. “When Was Genesis Written and Why Does it Matter?.” BioLogosFoundation. http://biologos.org/uploads/resources/enns_scholarly-essay3.pdf (accessed May 20, 2022) (2019).
Coogan, Michael D. et al. editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
Trible, Phyllis. “Hagar; The Desolation of Rejection,” in Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, Overtures to Biblical Theology. Fortress, 1984.
Von Rad, Gerhard. Genesis: a Commentary, Old Testament Library. Westminster, 1972.
