Genesis 16:6 Commentary and Bible Study

Abram does not mean by this statement, that it was nothing to do with him: she should settle it. It rather looks like that, but that is not what it means. It means, ‘Well, she is your servant, your slave, and I yield her to your putting her back in her place.’ In other words, he passed the responsibility, entirely backed her. So Sarai did that, but when we read that ‘Sarai dealt hardly her’, what picture do we have in our minds? Do you have a picture of Sarai walking round with the whip? No, no, no. She would have said something like this: ‘Come on Hagar, we want you up at six in the morning. You brew the tea – or whatever they do in tents in those days – you look after this, you look after. You have got above yourself. You have overreached yourself. You must now take up the duties of a servant once again.’ Well, Hagar was headstrong, and rebellious and unwilling, and she fled from Sarai’s face. She had a big fit of temper and off she went as an expectant mother. She was clearly heading back to Egypt, because the angel of the Lord finds her by a fountain of water in the wilderness on the way to Shur. That is right on the road to Egypt where she was from, so she was going home. It is a long way to go. She probably had not gone very far. ‘And the angel of the Lord found her.’ There are a lot of firsts in these chapters in Genesis. This is the first reference to an angel in the Bible, the angel of the Lord. But here is a very unusual angel. This angel is divine, because as you look at the words that he speaks – and Hagar recognises him as divine, and as God – you see he speaks as from God. And we know that every appearance of God as a man, as a person, in the Old Testament is an appearance of Christ; it must be. It is what we call a theophany. It is an appearance, particularly of Christ, because there is a great text in John 1:18 which tells us that nobody has seen God at any time. If you have seen God in the Bible, and he appears in human form, it is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is a pre-incarnate appearance. ‘No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’ So every appearance of God is Christ, and every reference or nearly every reference to the angel of the Lord in the Book of Genesis, is actually reference to the pre-incarnate Christ.