Hagar’s Expulsion—A Tale Twice-Told in Genesis

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The artist is a biblical commentator just as surely as the literary critic who studies the Bible’s internal devices, as the form critic who looks at the origins of literary genres, or as the source critic who tries to disentangle components that may have been woven together to create the text we know. Both artist and scholar alike face the Bible’s complexity, requiring that they pick and choose among its myriad images, its contradictions, and its obscure meanings.

The ancient text of the Bible, transmitted from generation to generation, inspired written works such as translations, commentaries, poetry and literature—and pictorial creations such as paintings, frescoes, mosaics and sculpture.

The medieval world recognized that both words and pictures served the same purpose—to communicate the Bible’s message. Pictures were 028treated as additional “text,” usually aimed at an audience not trained in the written word. Pope Gregory in the fifth century suggested that “painting can do for the illiterate what writing does for those who read.”¹ And the 15th-century Dominican friar Savonarola wrote, “You fellow, ignorant of letters, go to the pictures and contemplate the life of Christ and his saints.”² Words and pictures became interchangeable, and thoughts were recorded by one means or the other.

But there is a difference between writers and artists as they interpret the Bible. From one perspective the word is flexible and the picture is rigid. The writer has no limitations of time or space; the writer can move backward and forward in time and change locations at will. The artist chooses a defined space and time, which can change only by working on a different surface. The artist cannot tell us about subtle thoughts and ideas with the limited vocabulary of pictographic symbols, or with the words that may be inserted into that given space.

From another perspective—it is the painter who has the advantage. Leonardo da Vinci characterized the painter’s advantage so eloquently that we must admire him not only as a pictorial artist, but as a master of words as well.³

“If you, poet, describe a bloody battle, will it be with air dark and murky, in the midst of frightful and death-dealing arms, mixed with the thick dust that defiles the atmosphere and the frightened flight of miserable men afraid of a horrible death? In this case, the painter will surpass you because your pen will be worn out before you describe fully what the painter with his medium can represent at once. Your tongue will be paralyzed with thirst and your body with sleep and hunger, before you depict with words, what the painter will show you in a moment.” In biblical literature, the text is often skeletal.

The literary critic Eric Auerbach observes that the Bible specifies “only so much of the phenomena as is necessary for the purpose of the narrative, all else is left in obscurity; the decisive points of the narrative alone are emphasized, what lies between is nonexistent.”⁴ As a result, the artist is left to fill the gaps in the narrative, a task shaped by the artist’s personality, personal tradition and knowledge, experience and surroundings.⁵

Approaching a biblical text the artist asks: Which details of the story will include? Which exclude? Which characters will be emphasized? Which minimized or ignored completely? How will I imagine the setting, the dress, the architecture—all the details undescribed but necessary to recreating a human scene?

The Bible includes many instances in which a particular story is repeated but with variations. Here too the artist must “interpret” and choose the episode to illustrate.

In this article, I will look closely at the way several artists portrayed the events following Hagar’s pregnancy with Ishmael. The story is told twice—in Genesis 16 and in Genesis 21.

In Genesis 16, Abram^a is told by the childless Sarai^b that he should take her maidservant Hagar as his concubine so that he may have a child. Abram heeds Sarai’s request and Hagar conceives. When Hagar discovers that she has conceived, she despises the barren Sarai. Sarai then complains to Abram about Hagar’s behavior. Abram’s advice to Sarai is to “do to her [Hagar] as it pleases you” (Genesis 16:6).

Sarai does indeed do something harsh to Hagar (although what she does is not revealed). Hagar responds by fleeing to the wilderness where the angel of the Lord finds her by a spring on the way to Shur. The angel tells Hagar to return to Sarai to await the birth of her son who shall be called Ishmael. Furthermore, the angel predicts that Ishmael “will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man and every man’s hand against him” (Genesis 16:12). Hagar returns home and bears her son who is then named Ishmael by Abram, his father. Abram is 86 years old when Ishmael is born.

The next episode, in Genesis 21, occurs after the birth of Isaac to Sarah and of Ishmael to Hagar. 029The occasion is a feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning. Sarah observes that Ishmael, Isaac’s older half-brother and son of Hagar, scoffs at Isaac. Sarah asks Abraham to “cast out this bondswoman and her son; for the son of this bondswoman shall not be heir with my son, Isaac” (Genesis 21:10). God urges Abraham to overcome his reluctance to act against Hagar and Ishmael and advises Abraham: “Whatever Sarah has said to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendants be named” (Genesis 21:12).

Giving them bread and water, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness of Beer-Sheba where they wander until the water is gone and the weak child can only lie on the ground and await death Hagar weeps in despair. God hears the voice of Ishmael and an angel of God calls to Hagar saying, “Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad …. Arise, lift up the lad and hold him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation” (Genesis 21:17–18). God opens Hagar’s eyes and she sees a well of water. His life saved, Ishmael lives to become an archer in the wilderness of Paran (and the ancestor of the Arab nations).

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Despite the many similarities between the narratives of Genesis 16 and 21, ⁶ there are also many differences. The differences are not only in small details, but also in the basic sequence of events, preceding or following the birth of Ishmael. Consider, for instance, Hagar’s arrival in the desert. In chapter 16, Sarai is barren, and Hagar is pregnant with Abram’s son as Sarai requested in order to give her husband an heir. In chapter 21, the events begin after Sarah had already given birth to Isaac, whose playmate is Ishmael, Hagar’s son. In chapter 16, the pregnant Hagar flees to the desert on her own, and meets the angel near the well. In chapter 21, the story varies; Hagar is supplied with bread and water by Abraham before she is sent by him into the wilderness with Ishmael. There is no water in the desert, and the boy almost dies of thirst. As Ishmael weakens Hagar moves a 031“bowshot” away so as to not witness his death; then the angel appears to her.

Hagar’s flight also differs in the two scenes. In chapter 16, Hagar asks Abram’s help in her rivalry with Sarai, but Abram refuses to interfere in his wife’s affairs. Since Hagar is the maid, she is Sarai’s responsibility;⁷ Abram lets Sarai decide what to do. In chapter 21, Sarah asks Abraham to send the maid away; Abraham fulfills her request with regret, but nonetheless sends Hagar and Ishmael away.

When artists transformed the stories about Ishmael and Hagar into visual images did they prefer the tale told in chapter 16 or the one related in chapter 21? Or did they intermingle the texts?

A close study of many artistic works that present Hagar reveals at the two episodes were not treated equally by artists. Most preferred to illustrate chapter 21. The artistic conceptions of chapter 21 usually combine the first two scenes of the text, in which Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away, having provided them with bread and water for the harsh journey, while in the background, Sarah and her small son Isaac watch the event for which they are blamed. These episodes from chapter 21 of the biblical text have been depicted by such artists as Rembrandt in his etching (above) and Gustave Doré (see etching below). Regardless of technique or style, the artists included in their pictures the literary details of the chapter 21 narrative. Often, all the characters of the story are included: Abraham who feels sorrow at the need to send away his son Ishmael with his mother Hagar; the rival female, Abraham’s wife Sarah, who watches her husband so that he will not give in to his feelings and reverse his decision; and Isaac, Sarah’s son, who will carry the blessing.

Some of the artists who illustrated this particular episode of Hagar’s expulsion also inserted into it their version of a future event suggested by the end of chapter 21: In verse 20, the biblical narrator says of Ishmael: “And God was with the lad, and he grew; and he dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.” Rembrandt in his etching of the scene of the departure of Hagar and Ishmael 032equipped the boy with a quiver of arrows and a bow, respectively, as if to hint to the audience the outcome of the story.

The biblical text is not explicit about Ishmael’s age,^c nor about how he behaved at the moment when he and his mother were sent off by Abraham. The boy is usually portrayed as a youngster. He is envisioned either as a free-spirited child, not participating in the events but playing with his bow and arrow, or as a participant sharing the burden of preparations for the journey by carrying the bread or by guiding the animal. Some artists anticipate the boy’s later emotions in their representations of Ishmael; for instance, Doré’s etching depicts Ishmael’s fear as he clings tightly to his mother’s dress.

But not all of the artistic compositions were inspired by the rich narrative of Genesis 21. Some, such as the drawing by Rembrandt (see photo of drawing), follow the different account of the story found in chapter 16. Rembrandt illustrates Sarai’s complaint to Abram that Hagar despised and scorned her. Abram does not interfere with his women and gives Sarai freedom to act according to her own judgment in regard to her pregnant maid Hagar. Sarai, the mistress of the house (in Rembrandt’s drawing), turns to her husband, Abram. Abram turns away from Sarai and does not even glance at Hagar, the future mother of his son, as if to indicate that it is the responsibility of Sarai to deal with the rebellious pregnant maid, who has lost respect for her barren mistress.⁸

When artists have focused particularly on Hagar, most often they choose to depict her actions as they are described in chapter 21: her confrontation with Sarah and her encounter with the angel of God in the desert. The most frequently represented scene is that of Hagar and Ishmael from chapter 21, rather than the solitary Hagar of chapter 16. For instance, Jean Baptiste Corot (see photo of “Hagar in the Wilderness”) shows us the desperate mother praying in the desert for her son’s survival. In other works, artists dwell on the angel’s miraculous discovery of the mother and son. Benjamin West’s painting, on the cover, shows the angel pointing toward the source of life, the well. The 17th-century artist Francois Cozza (see photo of “Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness”) did not let Hagar wait for help, but portrayed her taking an active role in searching for the well with her jar. The angel appears behind her and guides her to the well. The motifs of life and death, the relationship between the suffering child and his desperate mother, the loneliness of the wilderness and the miracle of salvation have all been illustrated by artists.

Although artists concentrated on Hagar in the desert, where, for an instant, she became the heroine, others, like Rembrandt carefully portrayed both episodes in Genesis, focusing on one account at a time, and faithfully adhering to each. The close study of biblical art may help us become more aware of details in biblical texts and of nuances in the characters and emotions of the people engaged in biblical events.

The artist is a biblical commentator just as surely as the literary critic who studies the Bible’s internal devices, as the form critic who looks at the origins of literary genres, or as the source critic who tries to disentangle components that may have been woven together to create the text we know. Both artist and scholar alike face the Bible’s complexity, requiring that they pick and choose among its myriad images, its contradictions, and its obscure meanings. The ancient text of the Bible, transmitted from generation to generation, inspired written works such as translations, commentaries, poetry and literature—and […]