There are two accounts in Genesis, separated by a few significant chapters, that involve names – specifically, the names of the people in the accounts and that of “the Name” (Hebrew HaShem השם) of the Almighty. First, in chapter 16, there’s the account of how Abram came to have a child by his wife’s servant:
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, “You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” But Abram said to Sarai, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.
The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit to her.” The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.”
And the angel of the LORD said to her,
“Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;
you shall call him Ishmael,
for the LORD has given heed to your affliction.
He shall be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.”
So she named the LORD who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
Genesis 16:1-14
Then, a few chapters later, we have the account of Hagar and her son being driven out by Abraham’s wife, Sarah:
The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Genesis 21:8-21
What’s in a Name? Well, quite a bit if you stop and study it.
Genealogy
I’m into genealogy. A lot. So much so that there’s a rule in our Sunday School class that I can’t talk about genealogy – a rule that I sometimes break and, well, we’re not in my Sunday School class right now.
My Christian name is Thomas. I’m named for my grandfather, Thomas Caswell Murray Wicker. He was named for his grandfather, Caswell Drake Wicker, who was named for Richard Caswell, the first governor of North Carolina, and also for his great grandmother, Nancy Drake, who was born in Scotland and emigrated in the mid 1700’s to North Carolina.
I’m also named for my great grandfather, Thomas Street Wiley, who was named for his father, John Charles Street Wiley, his grandmother, Jane Street, and ultimately, his great grandfather, Joseph Street. I’m not sure about the Thomas part when it comes to the Wiley family.
You could say that I’m also named for my 6th great grandfather, Thomas Oscar Wicker, or for his grandfather, Thomas Wicker, who was born in Devon, England, and emigrated to America in 1685, after the failed Monmouth Rebellion. As far as we know, he was the first of many, many Thomases – so many that it can drive a genealogist crazy . . . I found a couple of instances where a Thomas Wicker had a son named Thomas and, after his first wife died, he remarried and had a another son named Thomas.
You can see why they won’t let me talk about genealogy in Sunday School.
Methuselah, Abraham and Sarah
But you can learn a lot from genealogies. Including how Methuselah, the oldest person recorded in the Bible, died. Everyone knows that Methuselah is the oldest recorded person in the Bible and the genealogies give us a strong clue as to the manner of his death.
Genesis 5:25-27 tell us —
When Methuselah had lived one hundred eighty-seven years, he became the father of Lamech. Methuselah lived after the birth of Lamech seven hundred eighty-two years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years; and he died.
Then we are told of Lamech —
Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and became the father of a son. Now he called his name Noah [Hebrew נוּחַ “rest”], saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the LORD has cursed.” Then Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years after he became the father of Noah, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died.
Genesis 5:28-31
And then Noah
Now Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of water came upon the earth.
Genesis 7:6
You don’t need a chart to figure it out, but I thought a chart might be fun —
You could just as easily add 187+182+600 to find the answer
But back to our Scripture for today.
Notice in chapter 16, that Abraham is referred to as Abram (pronounced “Avram”) and Sarah is referred to as Sarai. As you know, that changed in Chapter 17:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram [Exalted Ancestor], but your name shall be Abraham [Ancestor of Multitudes]; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.
Genesis 17:1-5
The name “Abram” אַבְרָם(Avram) is composed of two words, av and ram, and means something like “exalted father.” Abraham אַבְרָהָם (Avraham), on the other hand, derives from the words אַב (av) and הֲמוֹן (hamon), as explained by the phrase “because [I give you as] a father of a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:5). So a one letter change makes the big difference.
And then in Genesis 17:15-16 –
Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
“Sarai” (שָׂרָי) and “Sarah” (שָׂרָה) are different forms of the same Hebrew word that basically means “princess/woman of strength”. It is likely that Sarai is simply the possessive form of Sarah (i.e. “My Sarah”). Sarah, therefore, signifies that her strength does not belong exclusively to her immediate family, but to the future nation of Israel and even the world-at-large.
Consonants And The Great Vowel Shift
There are a lot of Sarah’s in my family tree on Ancestry.com. It’s a very common name throughout the generations, and usually someone named “Sarah” would be referred to as “Sally.” [In the time of the Normans in the 11th and 12th centuries, people would often substitute the letter R for other letters (in this case it's replaced by two L's), and would add a Y to the end as well. And so Sarah became Sally.]
Have you ever wondered why people named Margaret are often nicknamed Peggy? Well, a diminutive of Margaret was Maggie or Maggs which, changed to Meg or Meggie after The Great Vowel Shift in the 16th century. Then, because it’s a common name, the English would use rhyming to distinguish one Meggy from another, by changing the first letter – in this case to Peggy. Same reason we get Bill from Will, short for William.
{Words had very different pronunciations in Middle English from their pronunciations in Modern English.• Long i in bite was pronounced as /iː/ so Middle English bite sounded like Modern English beet /biːt/.
• Long e in meet was pronounced as /eː/ so Middle English meet sounded similar to Modern English mate /meɪt/
• Long a in mate was pronounced as /aː/, with a vowel similar to the broad a of spa.
• Long o in boot was pronounced as /oː/, similar to modern oa in General American boat /oʊ/.}
The Name Of The LORD
But back to our Scripture –Notice that in Genesis 17:1, we have God referred to as LORD. Whenever you see that combination of a capital L followed by small caps “ord” it is a reference to the name YHVH or Yehovah – that is “I AM” or “I AM WHO I AM.” [The word “LORD” when spelled with capital letters stands for the divine name, YHWH, which is here connected with the verb hayah, “to be”.]
In Exodus 3:13-15 we find this:
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
So, when you see LORD it means YHWH which we sometimes say as “Yahweh” or even “Jehovah.” [Note: Jesus/Joshua/Yeshua}. Lowercase Lord, on the other hand, would translate as “sir” or something along those lines, and is usually a translation of the Hebrew Adonai.
But what about when we see “God”, as in the passage from Exodus and elsewhere – well, usually that refers to “El” or “Elohim.” In Genesis 17:1 – where we see the LORD address Abram as “God Almighty” this is our English rendering of the Hebrew “El Shaddai.”
Now, you should not use “Yahweh” or any other rendering when talking to a person of the Jewish faith. The name is not spoken. In fact, the reference is actually to “the Name” or “HaShem.”
But back to Hagar and Ishmael. We know that Ishmael derives from the Hebrew “El” or God, and “Ish” hears. So, “God hears.” And he does . . . in both chapters 16 and 21 of Genesis.
"Hagar" allegorically represents the Jewish church (Galatians 4:24), in bondage to the ceremonial law; while "Sarah" represents the Christian church, which is free. Some sources say that the name Hagar comes from the Hebrew for “flight,” as in “flee” or “forsaken.” Now, I told you I’m an “enthusiastic” genealogist. My family tree on Ancestry.com has almost 26,000 people in it. And there are a lot of Abrahams and Sarah/Sally’s. But not one Hagar.
Now we’re getting down to where I want us to go with today’s Scripture. Let’s take a look at Genesis 16 and 21 again.
So, What’s In A Name?
In Genesis 16, Sarai says, “You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And then she says, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl [Hebrew “maid”] to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” And Abram replies, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.”
In Genesis 21, Sarah says, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.”
Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah don’t recognize Hagar as a person, with a name, but as an object – “my slave-girl,” “this slave woman.” For that matter, they “name” Isaac, but Ishmael is also simply “the son of this slave woman.”
Now let’s see how God views Hagar.
In Chapter 16 the Angel of the Lord addresses her – “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”
And in Chapter 21, when God hears the cry of Ishmael, the Angel of the Lord says, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”
The difference in human and Divine recognition of Hagar tells us something about her (that she is a person of some worth) and about God (that God recognizes each of us as unique person of worth). “Unlike Abram and Sarai who will never identify Hagar by name, the Divine speaks to her in a most personal way . . .” (Elizabeth B. Tracy, See Me! Hear Me! Divine/Human Relational Dialogue in Genesis, Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, Peeters, (2015), p. 123). “With the initiation of dialogue by the Deity, Hagar is not reduced, as might be expected, to quivering silence. Instead, the appearance of the Divine and the questions asked have drawn Hagar to speak for the first time.” (Id.) In Hagar’s response, we see not a subservient person shrinking away but a person with an identity, recognized by God, who responds to God and even names him “El-Roi” that is, “God sees.”
“The blessing promised in Genesis 16:10 comes to Hagar; not a man, a husband or a patriarch. Of all the women in the book of Genesis, she is the only one to receive this divine promise directly and one of just four people ‘to hear the language of the promise from God’s own lips’.” Tracy, Supra, p. 125.
I’ve titled this little talk, “What’s in a Name,” and you might think that it’s about the name of Hagar. And it is. But more importantly, it’s about the name of our God, which even in the Old Testament is not just about God Almighty, “El Shaddai,” or “Elohim” or “Adonai” or even HaShem but –
The God who hears
The God who sees
The God who does justice
The God who calls each of us by our names
The God who is Love. 1 John 4:8.