Hagar
The cast-out servant who named God — “the Living One who sees me”
Twice Expelled
Hagar appears in scripture as an Egyptian servant in Sarai’s household — given by Sarai to Abraham as a secondary wife when the promise of children seemed slow. When Hagar conceived and “her mistress was despised in her eyes” (Genesis 16:4), Sarai dealt harshly with her and she fled into the wilderness alone and pregnant.
The second expulsion came after Isaac’s birth, when Sarah demanded Abraham send Hagar and her son Ishmael away entirely. Abraham gave them bread and water and sent them into the desert of Beersheba. When the water ran out and Ishmael was dying, Hagar laid him under a shrub and walked away, unable to watch him die: “Let me not see the death of the child” (Genesis 21:16).
The God Who Sees
Both times Hagar was alone in the wilderness, God found her. The first time, the angel of the Lord sat with her at a spring and asked: “Whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?” (Genesis 16:8) — not to get information, but to open a conversation with a woman no one else in the story was listening to. He promised her a son and a future. And Hagar did something no other person in scripture does: she named God.
Genesis 16:13–14
“And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? Wherefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; that is, the well of the Living One who sees me.”
El Roi — the God who sees. She gave God that name from the bottom of her need, in the wilderness, alone and without standing. She was not a matriarch of Israel. She was the one who was sent away. And God sat with her at a well and saw her.
The second time — when she and Ishmael were dying in Beersheba — God again opened a well. “God heard the voice of the lad” and came to Hagar: “Fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad” (Genesis 21:17). He did not save them through Abraham’s household. He saved them directly, in the wilderness, as He had before.
Hagar teaches that God’s care is not limited to the chosen lineage or the covenant household. He finds the one who has been cast out, sits with them at their well, and asks where they are going. El Roi — the Living One who sees — is a name given to God by a woman the story could easily have discarded. He does not discard her. He does not discard anyone sitting alone at a well in the wilderness with no water left.