Person
Hagar
Also called Agar
Mentioned in 12 verses across 2 books, first in Genesis 16:1. The verses below are the ones linked to this person (the Theographic dataset, with our sourced corrections).
In these stories
In the Bible
The first 10 of 12 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
Genesis
- Genesis 16:1
Now Abram’s wife Sarai had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.
- Genesis 16:3
So after he had lived in Canaan for ten years, his wife Sarai took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to Abram to be his wife.
- Genesis 16:4
And he slept with Hagar, and she conceived. But when Hagar realized that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
- Genesis 16:8
“Hagar, servant of Sarai,” he said, “where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I am running away from my mistress Sarai,” she replied.
- Genesis 16:15
And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne.
- Genesis 16:16
Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
- Genesis 21:9
But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking her son,
- Genesis 21:14
Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba.
- Genesis 21:17
Then God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, “What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies.
- Genesis 25:12
This is the account of Abraham’s son Ishmael, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s maidservant, bore to Abraham.
Events
Events the dataset lists Hagar as taking part in. Dates follow its Ussher–Jones reckoning (one of several traditional counts), not established history.
- c. 1910 BCBirth of Ishmael
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. The entry is for the name and can describe more than one person who bore it. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
Flight, or, according to others, stranger, an Egyptian, Sarah’s handmaid (Gen. 16:1; 21:9, 10), whom she gave to Abraham (q.v.) as a secondary wife (16:2). When she was about to become a mother she fled from the cruelty of her mistress, intending apparently to return to her relatives in Egypt, through the desert of Shur, which lay between. Wearied and worn she had reached the place she distinguished by the name of Beer-lahai-roi (“the well of the visible God”), where the angel of the Lord appeared to her. In obedience to the heavenly visitor she returned to the tent of Abraham, where her son Ishmael was born, and where she remained (16) till after the birth of Isaac, the space of fourteen years. Sarah after this began to vent her dissatisfaction both on Hagar and her child. Ishmael’s conduct was insulting to Sarah, and she insisted that he and his mother should be dismissed. This was accordingly done, although with reluctance on the part of Abraham (Gen. 21:14). They wandered out into the wilderness, where Ishmael, exhausted with his journey and faint from thirst, seemed about to die. Hagar “lifted up her voice and wept,” and the angel of the Lord, as before, appeared unto her, and she was comforted and delivered out of her distresses (Gen. 21:18, 19).
Ishmael afterwards established himself in the wilderness of Paran, where he married an Egyptian (Gen. 21:20, 21).
“Hagar” allegorically represents the Jewish church (Gal. 4:24), in bondage to the ceremonial law; while “Sarah” represents the Christian church, which is free.