Day 2 of 7
The God Who Sees Hagar
The Bible's first refugee story
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
Read Genesis 16:1-14. Pay special attention to the angel's encounter with Hagar after she flees from Sarah's mistreatment: "The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness... And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, 'You are a God of seeing,' for she said, 'Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.'"
Then read Genesis 21:14-21, where Hagar is cast out a second time with her son Ishmael: "And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, 'What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.'"
Reflection
The Bible's first refugee story does not involve Israelites. It involves an Egyptian slave woman named Hagar — a foreigner, a servant, a person of no social standing, used by her employers for their reproductive purposes and then discarded when she became inconvenient. Her story is one of the most overlooked and most important narratives in Genesis.
Hagar flees Sarah's mistreatment and ends up alone in the wilderness, pregnant and terrified. She has nowhere to go. She has no resources. She is a refugee in the most literal sense: a person fleeing abuse with nothing but her body and the child within it.
And God finds her.
This is astonishing. The angel of the Lord — a figure many theologians identify as a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ — does not visit Abraham in this moment. He visits Hagar. The foreign slave. N.T. Wright observed the theological earthquake this represents: "Hagar is the first person in Scripture to be visited by an angel, the first person to give God a name, and she is a foreign slave woman. God's attention to the margins begins here." Before Israel exists, before the covenant with Abraham is formalized, God establishes a pattern: he sees the unseen, he hears the unheard, he pursues the abandoned.
Hagar's response is to give God a name — the only person in Scripture to do so. She calls him El Roi: "the God who sees me." In a world that had rendered her invisible, God saw her. In a culture that treated her as property, God addressed her as a person. In a wilderness where she expected to die, God promised her a future.
The second episode, in Genesis 21, is even more heartbreaking. This time Hagar does not flee; she is expelled. Abraham sends her away with bread and a skin of water — inadequate provisions for a journey through the desert. When the water runs out, Hagar places her son under a bush because she cannot bear to watch him die. She sits down at a distance and weeps.
And again, God hears. "God heard the voice of the boy." God opens Hagar's eyes to see a well of water. God saves them. God promises that Ishmael, too, will become a great nation.
Keller captured the pattern: "God sees the outcast before the outcast sees God." This is not a God who waits for refugees to come to him with proper documentation. This is a God who goes into the wilderness to find the desperate, the displaced, and the dying.
The implications for the immigration debate are not policy prescriptions. Scripture does not tell us the exact number of refugees a nation should accept or the precise design of a visa system. But it tells us something more fundamental: the God we worship has a deep and preferential concern for the displaced. Any approach to immigration that begins with suspicion rather than compassion has failed to reckon with the God of Genesis 16.
Going Deeper
Do you know any refugees or immigrants personally? Not as a category, but as individuals with names and stories? If not, consider why. Hagar was invisible to the powerful people around her, but not to God. Who in your community might be invisible to you — and what would it take to see them as God sees them?
Key Quotes
“Hagar is the first person in Scripture to be visited by an angel, the first person to give God a name, and she is a foreign slave woman. God's attention to the margins begins here.”
“God sees the outcast before the outcast sees God.”
Prayer Focus
Pray for refugees around the world today — those fleeing war, famine, persecution, and violence. Ask God, who saw Hagar in the wilderness, to see them and to use his church as an instrument of his seeing.
Meditation
Hagar named God 'El Roi' — the God who sees me. In your darkest moment of abandonment or despair, have you experienced God as El Roi? How does Hagar's experience expand your understanding of who God pays attention to?
Question for Discussion
Hagar was not an Israelite, not a believer in the conventional sense, and not a person of social standing. Yet God pursued her, comforted her, and made promises to her. What does this tell us about how God relates to people outside the boundaries of 'our' community — and how should it shape the church's posture toward refugees?