Abraham and Sarah (32 page)

She hid her face in her hands and gasped for air. In spite of her discomfort, she began to worry about the child she was carrying. She thought briefly of Sarai. Sarai desperately wanted the child and so did Abram. It would spoil all their plans if anything happened to the child she carried. Her death in this desert or her disappearance would punish them both. What other chance had they for the child they wanted so badly?

The old Hagar, the one who had caused Pharaoh’s favorite such trouble, would have taken great delight in getting even. Abram and Sarai would assume she had died in the sandstorm and perhaps even shed tears of remorse. They would see how cruel they had been and spend the rest of their lives feeling guilty.

The sandstorm pounded and shrieked around the rocks where Hagar hid, but her thoughts were consumed with the delightful prospect of revenge. She had loved Sarai and had grown closer to Abram, and they had betrayed her. She would never forgive them. As an Egyptian, she prided herself on being strong enough to wreak revenge on those who dared to hurt her.

She felt the sand pounding her relentlessly even when she pressed herself into the hollow of the rock. The heat stifled her, and the terrible roar of the wind deadened all but her bitter thoughts. Despite her anguish, the desire for revenge rose up in such strength that she no more wished to die. I’ll live, she thought, but they will never see this child.

A
s the wind continued, Hagar’s flask emptied out. Soon she became obsessed with her craving for water. At times her thirst gnawed at her with more force than her struggle to breathe. Though the huge rock partially protected her from the worst of the storm, she began to take seriously the idea that she might not escape from this ordeal alive. All of her spunk and brash bravado, even her desire for revenge, began to fade. They were of no avail against such odds.

Cowering in the niche, she felt small and powerless. Some god in charge of the desert must be punishing her. Perhaps it was the evil djinn that liked to torment humans. She vaguely remembered stories she had heard as a child about the evil spirits that lived in the deserts and deserted places of the earth. For the first time she was afraid.

She began to fear for the unborn child she carried. This was her child, not Sarai’s or Abram’s. If she died, this child would die too. She was the only one who could keep them both alive, and suddenly, inexplicably, she wanted the child to live. Abram’s God, Elohim, had promised Abram a child. Perhaps he would help her for the child’s sake.

No sooner had she thought of Abram’s God than she was reminded of the taunting words she had spoken that had so angered Sarai. The Elohim was perhaps to be reckoned with in all of this. What if Abram’s God saw her as cruel and spiteful?

For the first time she admitted reluctantly that she had been pleased to see the torment in Sarai’s eyes. She had known that her smug delight would crush Sarai worse than a millstone dropped on her. Now she felt small twinges of remorse for what she had done. It had not been necessary for her to gloat so over getting pregnant. For a moment she saw herself as the evil one who had deliberately spoken hurting words, and she wished for a chance to make things right.

Gradually the storm began to abate. Hagar could see her surroundings,
first faintly and then more distinctly. She still had to keep her mantle pressed against her face in order to breathe, but the heat was lifting and the sand no longer stung her skin. She realized that the night had passed, and it must be midday. There was a dull orange look about things. She stirred from her cramped position and tried to shake the sand from her clothes and hair.

Just as she began to move out from the niche in the rock, she was smitten once more with a terrible wrenching thirst. She tipped her water skin up to her mouth, but nothing came. She ran her tongue around the rim and found it dry. She had lived through the worst of the storm, but she could not live long without water. She knew nothing of the wells in this desert, and there was no oasis or clump of trees in sight. She saw nothing but rolling sand, thornbushes, and here and there a small acacia.

Abram would no doubt call upon his God for help, but what God would help a woman? Hathor had proved useless, and Abram’s God was probably not a God for women or Egyptians. She remembered how surprised she’d been when she first heard that Abram’s God actually spoke to him. Abram talked to Him as though he were a friend. What harm would it do to at least call out to Elohim and see if He would help? She thought of the child and instinctively put her hands on her stomach. For the child she must try.

The wind had died down, and in its place was heat rising from the sand and pushing up from the south in hot gusts that made the sand rise periodically in small puffs. Hagar spread her mantle on the sand as she had seen Abram do and knelt upon it with her face touching the earth. She had seen men bow before Pharaoh in the same way. “Elohim,” Abram had said, “was the Creator of all things.” He created the sand, and He created the water she so desperately needed.

Her prayer was simple: “Oh Lord God, named Elohim, creator of all things and friend to Abram, I carry Abram’s child and both of us will die without water. Do You see me? Can You give me water in this desert?”

That was all. She sat back and looked around. There was nothing. The same treeless expanse. The same dry heat. She slowly stood to her feet and shook the sand from her clothes. On impulse she climbed the rock that had sheltered her and looked around. At first she saw nothing, then her eyes settled on a round stone a short distance away. It had been covered by sand until the wind had blown it clean. Hagar had seen such stones on the way up from Egypt. They usually covered wells, but most wells were owned by tribes who
would not welcome a stranger making use of them.

Hagar didn’t hesitate to climb down and investigate. She feared that if it was indeed a well, the rock would be too heavy to move. She knelt down and pushed, then tugged and pulled until the large stone moved just enough for her to grasp the rope that hung from a projection inside the well. With trembling hands she fastened her water skin to the rope and then tried to move the rock far enough to lower the skin into the well.

It was impossible. The rock would not move. She sat back on her heels. There was a faint stirring in the thornbush that grew beside the well, and at the same time she had the feeling that someone was watching her. She stood up and looked around. If the owner appeared, he could refuse to let her have even one drop of the precious water. There was no one.

She knelt down again and in feverish desperation pushed at the rock. To her surprise, it moved quite easily, almost as though someone were helping her. With trembling hands she fastened the water skin to the rope and lowered it into the well. She almost laughed when she felt it hit the water. She quickly pulled it up and stood drinking the water in great gulps, ignoring what ran down her face and spilled over her clothes.

She was about to lower the skin again when there was a movement behind her and a voice said, “Hagar!”

Hagar whirled around to see who had spoken. Who knew her here in this wilderness? Who could speak her name?

There, half hidden in shadow, was a figure leaning against the rock. She strained to get a closer look, to be sure someone was really there. In the desert with the blowing sand, people often imagined they saw unusual things. She backed away and listened in astonishment. “Hagar,” she heard Him say, “I know you are Sarai’s maid.”

She strained to see just who had spoken. Who knew so much about her? As she backed away she heard Him ask, “Where have you come from?”

“I’m running away,” she said with a defiant toss of her head. “I’m running away from my mistress.” She turned and started walking, and to her surprise, the person didn’t try to stop her.

He asked, “Where are you going?”

For a moment there was silence as she looked at the vast expanse of wilderness before her. She saw no path and no sign of a living thing, only blowing sand and silence. She hesitated. The anger that had made her flight possible had
abated. She realized that she was hopelessly lost in a desert with wild beasts, blistering heat, and no other water.

She turned and saw that the stranger was still there, still hidden in the shadows. She wanted to ask him for help, but was too proud. He seemed to read her thoughts. “Hagar,” he said, “you have no choice but to return and submit to your mistress.”

At those words Hagar’s face clouded. Her eyes flashed with frustration and anger. “Never … I can never submit to Sarai. It’s impossible. You don’t know how I’ve suffered.” She paused, but sensing that He was not convinced, continued with even more anger, “She hates me for no reason. I can’t go back. I won’t submit.”

For a moment there was silence. When the stranger spoke again, it was with great tenderness and compassion. “Hagar,” he said, “the Lord has heard all your troubles. He knows all that has happened to you.”

Hagar was astonished. This stranger was no ordinary person. For a moment she wondered whether the heat or the desert sand had conjured up such a vision. As she leaned forward, peering into the shadows, the figure stepped out, and she was aware of His eyes, only His eyes. They were most astonishing. She had never seen eyes that radiated such strength and infinite compassion.

She had barely regained some composure when He spoke again, this time with authority that made her wonder whether He might not be the God of Abram. “Hagar,” he said, “you will bear a son and shall call him Ishmael because the Lord has heard you.”

“A son, I am to have a son,” she whispered as wonder and joy rose within her.

He held up his hand, signaling that there was more. “I,” He said, “will make of your descendants a great nation.”

“Ishmael,” she whispered. “I am to call his name Ishmael, ‘God hears.’”

As though to guard against too great an expectation, he continued to speak rather sadly and yet matter-of-factly. “He will be a wild, impulsive man,” he said. “He will be against everyone and everyone will be against him.”

Hagar started to speak, to object and question, but again the hand was raised. He hadn’t finished. “And,” he said, “he will live near the rest of his kin.” The message came to an end, and the stranger looked long and tenderly at Hagar then turned and slowly walked away.

Hagar stood, watching him go. Could she have imagined it all in a delirium caused by the heat?

Her eyes followed him as he went toward the east. She noticed that his sandals cast up small puffs of sand. “No mirage or vision would have done something like that,” she reasoned.

She watched as he walked steadily on, then suddenly he vanished, leaving only the wide expanse of empty sand and sky. “I have seen Abram’s God and lived,” she said in amazement.

The great rock stood solid and strong just as before; the sand had already begun to cover the well stone as she knelt and ran her hands around the rim. “I shall name this well, the Well of the Living One Who Sees Me,” she said.

As she stood up, a great wind began to blow. It puffed the sand in small peaks and spirals and made a noise like a rushing, mighty wind. There was something strong and joyful about it, though it blew her clothes taut against her and made walking almost impossible.

Hagar hardly noticed the strength of the wind for the joy and delight that rose up within her. “He knew me,” she murmured over and over again. “He saw me and saw all my troubles.”

She had only a vague idea of where she was or how to find her way back. Perhaps when the stars came out, they would help her. She would have to go north, since the desert and wilderness had always been to the south of where they were camped.

While finding her way back was difficult, it was not as difficult as the order to submit. The word held layers and layers of meaning. No Egyptian was ever known to submit to anyone. She, a princess, would find it harder than most. Submission went against her very nature.

As she hurried along she made plans. “If indeed it is a boy that I carry, I will name him Ishmael. I will tell Abram that we must name the boy Ishmael. When he asks why, I will tell him about the heavenly being and how He said Elohim had heard me, and so I must name the child ‘God heard me.’”

Hours later Hagar found Abram with some of his most trusted men out looking for her. He was obviously worried and distraught, and he said Sarai was back at camp, weeping with grief. Only when Hagar told him of the astounding encounter with the heavenly being did his eyes dance with delight. “So,” he said, “Elohim isn’t just concerned with the affairs of men, and He does hear a woman’s prayer, even an Egyptian woman’s prayer.”