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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Genesis 16:13 - 16:13
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In the angel, Hagar recognised God manifesting Himself to her, the presence of Jehovah, and called Him, “Thou art a God of seeing; for she said, Have I also seen here after seeing?” Believing that a man must die if he saw God (Exo 20:19; Exo 33:20), Hagar was astonished that she had seen God and remained alive, and called Jehovah, who had spoken to her, “God of seeing,” i.e., who allows Himself to be seen, because here, on the spot where this sight was granted her, after seeing she still saw, i.e., remained alive. From this occurrence the well received the name of “well of the seeing alive,” i.e., at which a man saw God and remained alive. Beer-lahai-roi: according to Ewald, רֹאִי חַי is to be regarded as a composite noun, and לְ as a sign of the genitive; but this explanation, in which רֹאִי is treated as a pausal form of רֳאִי, does not suit the form רֹאִי with the accent upon the last syllable, which points rather to the participle רֹאֶה with the first pers. suffix. On this ground Delitzsch and others have decided in favour of the interpretation given in the Chaldee version, “Thou art a God of seeing, i.e., the all-seeing, from whose all-seeing eye the helpless and forsaken is not hidden even in the farthest corner of the desert.” “Have I not even here (in the barren land of solitude) looked after Him, who saw me?” and Beer-lahai-roi, “the well of the Living One who sees me, i.e., of the omnipresent Providence.” But still greater difficulties lie in the way of this view. It not only overthrows the close connection between this and the similar passages Gen 32:31; Exo 33:20; Jdg 13:22, where the sight of God excites a fear of death, but it renders the name, which the well received from this appearance of God, an inexplicable riddle. If Hagar called the God who appeared to her ראי אל because she looked after Him whom she saw, i.e., as we must necessarily understand the word, saw not His face, but only His back; how could it ever occur to her or to any one else, to call the well Beer-lahai-roi, “well of the Living One, who sees me,” instead of Beer-el-roi? Moreover, what completely overthrows this explanation, is the fact that neither in Genesis nor anywhere in the Pentateuch is God called “the Living One;” and throughout the Old Testament it is only in contrast with the dead gods of idols of the heathen, a contrast never thought of here, that the expressions חַי אֱלֹהִים and חַי אֵל occur, whilst הַחַי is never used in the Old Testament as a name of God. For these reasons we must abide by the first explanation, and change the reading רֹאִי into רֳאִי.
(Note: The objections to this change in the accentuation are entirely counterbalanced by the grammatical difficulty connected with the second explanation. If, for example, רֹאִי is a participle with the 1st pers. suff., it should be written רֹאֵנִי (Isa 29:15) or רֹאָנִי (Isa 47:10). רֹאִי cannot mean, “who sees me,” but “my seer,” an expression utterly inapplicable to God, which cannot be supported by a reference to Job 7:8, for the accentuation varies there; and the derivation of רֹאִי from רֳאִי “eye of the seeing,” for the eye which looks after me, is apparently fully warranted by the analogous expression לֵדָה אֵשֶׁת in Jer 13:21.)
With regard to the well, it is still further added that it was between Kadesh (Gen 14:7) and Bered. Though Bered has not been discovered, Rowland believes, with good reason, that he has found the well of Hagar, which is mentioned again in Gen 24:62; Gen 25:11, in the spring Ain Kades, to the south of Beersheba, at the leading place of encampment of the caravans passing from Syria to Sinai, viz., Moyle, or Moilahi, or Muweilih (Robinson, Pal. i. p. 280), which the Arabs call Moilahi Hagar, and in the neighbourhood of which they point out a rock Beit Hagar. Bered must lie to the west of this.