BIBLE STUDY 17
Pastor: Abelina de Gómez
Sínodo Luterano Salvadoreño
Translation: Elisa Pérez Trejo
Iglesia Luterana Mexicana ILM
Sarah y Hagar
Genesis 21 : 8 - 21
Genesis 23: 1- 20
Introduction.
Patriarchal Society:
The Patriarchal Society gives us numerous ways of life for women of different conditions.
One of the different conditions was having many children, it was a longed-for honor, on the contrary, sterility was considered as a punishment from the hand of God, as an affront; On the other hand, having children was considered a sacred fact, motherhood was much admired, especially having male children, because it was considered that not having male children the tribe will disappear. And to ensure that the inheritance passed to their male children, rich men demanded virginity and fidelity from women, not from men. The violence of the rich men against women arose and they little by little the women lost the right to be independent. The owners fenced off their lands, their cattle claiming that they were private property as much as slaves and women.
So I want to highlight the way of life of these two women.
Sarah:
She was the mother of a great nation, a promise from God (Genesis 12) Leave the land and your relatives and I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great and you will be a blessing for all the families of the earth.
Sara is part of that promise, because it is from her that the great offspring come. Many times we fall into the error of seeing her as the bad woman who mistreats Hagar, it is necessary to see that the same patriarchal society puts them in competition and demands that they fulfill their functions.
Their age to have children was ending, they were running out of time , Sarah and Abraham were victims of despair, and they made their own plan.
It was difficult for Sarah to wait so long for God's promise to come true and because of this, the custom was to offer the husband a servant because she was sterile, the two accepted the plan, on the condition that the child would be born when of Sara. They communicated the plan Hagar, who accepts what her owners assign her.
God was present to fulfill his promise, when Sara heard the news that she was going to conceive, her laughter could be both delight and amazement.
Sarah; was a special woman for Abraham, she played a very important role in the nomadic culture, the fact of Abraham's insistence on buying a piece of land to make her burial has a great symbolic value, he wants to highlight the importance of this woman until the end of her life.
Hagar:
She was a slave and foreign woman, this reflected her place in patriarchal society.
As a woman relegated to a position of subordination in the patriarchal culture; slave: shows the exploited social class, without rights to which she belonged; foreigner, and dependent on her masters without rights and excluded.
Hagar's only ability was to have sons or daughters; history shows concern of man; the patriarch Abraham. To be a patriarch, you need male children and satisfy the patriarchal culture, the two women Sara and Hagar are placed in a competitive situation, who can better respond to the needs of the patriarch man, one has the privilege of being a wife but is sterile, the another can conceive, but is a slave, that is why her power and capacity of both is at the service of being used by man.
When Hagar's child is born, she mocks her sterile mistress, Sarah complains to her husband who exempted himself from all responsibility by saying: here is your servant in your hand, do with her what you see fit. (Genesis 16: 6). Sara followed his instructions.
Hagar goes to the desert fleeing from her mistress. For a moment she stopped to rest by an abandoned fountain, betrayed and fearful for feeling alone with her son in the desert.
An Angel of the Lord announced to Hagar that God had heard her crying; He told her to return to the house of his mistress and with all the confidence of a person who has experienced the presence of God in the middle of the desert, when the angel of the Lord said to her: I will multiply your descendants so much that they cannot be counted, you have conceived a son and you will call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. Hagar returned to her mistress's house.
God heard the crying of the child, it is a clear reference to the God of the exodus, God who choose for the most excluded, the most oppressed, the child of a foreign slave woman, expelled by her masters.
Hagar is the first woman in the Old Testament to see God. She receives God's blessing and the same promise that was made to Abraham of great offspring. The God of the oppressed rehabilitated in Hagar.
Our reality:
What can we learn from the two of them, Sara and Hagar?
We learn that God's people have limitations and that we should not be scandalized if we suffer because of their failures, because they are failures that the world offers us to have fear, despair, anguish, depression and many more negative things, as now today with COVID 19 the pandemic that many of us have fallen, not because of the disease but because other diseases attack us that kill our being, our body, our trust in God who sees everything, however if we must protect ourselves from abuse, we can find comfort in the fact that no matter how alone we are, or how distant we are, we are in the presence of the God who sees and who expects us to teach future generations to learn and wait on God and obey him.
