{"id":36714,"date":"2018-08-02T13:54:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T10:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=36714"},"modified":"2022-02-27T00:26:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T22:26:50","slug":"hagar-the-bibles-first-theologian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/hagar-the-bibles-first-theologian\/","title":{"rendered":"Hagar: The Bible’s First Theologian"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[384,438],"acf":{"old_id":"36714","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36663,"related_cahpter":"16","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The nature of the God of Genesis is able to be grasped \u00a0by a woman who has been treated as an object in her household not by the master.","content":"

Something interesting happens to Hagar in the course of Genesis 16. She goes from being the Egyptian handmaid in the house of Sarah and Abraham to being the Bible\u2019s first theologian, seeing and describing the nature of God. Hagar moves from object to subject. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a recent book <\/span>The Cost of Living<\/span><\/em>, British writer Deborah Levy writes of an older man and a younger woman, \u201cIt had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character. In this sense, she had unsettled a boundary, collapsed a social hierarchy, broken with the usual rituals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, this is precisely the function of Hagar in Genesis 16. She is the one to experience a revelation from an angel, who meets her by a fountain of water in the desert when she has fled from Sarai, and tells her she will bear a son and his name will be Ishmael (with the root \u201csh-m-a\u201d to hear) since \u201cthe Lord has heard your affliction.\u201d(Genesis 16: 11) <\/span><\/p>\n

After her conversation with the angel something shifts.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the moment when Hagar speaks for herself and describes the God she has experienced. \u201cAnd she called the name of the Lord that spoke to her, <\/span>You God see me<\/span><\/em> for she said, Have I also looked after him that sees me?\u201d(Genesis 16: 13) No one before her has had the capacity to describe God, yet Hagar portrays God as \u201c<\/span>El Roi<\/span><\/i>\u201d the \u201cDeity who sees.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Hagar is the first individual to be able to grasp and characterize in language the magnitude of who and what God is, as pointed out by Dolores Williams in an essay \u201c<\/span>Hagar in African American Biblical Appropriation<\/span><\/a>.\u201d The nature of the God of Genesis is able to be grasped \u00a0by a woman who has been treated as an object in her household not by the master. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abraham argued with God (Genesis 18:17-33); Hagar described God. Who is a major character and who a minor one?<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":36806,"id":36806,"title":"hagar","filename":"hagar.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/hagar.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/why-were-the-israelites-enslaved-for-so-long-in-egypt-a-surprising-backstory\/hagar\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"hagar","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":36704,"date":"2018-08-04 20:48:12","modified":"2022-03-05 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