Hagar

2 definitions found

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Hagar
     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.
     

From Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's) [hitchcock]:

  Hagar, a stranger; one that fears