But was it really YHWH himself Hagar replied to in Genesis 16? Verse 7 says it was “The angel of the Lord” who found her in the desert and spoke to her (8). And that same “angel of the Lord” in verse 9 who told her to “Go back to your mistress and submit to her,” and “The angel” (again) who said, “I will so increase your descendants they will be too numerous to count” (10).
The Hebrew word for “angel” here is malak meaning “messenger,” so is it an angel passing on a message from YHWH when he says, “I will so increase your descendants,” rather than YHWH himself saying it? And was it an angel speaking on behalf of YHWH in verse 11 when he says “the Lord has heard of your misery”?
It would seem so – until verse 13, which states that Hagar “gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her.” Not to the angel of the Lord who spoke to her, but “to the Lord (YHWH)” himself. And she leaves us in no doubt that she believed this was the real YHWH she was speaking to when she replies to him: “You are the God who sees me.”
To Hagar herself, then, this was the great God YHWH she was speaking to. Which opens up something wonderful about YHWH in her amazing reply to him. Because in her reply to what he’d done for her, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her” – and because names were so important for describing someone’s most striking attributes in that ancient culture – this has real meaning to it.
So what name did she give to the Lord as the most striking attribute she saw in him? It’s in the name of “the well” in verse 14, the name of the well being Beer Lahai Roi meaning “the Living One who sees me.” Or as Hagar herself phrased it in verse 13, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
The transformation in Hagar is wonderful to see. From feeling like death to the joyful realization that God himself had seen how badly she’d been treated – and even though she was a mere maidservant, he cared. What she saw in YHWH, therefore, was a Being who is utterly aware of our circumstances – who also wants us to know he’s aware too, by enabling us to see his love, so that the same transformation in Hagar can happen in us whenever our circumstances make us feel like death too.
To the next blog, then: “What YHWH requires in return”
Buck To Basics 