If Hagar was a slave, why wasn’t she freed after seven years with Abraham and Sarah in accordance with Jeremiah 34:14?

The command in Jeremiah 34:14 about freeing a servant after seven years does not apply to Hagar, because that law had not yet been given. 

Hagar lived in the days of Abraham and Sarah—hundreds of years before Moses, before the Exodus, and before God gave Israel the Law at Mount Sinai. The seven‑year release applied only to Hebrew servants serving fellow Israelites under the Mosaic Law (Exodus 21:2), not to foreigners, and certainly not to people who lived long before the Law existed. 

Hagar was an Egyptian maidservant, likely given to Sarah from Pharaoh’s household, and her status followed the customs of the ancient Near East, not the later Israelite legal system.

Even after the Law was established, foreign servants were not under the six‑year release requirement (Leviticus 25:44–46). It is also important to note that Hagar was not treated as a slave in the modern sense; she was a household servant who, according to the culture of the time, could be given to Abraham as a concubine to bear a child on Sarah’s behalf. 

Finally, Hagar was ultimately released—God instructed Abraham to allow her to leave, and He personally protected her, spoke to her, and promised to make Ishmael a great nation (Genesis 21).  Hagar was not kept in violation of any divine command. The law about releasing servants simply did not exist yet, did not apply to Egyptians, and was never intended to govern Abraham’s household centuries before Israel became a nation.

To learn more about lessons from the lives of Abraham and Sarah listen to, “How Do I Let Go And Let God?”