Hagar, expelled and wandering, encounters a messenger/manifestation of God, who promises her a son who will thrive. She exclaims: “You God of Seeing!” and adds “Have I actually gone on seeing here, after his seeing me?”
Is this just surprise at surviving the encounter? Or has she also learned something? Harold Kushner suggests she intuits that just as God sees “the oppressed, the needy, the marginalized, those of whom human society takes no notice,” so must she.
“A youngster I have been; I have become old as well. But I have not seen a tzadik abandoned, his children begging for food,” we recite after meals. Perhaps the verse calls us to see, as God does, those whom society overlooks …
