Hagar is Banished
Hagar is a slave acquired during a sojourn in Egypt, an allusion to the future Israelite slavery in that country. As a slave, she suffers. In the first account of her (Genesis, Chapter 16) she suffers through the fault of her pride, whereas in the second episode (Ch. 21) she merely suffers.
By chapter sixteen, Abraham has already been promised children but Sarah specifically has yet to be told that it is through her Abraham will have a favored son (Ch. 17). During this interim, Sarah tries to take a hand in fulfilling the promise made to Abraham. Although her request sounds unusual to modern ears, it would in those days merely have been pragmatic, and even praiseworthy, for her to say, "Look, the LORD has kept me from bearing. Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her." (16:2) Abraham's assent does not even warrant a quotation - he goes along with Sarah's plan as a matter of course. It's natural to be fruitful and multiply, so there's no shame in Sarah's request.
But troubles soon arise. We're drawn into the domestic life of Abraham, and the human emotions teeming there, as in many Biblical households. Hagar takes pride in her pregnancy, and loses respect for Sarah. Here lies Hagar's fault. We can well imagine her subtle glances, and carefully chosen words. Such pride would grow with every inch that Hagar swelled. It seemed so easy to Sarah, when she said, "I shall have a son through her" (16:2). It might be understandable that Hagar would take pride in having conceived, but we also understand how Sarah would be troubled by Hagar's conceit.
Despairingly, Sarah accuses Abraham of being responsible for Hagar's pride. Abraham replies, "Very well; your slave girl is at your disposal. Treat her as you see fit." Hagar is but Sarah's slave after all, and Abraham relinquishes all responsibility for her. Hagar now has no appeal within the household. When mistreated, she can only run away.
Run away Hagar does. She now realizes the error of her pride, wandering alone and pregnant in the wilderness. "After all," she thinks, "am I not a slave?" As we could imagine her prideful glances working on Sarah, now we imagine the slave's debasement and reproach turned inward as Hagar wanders alone. She now feels what a mistake it was to run away. Now when she is brought low, a divine Angel appears to her. The Angel says, "Go back to your mistress, and submit to her harsh treatment" (16:9). If the story ended here, it wouldn't reveal the understanding and concern for humanity that Genesis is known for. Instead, it would contain the cruelest of moral injunctions: the slave must submit to the master. Fortunately, God continues the vision with a prophecy similar to the one given to Abraham. Hagar is the first woman since Eve to have a vision of divinity. In chapter fifteen, Abraham is asked if he can count the stars, and is told, "So shall your offspring be" (15:5). Hagar is told that her offspring will be "too many to count" (16:10).
Even the slave can behold the Light and still see. In effect, the LORD is saying that Hagar had no reason to have been puffed up with pride, because she was always as worthy of God's light as Sarah was. "Have I not gone on seeing after He saw me!" (16:13) she exclaims, in her realization that the Light is accessible to her also. Now she can return to Sarah with her self-worth regained, because she knows that she is watched over, even though she is a slave.
If we can see Hagar's pride as a tragic fault which led to her suffering mistreatment at the hands of Sarah, the second episode concerning Hagar reveals Sarah as having a fault. However, neither is Sarah punished for her fault, nor is Hagar's punishment the result of any fault. Sarah's fault concerns the trouble which plagues domestic households of the Patriarchs - the division of the inheritance. It's good for the community if the inheritance is not divided, because when it is divided up it loses the strength it has. Thus, although Sarah has the fault of selfishness, in the context of Genesis it is no more unworthy of her to ask Abraham to cast out the slave-woman than it was for her to ask Abraham to sleep with Hagar in the first place. It was the survival of the community she had in mind when she asked Abraham to have a child "through Hagar," and so it is in the interest of the community that she asks Abraham to throw Hagar and her son out.
Now Abraham can't be as pragmatically logical and disinterested as in the first episode, when he had no trouble deciding that Sarah could do anything she wanted with the slave that was hers. "The matter distressed Abraham greatly, for it concerned a son of his" (21:11). Why was he not distressed the first time? We are given no explanation as to why he would be concerned for Hagar this time and not in the last episode, when he condoned Sarah's mistreatment of Hagar. We can guess at possibilities: (a) Hagar's child had not yet been born, so there was no assurance that it would be a son; (b) he recognized Hagar's fault of pride the first time; (c) he didn't know that Hagar would flee to the wilderness.
Banishment into the wilderness is tantamount to a death sentence, and surely Abraham realizes this. But just as God intervenes to spare the life of Isaac in the next chapter, so here He reassures Abraham that He will spare the life of Hagar. We cannot know whether Abraham would have actually sent Hagar out to a certain death in the wilderness if he had not received the assurance (21:12).
Even though Abraham knows that Hagar and her son will not perish, Hagar herself is not told. She is brought even lower in the second episode than in the first - at least the first time in the wilderness she found a spring of water (16:7). Now her water runs out and she is faced with the grim prospect of watching her only child die of thirst. We could get some consolation from the fact that in the first episode her suffering was the result of her pride, but in this episode there seems to be no clear reason why she is made to believe that her son will die. "She left the child under one of the bushes, and went and sat down at a distance, a bow-shot away; for she thought, 'Let me not look on as the child dies.' And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears" (21:15).
One can't help but see the parallel between this scene and the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham in the next chapter. Although she is not asked specifically to sacrifice her only son Ishmael, like Abraham she is led to believe that her child will be taken. Both trials are a consequence of having been promised offspring "too many to count," and becoming the progenitors of "great nations."
Unfortunately for Ishmael, though, the comparison ends here. Ishmael becomes the first of Abraham's descendants to lose out on the inheritance; like Esau after him he is not a favored son. "He shall be a wild ass of a man; his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; he shall dwell alongside of all his kinsmen" (16:12).