Hagar’s God is “YHWH El-Roi, “God sees me.”

As an ancient sacred scripture inspired by God, the Bible must contain material that lies dormant for many centuries until it is discovered by a much later generation that desperately needs it.

An almost unnoticed name of God from the age of Abraham may help promote peace and brotherhood among Christians, Jews and Muslims whose prophets all look back to Abraham, who is called a friend of God: “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you are descendants of Abraham my friend,—Isaiah 41:8 and “Our God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?” (II Chronicles 20:7)

“And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.” (James 2:23).

“And who is better in religion than one who submits himself to Allah while being a doer of good, and follows the religion of Abraham, the upright? And Allah took Abraham as an intimate friend.” (Qur’an 4:125)

Hagar and Sarah are the matriarchs of the Arabs and the Jews in both Jewish and Muslim interpretation. In the Bible, the rivalry between the two women is never mended, but many Jewish and Muslim feminist readers have used poetry to rewrite the ending of their story, in hope of reconciling the contemporary conflict between their descendants.

Hagar flees from Sarai into a wilderness. An angel of God appears to Hagar and instructs her to return and continue her suffering under Sarai, but God’s angel promises that Ishmael will be free. Hagar responds by naming God “YHWH El-Roi, “God has seen me.” Hagar’s story can be connected to Israel in Egypt, saying that Israel’s God cares about people beyond just Israel.

All three of Israel’s patriarchs receive messages from God, Hagar is the only one of their wives/concubines to receive a direct divine message, and to give a new name (“YHWH El-Roi, “God has seen me.”; the only person in the Bible to do so) to Prophet Abraham’s one God.

As Kathleen O’Connor notes in her commentary on Genesis: “To be seen in one’s suffering is to receive a most basic form of compassion. For another to see you as you are, to recognize your pain, your dehumanization and shame… is to have your humanity restored. Thus, “what God hears or gives ‘heed to’ is the affliction of an abandoned, dehumanized, and harshly abused woman.”

The God of Israel sees and hears a lowly, humiliated, foreign woman.

God reveals to Abraham God’s plan of making Ishmael a great nation alongside Isaac: (Genesis 21:13) “And as for the son of Hagar I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.” God speaks this way to lessen the pain Prophet Abraham feels at what he is being asked to do.

Whatever the case, God views both Prophets Isaac and Ishmael as the seed of Prophet Abraham, and each will have a great many offspring and fame of their own.

Hagar’s story makes a powerful point in a dramatic way. As Tikva Frymer-Kensky states: At the heart of the Abraham-Sarah cycle is a story demonstrating that the destiny of the people around Israel is not utterly different from Israel’s. The person God sees, and reveals Godself to, is, in Israelite terms, a foreigner and an outsider.

God’s promise to Hagar indicates that God is concerned with, and active in the life of, people—and peoples beyond Israel.As the contemporary biblical scholar John Goldingay observes,

God has not exclusively committed [Godself] to Abraham-Sarah. God’s concern is not confined to the elect line. There is passion and concern for the troubled ones who stand outside that line.

God sees and hears Israel’s afflictions, and also Hagar’s; God blesses Israel with abundant offspring, and also Hagar; God liberates Israel from slavery, and also Hagar; God is with Israel in the wilderness, and also with Ishmael.

In fact, Ishmael’s near-death experience in Genesis chapter 21, being saved by an angel at the last minute, parallels that of Isaac on Mount Moriah, in the next chapter Genesis 22.

When Jews speak of God in the third person, God’s name is YHVH “the One who causes being and becoming, the One who brings potentials into existence.”

This name was spoken publicly from the time of Moses and throughout the centuries of the 1st Temple of Solomon, but it was replaced by Adonai (Lord) before the beginning of the 4th century B.C.E., because God’s actual Holy name was eventually considered too holy to utter audibly.

In later centuries even the substitution was considered too holy to utter; and the custom among pious Jews till this day is not to use any name for God at all (except in prayer); but to say HaShem–the name (of God) when speaking about God.

Now we need to add to all the traditional appellations of God, a name that has been almost unnoticed during the past 150 generations that may help us promote peace and brotherhood among Christians, Jews and Muslims. This is a name of God that few Christians or Jews even know, much less use today.

Yet it is a name for God that I believe could become more important in the future as Christians, Jews and Muslims learn more about each other’s religions. This name, El Ro’ee, only appears twice in the Hebrew Bible and, as far as I know, is not used at all in the Talmud or Midrash as a Divine appellation.

Abraham’s Egyptian wife Hagar, uses El Ro’ee as a her special name for God. El Ro’ee means A God Who Sees Me. It also becomes the name for a well (Zamzum?). “Then she (Hagar) called the name of YHVH, who spoke to her, El Ro’ee, ‘You are a God who sees me’; for she said, ‘Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?’ Therefore the well (where this happened) was called Beer-laHai-roee; the well of the Living One (Al-Hayy) who sees me. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael” (Genesis 16:13-15)

Neither Sarah nor Hagar/Ha-jar are mentioned by name in the Qur’an, but the story of Ha-jar’s exile from Abraham’s home is traditionally understood to be referred to in a line from Ibrāhīm’s prayer in the Qur’an (14:37): “I have settled some of my family in a barren valley near your Sacred House (the Kaaba)”

Muslim tradition relates that when Hā-jar ran out of water, and Ismā’īl, an infant at that time, began to die; Hā-jar panicked and ran between two nearby hills, Al-Safa and Al-Marwah repeatedly searching for water. After her seventh run, Ismā’īl hit the ground with his heel and miraculously caused a well to spring out of the ground called Zamzum Well. It is located a few meters from the Kaaba in Mecca.

Perhaps these two Torah names of God, El Ro’ee and Hai (Hayy) Ro’ee; which are Hagar’s names for God, which mean a God Who Sees Me, and the name for the Zamzum well ‘Beer-laHai-roi’; the well of the Living One (Hayy) who sees me; can help bring Christians, Jews and Muslims, who all share respect for Abraham and his family, to see each other better; and thus become closer to one another in the future.

That would be an excellent example of the power of God’s name to cause seemingly impossible future transformations in all kinds of people and places.