What Does Genesis 16:13 Mean?

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." Hagar's theological response to the divine encounter is the most personal and surprising divine name in Genesis: El Roi, the God who sees me. She does not name God by the title of the one who called Abram or by the El Elyon that Melchizedek used. She names God from her own experience of being seen in the desert. The God who found an Egyptian slave beside a road to Shur has been given a name by that slave: the God who sees.

The act of naming God is itself an act of theological intimacy. In the ancient world, to know a name was to have access; to give a name was to identify what one had encountered. Hagar's naming of God with the name El Roi is her personal testimony, the way her encounter can be told to others who were not there. The God she met was the seeing God, the one whose sight extended to the desert spring where a runaway slave sat in despair. That sight was the thing she named, because it was the thing that made the encounter what it was.

"I have now seen the One who sees me" is one of the most beautiful lines in Genesis. The mutual seeing, Hagar seeing the God who has seen her, describes the covenant encounter as a two-way recognition. God does specifically observe; He is seen by the one He sees. The God-who-sees of Genesis 16 is the same God who told Moses at the burning bush, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out." The God who sees is the one who ultimately does not remain invisible but becomes visible in Jesus, who said, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."