COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 43 - MAKING THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

The world we live in today makes a big deal about making special announcements public, such as weddings and anniversaries, and of course; the soon coming arrival of a child.  I have to wonder what this would have been like if you were living in the ancient land of Caanan and you were the SECOND wife that had conceived the child with your Mistress’s husband. 

It must have been a bit strange to our way of thinking today. 

Would there have been a gender reveal?  Of course not, there was no way of knowing the sex of a child back in those days, but there must have been an “I’m going to have a baby and it belongs to Abram” public moment that came to pass in Hagar’s life.  How would this have transpired? 

It must have been the talk of the tents!  

How do you imagine Hagar went about telling Abram and Sarai the news?   Of course they would have been waiting and watching and expecting, but still, it would have been perhaps a bit strange and awkward.   

How do you think she was received when she did let them know the news?  I can’t help but wonder who she told first, Abram or Sarai.  I suspect she went to Abram first.  The scriptures leave much to our imagination.  We can only look at the history of women who became “second wives” back in those days and learn a little of what might have happened.

The technical word for second wife was “concubine.”   The concubine was always of inferior status to the first wife.  If the husband wished to perform a veiling ceremony she could obtain the name of “wife” but she would still be considered the inferior wife, the second choice with the first wife always being over her and in charge of her. The husband was in charge of the first and chosen wife, but he WAS NOT in charge of any wife after her.  Any subsequent wife was totally under the charge of the first and chosen wife.  Hagar's welfare remained in the hands of Sarai even after she bore a child of Abram's.

Much of these concubine relationships materialized when the first wife discovered she was barren.  The concubine was a way of securing an heir for the family name if the first wife simply could not bear a child.  Many ancient marriage agreements had wording stating promises from the wife that should the wife be unable to bear an heir she would secure a concubine to have her husband’s children.   These heirs would hold unless the first wife later and unexpectedly bears a child.  The concubine’s children were always inferior to the chosen first wife’s children.  This was true for everything concerning a child in the family, but especially true when it came to inheritance. 

Because of these situations in the culture, the laws of Israel that came later were very careful to provide rights safeguarding the Hebrew girls who found themselves being sold as handmaidens. 

It seemed that when a concubine was going to be provided as one who would bear the children for her mistress, it was usually done by taking a very strong and healthy young handmaiden (often bought in the market of slaves) that the mistress could train as a child and supervise as she grew into a young girl.  The young girl would be brought up to serve the household.    Usually before the child was born the handmaiden would become wed to the one who had purchased the handmaiden. 

Some people have been very upset thinking that Abram sinned with Hagar by committing adultery.  Well, we have already discovered that Abram was an ordinary man and very capable of sin just as any other man; but in this case he was innocent.  He was simply following the legalities and civil laws that were in place in his days and in the culture where he lived.   At that time in that culture it was perfectly legal for Abram to take a second wife.  Sarai's giving Hagar to him would have signified that she was being chosen as a second wife for the purpose of bearing a child to Abram.  Notice the word "wife."  Even though Hagar was a second, inferior wife, chosen only for the sake of bearing children; she was in fact legally married to Abram.  You cannot commit adultry with someone who you are married to.   Even if they had not been married, the law (the ten commandments) had not yet been given, so it was hard to break a commandment that God had not yet officially commanded.  This argument that Abram sinned doesn’t really stand, and for once Abram is let off the hook.  That is also not to say that Abram did the right thing.  Abram should have consulted God before agreeing with Sarai in this plan.  Does anything about this sound familiar?  What if Adam had consulted with God before agreeing to eat the fruit that Eve offered?  The devil's tactics never change, they are always the same and usually quite predictable when you think about it.  

Also, that isn’t to say that God did not intend for men to have only one wife and for women to have only one husband.  Once again, He set the example for us with Adam and Eve way back in the garden.  He showed us the better way from the start.  It was man who came up with the other less than perfect ways of living, and hence mankind is always dealing with the circumstances of their own mistaken choices.   God later addressed this issue when He wrote down the ten commandments and gave them to Moses. 

The picture of Sarai and Abram making their own decisions here instead of waiting on God to bring about His will for them is a perfect lesson and example of how things are better when you do things the best way; God’s way.  In all life situations there is a choice between the way that SEEMS right to men, and God's way.  It seems that Abram and Sarai rushed God’s plan because they got all caught up in their own importance instead of God’s.   If Abram sinned at all, this would be where it happened.  Now, for the rest of his life, the relationship of Abram and Sarah and their beautiful love story would have a shadow of a handmaiden and another son named Ishmael.  The focus of complete joy would forever be diverted  from the eventual promised child because of the responsibilities brought on by wrong human decisions that were way lower than God's original purposes.  

God allows us to grow in and from our mistakes.  This happens because He doesn't produce a magic wand that instantly corrects everything that we have done wrong.  He lets us live with the circumstances that we bring upon ourselves and He is still kind and merciful and loving to us through it all.  He takes our mistakes and turns them for good eventually, even if the "good" is just to teach us to be more careful and more diligent to seek His guidance.  

If the handmaiden went through the child bearing process and boar a child for her mistress and then sought to place herself on an equal footing, she normally could not be sold to anyone else (this kept the man’s child living within his own household even if the relationship with the woman went sour); although she could be reduced again to the status of a slave.  There were civil laws and provisions spelled out in the Code of Hammurabi stating certain conditions where the slave-concubine and her child could even be expelled, but only on the advice of divine oracle.  This too plays into the story of Abram, Sarai and Hagar as we will discuss later.

All of the above is interesting to note as we look deeper into the story of Hagar, Abram and Sarai.

The scriptures tell us that Hagar bore a male child to Abram and even while she was pregnant with him she began to despise Sarai. 

Hagar had been with Sarai since that dreadful time in Egypt when Abram had almost let Pharaoh marry Sarai without telling him she was his wife.  God had intervened in that time and the truth had been revealed.  When Pharaoh sent them away he gave Hagar to them, but it is said that she had requested to go saying:  “One day in the house of Abram and Sarai is better than many days in the house of Pharaoh”  Perhaps Hagar, even as a young girl had entertained the thoughts of being the wife of Abram and bearing his children.  Perhaps she had looked at the life that Sarai led and said “that is for me – I’ll take it!  I want to be just like her!”  There again is another commandment - "Thou shalt not covet" - that had not yet been written down in stone or spelled out for the world to see.  We don’t really know, but it is quite possible that Hagar coveted the life of Sarai. 

Maybe Hagar was simply a child used in a sneaky political move.  Perhaps Pharaoh, secretly wishing to promote the growth of Egypt beyond its borders thought to himself; “I’ll send one of the daughters of my concubines with them and even though they gain great wealth when this child gives birth to another child we will be able to put an Egyptian claim onto all the lands that they come to possess."  Ancient cultures were known for devious acts such as this.  Every kingdom was about power and greed in those days.  Now, this is only imaginative thinking, no one knows what really went on behind the scenes and why Pharaoh allowed one of his princess/daughters to become the handmaiden to Sarai, but it is a thought worth entertaining. 

Who knows what secret thoughts Hagar held in her heart as she grew up in the tents of Abram?  It is in many ways like the story of Esther in reverse. 

It appears in every segment of Hagar’s story that her greatest characteristic was her ambition.  She held on in very hard circumstances determined to succeed in spite of all obstacles.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  What we really know at this point is Hagar was Sarai’s handmaiden and Sarai gave her to Abram to bear a child and Hagar became pregnant and despised Sarai when she did. 

One cannot help but wonder if this word “despise” is a way to describe that green-eyed monster common among women called jealousy.  Let us consider that a bit as we think of Sarai and Hagar and this situation.  They were probably both equally jealous for very different reasons.  

Hagar probably craved the power and control and possessions of Sarai as Abram’s wife, including the love of Abram.  Can you imagine the pain of knowing that another woman would take the child born of your flesh into her arms immediately after birth and raise the child as its mother?  No matter how Hagar worked at her ambitions to replace Sarai, Sarai was ALWAYS going to be in the picture and always going to have control of the destiny of Hagar's child.   

Sarai, on the other hand,  probably felt pain and sorrow to have another woman bearing the child of the one man she had always loved with all of her heart. No matter what she did from this point forward, Abram's loyalties would always be divided and distracted away from her toward this son of another woman.  It must have been humiliating to Sarai to have to make the choice to allow another to give birth to her husband's child and sit helplessly by and watch as the world around her changed daily with this new development.  

Before Hagar's pregnancy Sarai and Hagar had most likely been very close friends.  They would have by this time spent hours and hours and days and years side by side in the household of Abram.  They would have been a team in all that had happened so far.  We can read in the legends of the sages stories of  Sarai entertaining royalty in her tents and recognizing and addressing Hagar as a royal princess instead of her slave among the guests.  Perhaps there were many, many times that these two shared the everyday moments of womanhood in the family together, laughing, talking as close friends, emphasizing with one another over the things that all women go through.  Hagar had most likely been a close friend, confidant and supporter of Sarai.  Now all of that was destroyed between them.  The whole landscape of their relationship and friendship totally changed when Hagar made her famous announcement.   These were real life-changing times for both of these women.   

By the time that Hagar was pregnant and despised Sarai, Sarai knew that she had acted in haste with her decision to give her to Abram and she most likely regretted it terribly.   It must have come  clear to her like a hammer over the head that she had not sought this out through prayer and had not consulted God at all.  She would have had to see the look of concern on Abram’s face every time Hagar winced when the baby kicked, and she would have not been used to the tender way a man would have treated a woman bearing the child of his loins.  Some of the tender loving care that Abram had always given to Sarai would naturally go now to the mother of his child.  This all must have been an eye-opening experience to Sarai and her grief could have easily turned to a huge mountain of bitterness and hate. 

So what do you do when you have gone against the wishes of God even after He has promised you nothing but great blessings and a perfect destiny and has made your life so fulfilling and abundant up until that point?

Wouldn’t we all love to know what went on in the mind and hearts of Sarai and Abram during this time that Hagar was pregnant?  

It must have been a very strange time indeed.  What should have been a time of sheer joy was  now touched and stained with the human traits of anger, bitterness, jealousy, hate, regret, uncertainty, fear and a million other human emotions.  It was all unnecessary, but God lets us make our own choices.  The thing is – once made – we have to live with them.  

It isn’t completely bad though, this is how we learn grace and how we can learn to love deeper and with more intention.  Ironically, pain often brings gain.  Eventually the fog lifts and God shows us the detour that our decisions have brought to our journey.  Detours are not always smooth paved roads, they can get rocky and hard to travel.  We have to just keep moving until we get back to God’s original destiny.  Sometimes it takes a very long time. 

Both Hagar and Sarai had made some bad decisions.  Hagar in choosing to leave her life as the princess she desired to be in her heart all along, and Sarai in choosing to let another woman into her marriage and giving her the right to bear the child to Abram.  Abram too had allowed things to happen without questioning or correcting the errors.  They all had detours cropping up on the radar.  It was going to be a much different and harder journey from here on out.  Some days the only thing left to do is to just keep on walking.

In spite of Abram and Sarai’s mistakes and humanness, God was with them through it all.   He was still pouring out His blessings on them as well as looking after Hagar and her child.     

God is good - all the time.