Jamin Bradley

The current mistreatment of immigrants and strangers is nothing new. Indeed, it’s one of the earliest lessons in the Bible, found in the story of Hagar. Bible scholar Tim Mackie translates this name from Hebrew to English for us, noting that it literally means, “The Immigrant.” With this in mind, we recognize we are being set up to pay attention to Abraham and Sarah’s treatment of this immigrant.

Spoiler alert: It’s not good.

Hagar was an Egyptian slave given over to Abraham and Sarah’s control after Abraham made a cowardly decision that demeaned his wife and brought difficulty upon Pharaoh’s house. Being infertile, the couple decided to turn their newly acquired immigrant into a sex slave of sorts. By following an ancient surrogate custom, Abraham would impregnate Hagar, and their child would then be transferred to Abraham and Sarah.

As you can imagine, these horrific dynamics would create significant relational tension. The mistreatment of Hagar reached a point where she eventually fled from Abraham and Sarah. But God met the poor, abused immigrant in her pain, and Hagar became one of the few women in the Old Testament to have an encounter with the divine.

Hagar returned to her slave owners, and things eventually grew worse. Sarah had had enough of her, and so Abraham deported her from his house with some bread, water, and her child. They wandered the wilderness until death seemed imminent. Just when she had given up all hope that her child would live, she experienced the divine again. God provided for and blessed her, and she and her son moved on with their lives outside of the grip of Abraham and Sarah.

The mad irony, as Mackie points out, is that all of this mistreatment of “The Immigrant” comes right after God told Abraham that his descendants would one day be immigrant slaves in a foreign land. The golden rule to treat others as you would have them treat you goes completely unlearned in this story.

Even Joseph misses the lesson after he uses his newfound power to turn all of Egypt into slaves, which he himself once was. It’s no surprise that the book of Exodus begins with the Hebrews being turned into slaves by the Egyptians.

Hagar lives among Americans today, and she is crying out to God for help from our oppression. He is listening, and he will respond. How do we fit into her pain, and how might God need to address us? I pray we are listening.

From Oppressor to Oppressed: The Tragic Cycle of Dehumanization