Each of the seventeen short chapters of Finding Hagar: God’s Pursuit of a Runaway by Michael Kuhn begins with an expressive drawing by his daughter Bethany Giles, followed by a fictionalized account of Hagar’s thoughts, grounded in the biblical text and inspired by the culture and social life of the Middle East. Chapters continue with scholarly analyses of Hagar from Genesis 16, 21, and 25, with a digression into Paul’s mention of Hagar in Galatians.
The book is helpful in providing information on Ancient Near Eastern perspectives and laws on childless marriages and the custom of siring heirs through a slave. Kuhn’s imaginative reconstruction of Hagar’s prospect of becoming the second wife in an often-in-conflict polygamous family by marrying Abram, possibly her senior by as much as sixty years (16), is touching. The text draws a contrast between this union wherein Hagar and even her womb are owned, and the emotional attraction that Isaac and Rebekah had (Genesis 24:67).
Finding Hagar brings out the importance of names and naming in Hebrew culture. Hagar, plausibly given to Sarai during her time in the Egyptian harem (Genesis 12:10–20), has a name that may be a play on words from the common Semitic root h-g-r, meaning “the stranger” in Hebrew and “to flee” in Arabic (5). God calls Hagar by her name, which no one else does, acknowledging that she is more than a mere servant. He names the boy in Hagar’s womb Ishmael, “God hears,” signifying that he hears hers and the boy’s weeping and will keep his promise (74). Hagar, the sole Old Testament character who names the deity they interact with (54), responds by naming Yahweh El Ro’i, “The God Who Sees Me” (Genesis 16:13).
Kuhn develops various literary parallels, some at length: the lives of Hagar and Moses; God’s covenant promises to the patriarchs and to Hagar (30) that her offspring will be multiplied beyond number (Genesis 16:10); God’s compassionate, but corrective, treatment of Hagar and that of Jesus with the Samaritan woman (John 4), both outsiders. The author surprises us with facts: with the exception of Mary the mother of Jesus, Hagar is the only woman in Scripture to receive such a sweeping promise and the first since Eve to encounter Yahweh (40).
The book also develops literary motifs like inversion and irony. As an Egyptian enslaved by the covenant people, Hagar is the inverse of the future reality that Abram’s progeny would serve in a foreign land before returning to their promised inheritance (Genesis 15:13–14).
After Hagar and Ishmael are banished (Genesis 21:8–14), the story holds strong notes of irony and redemption. Hagar may have hoped for freedom, but now it holds misery (Genesis 21:16). Ishmael, lying helpless in the chaotic wilderness, will soon be a desert survivor, an expert hunter with the bow (Genesis 21:20).
Kuhn spends quite a bit of ink proving that God’s statement to Hagar about her son’s future was a promise rather than the curse it sounds like. Ishmael’s hand being “against all” does not imply hostility; rather, it means he will not be subject to anyone (49). That he will be “a wild donkey of a man” compares him positively to the desert donkey that roams the rugged Middle Eastern deserts. It is a symbol of freedom and self-determination, a reversal of her condition and an apt description for Bedouin people like Ishmael’s descendants (48). The third phrase in God’s blessing to Hagar, mistakenly translated “in hostility to his brothers,” simply means that he will live in proximity to his brother Isaac in the region we know today as the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, southern Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia (49).
The book strengthens this argument by citing little-considered Old Testament passages that belie hostility between Ishmael and Isaac; for example, they bury Abraham together (Genesis 25:9), and biblical mentions of the twelve princes that God promises will issue from Ishmael (Gen 17:20) are positive rather than negative. Kuhn also tackles Paul’s allegory based on Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4:21–31, and concludes that it is the sons of Isaac rather than Ishmael who are the “son of the slave woman,” and that the analogy says nothing about any ethnic group in the Middle East today, whether Jews or Gentiles (79).
In the appendix “Ishmael: Father of the Arabs?” Kuhn distinguishes Arabs and Muslims from the descendants of Ishmael but stresses the symbolic significance for the Arab peoples of the fatherhood of Abraham (115). Muslim pilgrims walk Hagar’s circuit seeking water (114).
The book challenges our attitudes and actions toward displaced peoples, refugees, and asylum seekers, especially Arab and Muslim people. Rather than fear and exclude Muslims, we should regard them missionally, as Jesus treats Samaritans, an ethnic and religious group his Jewish contemporaries perceive as enemies (111). The inclusion of Ishmael in God’s covenant, symbolized by circumcision, should invigorate our hope that many Arabs and Muslims will find their peace with God in Jesus, the promised seed of Abraham (112). Conversely, the author confronts Abraham and Sarah, archetypes of faith, who reflect contemporary Christians’ residual tendency towards self-preservation and aggrandizement, which often results in abuse (108).
Finding Hagar is a good corrective read for biblical scholars as well as for Christians with negative attitudes toward Hagar, Ishmael, and Arab peoples, and it provides encouragement for any who feel unnoticed in a subservient position, especially women who do not have the joys of egalitarian relationships or churches and women of color who have experienced marginalization.