Since November 2025, I have been thinking deeply about what it means to belong. We belong to families, churches, nations, and communities. Such belonging shapes our identity, our obligations, and our understanding of ourselves. When that belonging is fractured—especially by those entrusted with authority—the loss is more than social. It is a disruption of one’s place in the world.
The story of Hagar raises this question in one of Scripture’s earliest covenant communities. Did Hagar belong to Abraham’s household? More importantly, what does it mean to belong to a covenant community called by God to bless the nations?
“I will make of you a great nation… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Gen 12
This covenant is not merely about Abraham’s descendants. It establishes Abraham’s household as a community through whom God’s blessing would reach others. The covenant therefore carries both privilege and responsibility. The community chosen by God must also become a community that reflects God’s character.
Hagar enters this covenant household as an Egyptian servant, likely acquired during Abraham and Sarah’s stay in Egypt (Gen. 12). Legally, she belongs to Abraham’s household. Ancient Near Eastern laws permitted a barren wife to give her slave to her husband in order to produce an heir. As Ilona Rashkow notes, the child born to a slave woman would belong to the slave owner rather than to the slave herself. Within that legal framework, Sarah’s proposal in Genesis 16 would have been culturally understandable.
Yet Genesis asks us to see beyond the legal framework.
Earlier, when God reaffirmed the covenant in Genesis 15, Abraham expressed concern that Eliezer, the head servant of his household, would become his heir. God explicitly responded that Abraham’s own offspring would inherit the promise. Nevertheless, when Sarah proposed obtaining children through Hagar, Abraham accepted her plan without recorded protest. Whether he misunderstood God’s promise, yielded to Sarah’s initiative, or simply failed to trust God’s timing, the narrative leaves the motives unstated.
What follows reveals a deeper failure.
After Hagar conceives, conflict arises between the two women. Sarah complains to Abraham, and Abraham responds, “Your slave is in your power; do to her as you please” (Gen. 16:6). Hagar is treated according to her legal status rather than according to the covenantal vocation of the household. She becomes a means to secure an heir rather than a neighbor to be received.
This distinction is significant. Hagar belongs to Abraham’s household legally, but does she belong relationally? Did she belong covenantally?
Ironically, Hagar herself continues to identify with the household. When the angel of the Lord meets her in the wilderness and asks where she has come from, she replies, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai” (Gen. 16:8). Even after abuse drives her away, she still understands herself as belonging to Sarah’s household. God meets Hagar in the wilderness, sees her suffering, speaks directly to her, and promises a future for her son. The God whom Abraham serves becomes the God who sees the one whom Abraham’s household has failed to see.
More than a decade later, after Isaac is born, Sarah demands that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away permanently. Once again Abraham yields. The household that was called to bless the nations cannot find room for the Egyptian woman and her son within its own community.
This raises an uncomfortable theological question. How can Abraham’s household become a blessing to all the families of the earth when it cannot embody blessing toward one of the most vulnerable members already living within it?
Genesis does not resolve this tension by rejecting Abraham’s covenant. Instead, God remains faithful to both Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac becomes the bearer of the covenant promise, while Ishmael also receives God’s protection and blessing. Divine election never negates God’s concern for those pushed to the margins by human communities. Election was never a means to exclude or dominate and direct another’s life. Election was always about relationships.
The story concludes with an intriguing image. Years later, Isaac and Ishmael stand together to bury Abraham (Gen. 25:9). Scripture offers no explanation, only the quiet possibility that fractured relationships need not remain permanently divided.
The story of Hagar ultimately asks more than whether she belonged to Abraham’s household. It asks whether Abraham’s household truly lived as a covenant community. Membership alone did not fulfill God’s calling. The covenant required a way of seeing and receiving others that reflected the God who had first called Abraham. The failure was not simply legal or ethical; it was covenantal. Hagar belonged to the household, yet she was never fully embraced within it.
Perhaps this is one of Genesis’ earliest lessons about belonging. A covenant community is not defined merely by shared ancestry or legal membership, but by whether it embodies God’s character toward those whom God has placed within its care.
A covenant community learns to see:
The covenant community is not merely a people who possess God’s promises; it is a people who learn to see as God sees. Hagar’s story exposes Abraham’s failure not only of justice but of vision. Although Hagar belonged to Abraham’s household, she remained invisible as a neighbor. Only in the wilderness does she encounter the God who sees her. Her confession, “You are El Roi,” becomes both a testimony to God’s compassion and a critique of the covenant community that failed to embody God’s way of seeing.
In the artwork, the viewer completes the piece by appearing in the mirror. In Genesis, the covenant community is incomplete until it learns to recognize every person within it as one whom God already sees (El Roi).
Inspired by the mirror-work tradition of Lippan art, my artwork invites the viewer to complete the image through their own reflection. The mirrors transform the viewer from observer into participant. Hagar’s story makes a similar demand. Rather than asking us merely to evaluate Abraham or Sarah, it asks whether we ourselves have learned to see those whom God sees.