Genesis · Pentateuch (Law)

Genesis 16

Hagar bears Ishmael, creating tension within Abram’s household.

c. 2080 BCKey verses Genesis 16:2, 16:7-11, 16:13Read Genesis 16 in the ESVopens BibleGateway
Haran, about 1,250 ftAbram’s road from Haran into Canaan (Genesis 12:4-6), about 420 milesShechem, about 1,900 ft

16:7

“The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.”

Genesis 16:7, ESV

The chapter at a glance

  1. 1–6Sarai’s planHuman means to a divine promise breed contempt and cruelty
  2. 7–12The angel finds HagarThe LORD hears the afflicted runaway
  3. 13–14A God of seeingHagar names the God who sees her
  4. 15–16Ishmael bornThe son of human planning is born

The chapter in brief

After ten years in Canaan, Sarai is still childless. She gives Abram her Egyptian servant Hagar as a wife, hoping to obtain children by her, and Abram listens to her. When Hagar conceives, she looks with contempt on her mistress; Sarai blames Abram, Abram tells her to do as she pleases, and Sarai deals so harshly with Hagar that she runs away. The angel of the LORD finds her by a spring on the way to Shur, asks where she has come from and where she is going, tells her to return to her mistress and submit to her, and promises her offspring beyond counting. She will bear a son and call him Ishmael, “because the LORD has listened to your affliction”; he will be “a wild donkey of a man,” living at odds with his kinsmen. Hagar names the LORD who spoke to her “a God of seeing,” and the well is called Beer-lahai-roi. Hagar bears Abram a son, and Abram, now eighty-six, names him Ishmael.

This is the promise hurried by human means, and it echoes the fall. Abram “listened to the voice of Sarai” (v. 2), and God had said to Adam, “you have listened to the voice of your wife” (3:17), and Sarai “took” and “gave” to her husband (v. 3), as Eve took and gave (3:6). Blame follows as it did in Eden, and everyone in the tent wrongs someone or is wronged. Yet the one who meets God in this chapter is the outsider: an Egyptian servant, used, mistreated, and fleeing. The angel of the LORD speaks as God and is called God, and many Reformed readers see in Him an appearance of the Son before His incarnation. However that is read, the chapter shows the God who comes looking for the afflicted, the God made fully known in Christ, who “came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Points for discussion

vv. 1–6

Sarai’s plan

Documents from the ancient world describe a childless wife giving a servant to bear children counted as her own, so by the customs of the day the plan was unremarkable. Genesis measures it by Eden instead. Sarai blames God (“the LORD has prevented me”) and then Abram (“May the wrong done to me be on you!”), and Abram steps away: “do to her as you please.” Hagar never speaks in these verses and is never named by them; she is “my servant,” “your servant,” given and taken. Genesis does not endorse taking a second wife; the households in the book that do so are full of grief, against God’s pattern of one man and one woman (2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). Sarai “dealt harshly” with Hagar, and the verb (’anah) is the one used for Egypt afflicting Abram’s offspring (15:13; Exodus 1:11). Here the mistress from Abram’s house afflicts the Egyptian.

vv. 7–12

Where have you come from?

“The angel of the LORD” appears here for the first time in Scripture, and He finds her. He is the first in the story to call her by name: “Hagar, servant of Sarai.” He speaks as God, “I will surely multiply your offspring” (v. 10), and the narrator calls Him “the LORD who spoke to her” (v. 13). Many Reformed readers see in the angel of the LORD an appearance of the eternal Son before His incarnation, the One who makes the unseen God known (John 1:18; compare Exodus 3:2-6); others read a created angel speaking with God’s own authority, as an envoy speaks for a king. On either reading the Son did not become anything He was not; He took our flesh only at the incarnation (John 1:14). “Wild donkey of a man” pictures a free, untamed life in the open country (Job 39:5-8), not a curse. These words have been used as a slur against Arab peoples, and they never warrant contempt for any people.

For discussion

The angel tells Hagar, “Return to your mistress and submit to her” (v. 9). It was a command to her in her situation, with a promise for her son and God’s own eye on her, not a rule that anyone suffering abuse must go back to it. The law later forbade returning a runaway slave to a master (Deuteronomy 23:15-16), and no one is commanded to stay in danger. How do we read this command alongside God’s evident care for Hagar?

vv. 13–14

A God of seeing

Hagar gives God a name: “You are a God of seeing,” or, as the ESV footnote has it, “a God who sees me.” The rest of verse 13 is hard Hebrew, and translations differ, but its wonder is clear: she has been seen. The well is called Beer-lahai-roi, “the well of the Living One who sees me.” The God who hears (Ishmael’s name, v. 11) and sees (Hagar’s name for Him) is the God who will later say of Israel in Egypt, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people... and have heard their cry” (Exodus 3:7). And Isaac, the son of promise, will later make his home at this very well (24:62; 25:11).

vv. 15–16

Ishmael born

Abram names the boy Ishmael, so Hagar evidently told him what the angel said. He is eighty-six, and Genesis passes over thirteen silent years until God speaks again (17:1). Paul calls Ishmael the son “born according to the flesh” (Galatians 4:23). That describes the manner of his birth, by human arrangement rather than by promise; it is not a slur on the boy, whom God blesses (17:20).

Threads across the chapter

  • Hearing and seeing. Ishmael’s name, “the LORD has listened” (v. 11), and Hagar’s “God of seeing” (v. 13) are the pair God uses again of Israel in Egypt (Exodus 3:7).

  • Eden replayed. Abram listens to his wife’s voice and Sarai takes and gives (vv. 2-3), as in Genesis 3:6 and 3:17, and blame follows (vv. 5-6).

  • Affliction. Sarai afflicts her Egyptian servant (v. 6), and God hears her affliction (v. 11), a reversal of 15:13, where Egypt will afflict Abram’s offspring.

  • Names. Sarai and Abram never speak Hagar’s name (vv. 2, 5-6); the angel does (v. 8), and Hagar names God (v. 13).

Key words

16:7
מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה mal'akh YHWH“The angel of the LORD”; a messenger who speaks as God, seen by many Reformed readers as the Son before His incarnation and by others as a created angel
16:6, 11
עָנָה anah“Dealt harshly,” “affliction”; the word for Egypt’s oppression of Israel (15:13; Exodus 1:11)
16:11
יִשְׁמָעֵאל Yishma'el“Ishmael,” God hears; named because the LORD listened
16:13
אֵל רֳאִי El Ro'i“A God of seeing”; Hagar’s name for the God who saw her

Cross-references

Questions for your group

  1. 1

    Chapter 15 ended with God’s oath; chapter 16 begins with a plan to help God keep it. Why might the strongest promises be followed by the most anxious schemes?

  2. 2

    What do the echoes of Genesis 3 in verses 2-3 suggest about what went wrong in Abram’s tent?

  3. 3

    The one who names God in this chapter is an Egyptian servant whom Abram’s household never names. What does that tell us about the God of Abraham?

  4. 4

    Who in our churches and neighborhoods is most like Hagar, and how would the God who sees have us treat them?

  5. 5

    How should we read the command to “return to your mistress and submit to her” (v. 9) alongside Deuteronomy 23:15-16 and God’s care for the afflicted?

My notes