Even the most stupid of us (and I count myself amongst them!) have 20/20 hindsight. After it’s said and done we often see the mistakes we’ve made and wish we could do things over. Most often, I’d do things differently. Well, as Alexander Pope said, “To Err is human.” But to “make matters worse” is another human specialty. I can do that well. This is especially true in how I treat people. Sarai and Abram learned all about making mistakes and then making matters worse. There is an ominous beginning to Chapter 16 of Genesis. If you had never read the story before or heard it told you have a pretty good hunch as to what was going to happen next. Verse 1 says, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.” Yep, we all know what’s coming!
Giving Hagar to Abram to take to bed and bring forth a child into the world was one of the biggest mistakes that Sarai made. But Abraham listened to her! He was just as much to blame for that mistake as Sarai. Adam had once listened to his wife also and made a mistake by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that didn’t relieve him of his responsibility at all. The story goes on and Sarah gave her maiden, Hagar, to Abram as a sort of surrogate mother. Big mistake! As a side note here it’s interesting to study the idea of surrogate motherhood as it was practiced in the near east in ancient times. Guzik says, “Some believe that the phrase refers only to a symbolic placement of the child on the knees of one who adopts it. Others believe that it refers to the surrogate sitting on the lap of the adoptive mother during both insemination and birth.”1 Hagar, as soon as she conceived, couldn’t resist the temptation to look down on Sarah with contempt. Sarah makes matters worse by treating Hagar so harshly that she runs away. Notice that neither Abram nor Sarai made any attempt to go after her. Don’t you think that they were having regrets for making the decision to begin with! Another side note here is that Hagar’s son, Ishmael, becomes the father of all the Arab nations that have been Israel’s enemies to this very day. Oh, that we could do some things over again!
God cares about all His children; slave girls and unborn children alike. He intercedes on her behalf at a place named “Beer Lahai Roi.” That means “God sees.” He speaks to her, comforts her, promises her a son and instructs her to name him “Ishmael” which means, “God hears.” God then sends her back to Abram and her mistress Sarai with a story to tell. All three of the members of this cast got the message. God sees all our mistakes and how we often make matters worse in the way we treat others. God hears the cry of the abused and will always intercede on their behalf. All of us should remember that God sees and hears everything we do and say to others! The worst regrets in my life deal with relationships and how i’ve misused or abused them. There are things that i’ve said and done that cannot take back and the consequences continue with me to this day! I know I’m forgiven, but like the drunk who lost his arm in a knife fight and later becomes a Christian. He is forgiven and so am I. But he still lives without an arm!
1 David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 16:3–4.