What Does Genesis 16:9 Mean?

Then the angel of the Lord told her: "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." The divine instruction is not what Hagar might have hoped to hear. She is told to return to the household from which she fled, to submit to the mistress who mistreated her. This instruction is theologically uncomfortable and practically difficult. Why return to mistreatment? The answer lies in what follows: God is about to give Hagar a promise that requires the return. The child she carries needs to be born in a context where the covenant's geography can unfold around him.

The call to return and submit is the covenant God's intervention in an unjust situation that produces a command for the victim rather than a judgment on the perpetrators. The absence of a divine rebuke to Sarai in this chapter is one of its most difficult features. The mistreatment is not approved; the word used for it is the Exodus word for Egypt's treatment of Israel. But the divine response to the person in the desert is a call to return rather than a grant of escape. What God does for Hagar instead of escape is a promise and a presence that make the return endurable.

The same instruction, to return to something difficult because God's purposes require it, appears across the biblical narrative. Moses at the burning bush was told to go back to Egypt; Elijah under the juniper tree was told to go back to the work; Paul in the vision was told to go back to Damascus after his conversion. The call to return is always accompanied by a promise. The endurance that difficult returns require is supplied by the promise attached to them. Jesus returned to Jerusalem knowing what awaited Him because the promise on the other side of the cross determined the path through it.