Genesis · chapter 16 of 50
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Genesis 16 tells how Sarai, barren and weary of waiting, gives her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abram so that she may have children through her. Hagar conceives and despises Sarai, who mistreats her, and Hagar flees into the wilderness. The angel of the Lord finds her by a spring, tells her to return and promises her a great number of descendants. Hagar bears Ishmael when Abram is eighty-six years old.
Genesis 16 comes after the promises of Genesis 12 and 15. Ten years have passed in Canaan and Sarai still has no children. The chapter shows what happens when waiting becomes unbearable and a human solution is sought, and also how God draws near with compassion to a slave and foreign woman, forgotten by everyone.
Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar. After ten years in Canaan, Sarai proposes that Abram go in to Hagar so that she may have children through her servant. Abram agrees. Hagar conceives and, seeing this, despises her mistress.
Sarai complains to Abram and tells him the wrong done to her is on him. Abram answers that Hagar is in Sarai's hands and she may do with her as she pleases. Sarai mistreats her and Hagar flees. The angel of the Lord finds her by a spring of water in the wilderness, on the way to Shur, and asks where she has come from and where she is going. She says she is fleeing from her mistress. The angel tells her to return and submit, and promises to multiply her offspring so that they cannot be counted.
The angel announces that she will bear a son and will call him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard her affliction. He will be a wild man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live at odds with his kin. Hagar calls the Lord who spoke to her the God who sees me, for she has seen the one who sees her. The well is called Beer-lahai-roi. Hagar bears Ishmael, and Abram was eighty-six years old.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Sarai tells Abram that the Lord has kept her from having children and proposes that he go in to her servant. Although it was an accepted practice in her time, it is a human way out that does not wait for God and will bring pain to everyone.
The angel of the Lord finds Hagar by a spring in the wilderness and calls her by name, asking where she has come from and where she is going. God seeks the runaway slave, whom no one in the story had looked at with interest.
The angel announces that Hagar will have a son and will call him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard her affliction. The name, which means God hears, will always recall that God listened to the cry of a woman in the wilderness.
Hagar calls the Lord the God who sees me and marvels that she has seen the one who sees her. It is the only case in the Bible where a person gives God a name, and it is a slave and foreign woman who does it.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: Sarai's Egyptian servant. — Genesis 16:1
Answer: That he go in to her servant Hagar so that she might have children through her. — Genesis 16:2
Answer: She looked with contempt on her mistress Sarai. — Genesis 16:4
Answer: By a spring of water in the wilderness, on the way to Shur. — Genesis 16:7
Answer: God hears, because the Lord had heard her affliction. — Genesis 16:11
Answer: The God who sees me. — Genesis 16:13
Genesis 16 teaches us to tell apart waiting on God from helping him fulfill his promise on our own. Sarai and Abram acted out of impatience, and the result was family pain. In a group you can ask which promise of God is hard for us to wait for, and which tempting shortcuts show up.
The chapter also comforts anyone who feels invisible. God sees Hagar when no one else does, calls her by name and listens to her. Ask who around you no one seems to see, and how the church can reflect God's compassionate gaze without ceasing to tell the truth about what is happening.
Genesis 16 ends with the birth of Ishmael, Abram's son but not the son of the promise. In Genesis 17 God will appear to Abram at ninety-nine, change his name to Abraham and confirm the covenant.
In the ancient world it was an accepted practice for a barren wife to give her servant to her husband so that the children would count as hers. The text does not approve it as a model of faith: it presents it as a human way out that comes from impatience and ends up bringing conflict.
In the Old Testament the angel of the Lord sometimes speaks as if he were God himself, as here, where he promises offspring and Hagar says she saw God. Many Christians see in these appearances a manifestation of the Lord, though the text does not fully explain it.
The text gives no reasons. Hagar was alone and pregnant in the wilderness, and returning meant protection for her and her son. God also promises her a great number of descendants, so going back is not a defeat but the way for what he announces to be fulfilled.