What Does Genesis 16:4 Mean?

Abram slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. The plan produced the intended biological result: Hagar conceived. But it also produced an unintended relational result: Hagar, now pregnant and therefore elevated in the social logic of a world where fertility conferred status, began to look down on the barren Sarai. The surrogacy has succeeded in producing a pregnancy and failed in producing the household harmony that was necessary for the plan to work as Sarai had hoped.

The phrase "she began to despise her mistress" is the ancient Hebrew idiom "Sarai was insignificant in her eyes", the same root used for the cursing prohibition in Exodus (you shall not despise your father and mother). Hagar's attitude toward Sarai is the opposite of the honor that social convention demanded a servant give to a mistress. The pregnancy has inverted the social hierarchy in Hagar's own perception of herself and her position: she carries what Sarai cannot produce, and she treats that as a license to regard Sarai as lesser.

The relational dynamic that Hagar's contempt toward Sarai creates is one of the most realistically rendered human complications in Genesis. The plan that was supposed to solve the barrenness problem has introduced a hostility problem between the two women who must share a household. This is the domestic cost of the decision that was made with theological hope but without accounting for the full range of human responses to changed circumstances. What Jesus said about serving two masters applies here: the attempt to serve both the divine promise and the human convention of surrogacy simultaneously has created competing loyalties and competing injuries.