“And the Angel of the Lord said to her: “Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. 12 He shall be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” 13 Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer Lahai Roi (Well of the One Who Lives and Sees Me); observe, it is between Kadesh and Bered” (Gen. 16:11–14 ).
The risk of anthropomorphizing
Granted that we, believers, are aware that God is very different than man, we nevertheless run the risk—in some areas at least—to anthropomorphize the great I AM as to render Him more comprehensible or more accessible. We might not be aware of that danger, but the possibility is lurking on the periphery of our mind, awaiting the propitious moment to jump in and distort our concept of Him.
That man has been created in the image of God in the realm of personality is beyond question, but when it comes to dimension the similarity collapses, for God is infinite and man finite. It follows that the notion of infinity remains abstract for us, and can hardly be imagined adequately, i.e., there is a gap between God’s understanding of infinity and ours. This should not surprise us, for God experiences it in first person and we don’t.
Hagar
The story of Hagar pours valuable light on the difficulty we have to conceptualize God adequately. Left on our own there will be no hope of success, and a disfiguration of the Godhead would be the only possible result. Happily, God can reveal Himself and partially close the gap created by our finiteness. Therefore we can acquire valid knowledge, but only in part (1 Cor. 13:9).
This is precisely what happened to Hagar. The Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness and told her she would give birth to a son. He also told her which kind of man he will be, and that his descendants will multiply exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude. He also gave her immediate direction in regard to what she should do next. So she heard God’s voice with her very ears. But amazingly, what impressed her the most was not the fact that God speaks, but rather the fact that He sees:
Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” (Gen. 16:13).
There, by that spring of water, God revealed something of Himself to Hagar. And the revelation had to do with His sight.
Two kinds of sight
When Hagar said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” (Gen. 16:13), she brings to light a knowledge obtained by revelation. Only then and there she did see the God who sees her. That’s what a revelation does; it opens our eyes and makes us see something true of God.
Pay attention to the words Hagar spoke, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” (Gen. 16:13). Her words underline a contrast between her sight and God’s sight, i.e., between our human sight and the divine sight.
The permanent sight of God
Hagar didn’t say: “Have I also here seen Him who saw me?” But rather, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” Hagar had come to know, through revelation, that when she had ceased to see God, God was still seeing her, that is, she had experienced the permanent sight of God. It’s one thing to have this information in our head, but it’s a completely different thing to know it as Hagar knew it. She had seen El Roi (ראי אל), “the God who sees me”. When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was I Am” (John 8:58), He was declaring His divinity. But he was also declaring it—or better say, revealing it—when He met Nathanael:
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Nathanael understood, then and there, that Jesus had seen him all along. He got a glimpse of the permanent sight of God and came to the conclusion that this was no ordinary man. “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
The first contrast
So here we have the first polarity between God’s sight and ours. Ours is fleeting and transitory, God’s sight is abiding. He sees us uninterruptedly. In fact, He sees everyone and everything that way. This thought haunted Nietzsche. In “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” he created a character that eventually becomes the murderer of God. Later on the criminal explains the reason of his act:
But he … had to die: he saw with eyes that saw everything—he saw the depths and grounds of people; he saw all of their hidden humiliation and ugliness. His pity had no shame: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This absolutely-curious, too-intrusive, too-pitying one had to die. He always saw me: I wanted to have revenge on such a witness—or else not live.
The God who saw everything, everyone included—this God had to die! A person cannot stand it, that such a witness should live.”
These words might mirror Nietzsche’s personal motivation, not to kill God as he supposed, but to kill the inner knowledge he had of Him and the insupportable cognizance he had of himself.
Yes! God is indeed El Roi (אל ראי), “the God who sees me”, and sees me always.
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