Methodist Bishop

  Genesis 16, Matthew 4.1-11 Many passages in the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament, are a challenge for anyone who believes that the whole of Scripture is the inspired revelation of God. The stories they relate can be very upsetting, especially when measured by modern standards of behaviour. Hagar finds herself in an abusive relationship. She’s a slave and probably a young teenager. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Israel. Slave girls were often captured in raids carried out by warring neighbours. But in Hagar's case she was probably sold into slavery to settle a family debt. Sarai's decision to make Hagar sleep with her husband takes Hagar's slavery to new depths. No doubt Abram wasn't the only man in ancient Israel who slept with his wife's slave girl. Jeffrey Epstein was still procuring sex slaves for himself and his entitled friends in the Twenty-first Century. The unusual thing about Hagar's story is that it appears in a sacred text....