El Roi Meaning: Hagar and the God Who Sees Me
El Roi means "the God who sees me." A runaway slave woman said it by a spring in the desert, and she is the one who gave God that name.
What does El Roi mean?
It means the God who sees me. The name comes from Genesis 16, where Hagar, alone and pregnant, answers the one who found her.
“So Hagar gave this name to the LORD who had spoken to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘Here I have seen the One who sees me!’”
(Genesis 16:13, BSB)
"El" is the Hebrew word for God, and the second half is the word for sees (Hebrew: רֳאִי, ro'i, “sight, a seeing”). Strong's gives it as sight, whether a vision or a spectacle, and the KJV renders it look to or see. So the name can be heard two ways. He is the God who sees me, and he is the God whose sight I can stand in. Hagar says both. She was seen, and then she saw.
The name is rare. Abraham named a place after God ("The LORD Will Provide," Genesis 22:14) and Gideon named an altar ("The LORD Is Peace," Judges 6:24). Hagar named the LORD (Hebrew: יְהֹוָה, YHWH, “Jehovah, the Lord”) himself, the God whose personal name sits behind the capital letters. And she was not an heir, a priest or a prophet. She was a woman nobody had asked anything.
Who was Hagar?
Hagar was an Egyptian slave in Abram's household, and she was given away without being asked. The story starts with a woman who has no say in her own life.
“Now Abram’s wife Sarai had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.”
(Genesis 16:1, BSB)
Sarai had waited, and the waiting had worn her down. The BSB tells us what she did next.
“So after he had lived in Canaan for ten years, his wife Sarai took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to Abram to be his wife.”
(Genesis 16:3, BSB)
Sarai took her and gave her. The text records no question put to Hagar and no answer from her. Ten years of waiting had gone by in Canaan, and Hagar had not been part of any of the conversations about it. When she conceived, the pressure inside the house broke, and the story turns hard.
Why does no one in the story say her name?
Because to the people who owned her she was not a person with a name. She was a servant. Follow the speech and the pattern is hard to miss. The narrator calls her Hagar. The two people with power over her never do.
“Please go to my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family by her.”
(Genesis 16:2, BSB)
“I delivered my servant into your arms…”
(Genesis 16:5, BSB)
“‘Here,’ said Abram, ‘your servant is in your hands. Do whatever you want with her.’”
(Genesis 16:6, BSB)
Sarai says "my maidservant" and "my servant." Abram says "your servant." Neither of them speaks her name in all of it, and Abram hands her back with the words "do whatever you want." What followed is in the next line.
“Then Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she fled from her.”
(Genesis 16:6, BSB)
The verb behind "treated so harshly" is 'anah (Hebrew: עָנָה, 'anah, “to afflict, humble”). Strong's gives it as to depress or afflict, and the KJV renders it afflict, humble or deal hardly with. An interlinear check confirms that the same verb (Strong's 6031) is used in Exodus when Egypt crushes Israel.
“So the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.”
(Exodus 1:11, BSB)
The irony runs both ways. Here an Egyptian slave is afflicted in a household of Abram's family. Centuries later the descendants of that household are afflicted in Egypt, and the same word describes both. The story does not draw the line for us. It leaves the two verses side by side.
Where did the angel find her?
He found her at a spring in the desert, on the road to Shur, and the text says he went looking. Nobody sent for him. She did not call.
“Now the angel of the LORD found Hagar by a spring of water in the desert—the spring along the road to Shur.”
(Genesis 16:7, BSB)
The word for angel (Hebrew: מֲלְאָךְ, mal'ak, “messenger, angel”) is the Hebrew for a messenger, one who is sent. Strong's traces it to a root meaning to despatch as a deputy. This is the first time the phrase "angel of the LORD" appears in the Bible, and it appears for her. The study on who the Angel of the LORD is follows him through the rest of the story.
Shur lies on the road toward Egypt. She was going home. A pregnant slave with no money and no family was walking the one road that led back to the land she came from.
Then he asks her a question.
“‘Hagar, servant of Sarai,’ he said, ‘where have you come from, and where are you going?’”
(Genesis 16:8, BSB)
Notice first that he says her name. Everyone who speaks about her calls her a servant, and the first voice to say "Hagar" aloud is the one who came out to the desert to find her. He adds "servant of Sarai," because he knows exactly who she belongs to, and then he asks her to say it.
The question is not for his benefit. In the garden God called to the man who was hiding, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). To Elijah in his cave God said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9). God does not ask because he lacks the answer. He asks so the person has to say where they really are. Hagar answers honestly. “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” It is the first thing the chapter records her saying.
Why did the angel send her back?
That is the hard part of the story, and it should not be smoothed over. He tells her to go back.
“So the angel of the LORD told her, ‘Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.’”
(Genesis 16:9, BSB)
Nobody is rescued out here. She is sent back into the house where she was hurt. If the story stopped at that verse it would be an unkind one. But it does not stop there, and the pattern is one the Bible repeats. God rarely lifts people over what they dread. He walks them through it (the study on whether God brings you through it follows that thread across the Bible).
She does not go back empty. The next sentence is a promise.
“Then the angel added, ‘I will greatly multiply your offspring so that they will be too numerous to count.’”
(Genesis 16:10, BSB)
Listen to who is speaking. The angel says "I will multiply," and he says it in the first person. It echoes what the LORD said when he took Abram outside, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able” (Genesis 15:5). A promise of numberless children once given to the husband is now given to the slave. Hagar is told, in the middle of the desert, that her story is bigger than this house.
What does Ishmael mean?
Ishmael means "God will hear." The name is built from two Hebrew words, and God chose it before the boy was born.
“And you shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard your cry of affliction.”
(Genesis 16:11, BSB)
The first half is heard (Hebrew: שָׁמַע, shama', “to hear, listen”). Strong's gives the root as to hear intelligently, often with attention or obedience, and it lists Ishmael as coming from that root and the word for God. The second word is the noun for affliction (Hebrew: עֳנִי, 'oni, “affliction, misery”), which Strong's derives from the same root as the harsh treatment in verse 6. An interlinear check shows that "has heard" in this verse is that verb (Strong's 8085) and "affliction" is that noun (Strong's 6040). So her pain has a name, and the name is his answer to it. The word that described what Sarai did is now the word God says he has heard.
Every time Hagar calls her son, she says it. God hears. For the rest of the boy's life his own name is the sentence that tells his mother she was listened to. God says it again to Abraham, “As for Ishmael, I have heard you” (Genesis 17:20).
What happened to Hagar's well?
It got a name, and it became a landmark.
“Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi. It is located between Kadesh and Bered.”
(Genesis 16:14, BSB)
The first part of the name is Beer (Hebrew: בְּאֵר, be'er, “a well, pit”), the Hebrew word for a well or pit, and the last part is her own name for God, ro'i, the one who sees. Her words were put on a map. A slave who had no property had a place named after the moment she met God.
The map keeps going. When Isaac comes into the story as a grown man, this is where he lives.
“Now Isaac had just returned from Beer-lahai-roi, for he was living in the Negev.”
(Genesis 24:62, BSB)
“After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who lived near Beer-lahai-roi.”
(Genesis 25:11, BSB)
The son of the mistress, the child of the promise, made his home beside the slave woman's well. God blessed him there. The place where Hagar was seen became the place where the next generation was blessed.
What happened when Hagar was sent away again?
She was cast out a second time, and the God who sees her was already there. After Isaac was born, Sarah saw Ishmael mocking and asked for them both to be sent out.
“Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac!”
(Genesis 21:10, BSB)
Again she is not Hagar. She is "the slave woman." And again she is sent out, this time with bread and a skin of water.
“Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba.”
(Genesis 21:14, BSB)
Then the water runs out. She puts the boy under a bush and goes a bowshot away, because she cannot watch him die, and she weeps (Genesis 21:15-16). This is the lowest she has been in the whole story. But look at what God hears.
“Then God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, ‘What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies.’”
(Genesis 21:17, BSB)
"God heard" is the meaning of the boy's name, said aloud in the desert. And the voice from heaven says "Hagar." Sarah said "slave woman." Heaven says her name.
“Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.”
(Genesis 21:19, BSB)
The text does not say that a new well appeared. It says God opened her eyes and she saw one. The water may have been within reach the whole time. The God who sees did for her what she once said of him. She had named him the One who sees, and now he opened the eyes of the woman who named him.
What does "the God who sees me" mean for you?
It means you are not too small, too far off or too forgotten to be found. Hagar had no standing in her household, no road home and no one speaking her name. God came to her anyway, and he came first.
Look at the order. He found her before she asked. He spoke her name before she spoke his. He saw her before she was rescued, and being seen was what carried her through the rescue that came slowly after. For a lot of people the thing they need first is not a solution. It is to be known by someone who is not looking away.
Many centuries later Jesus sat down at another well, tired from the road, and asked a woman for a drink (John 4:6-7). She was a Samaritan, and the text says, “Jews do not associate with Samaritans” (John 4:9). He spoke to her anyway and told her about “living water” (John 4:10). It is the same pattern, in the same sort of place, with a woman the surrounding world had walked past.
He finds people who are not looking for him. He says the name everyone else forgot. And no one he finds is ever sent back unseen.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (public domain), every verse quoted, including Genesis 3:9, 15:5, 16:1-14, 17:20, 21:10-19, 22:14, 24:62 and 25:11, Exodus 1:11, Judges 6:24, 1 Kings 19:9 and John 4:6-10.
- Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, digitised by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA), for the Hebrew words, their meanings and the KJV renderings. Each marked word links to its entry in the word glossary.
- Word-in-verse checks (the same verb in Genesis 16:6 and Exodus 1:11, and the roots in Genesis 16:11) were made against the Genesis 16:6, Exodus 1:11 and Genesis 16:11 interlinear pages on Bible Hub.