Genesis 16

Years after God’s promise of offspring, Sarai and Abram grow tired of waiting and try to fulfill it through Hagar. The plan brings pain, jealousy and flight. Yet God finds the runaway slave in the desert, hears her, and gives her a promise and a name for Him: the God who sees.

Genesis 16:1

Sarai is still childless, though God had promised Abram descendants. Hagar, an Egyptian slave girl, is introduced quietly. She may have come from Egypt during their earlier stay there. The chapter will turn on the two women and on one long delay.

BSA: maidservant (“female slave, servant girl”): Hagar owned nothing and had no say, which makes what is done with her more troubling and God’s attention to her more striking.

See also: Genesis 12:2; Genesis 15:4-5.

Genesis 16:2

Sarai blames the LORD for her barrenness and proposes a human shortcut. In that world, a servant’s child could be counted as the wife’s own. Abram simply agrees. Echoing Eden, a husband listens to his wife’s voice and takes what is offered, instead of waiting on God’s word.

BSA: listened (“heard, obeyed”): Abram did more than hear Sarai; he obeyed her, setting her voice above the promise he had been given.

Hebrew: וַיִּשְׁמַע (vayyishma, H8085) — “and he listened, obeyed.” The Hebrew verb for hearing also means obeying. The same phrase, listening to the voice of his wife, appears in Genesis 3:17.

See also: Genesis 3:17.

Genesis 16:3

Ten years had passed in Canaan with the promise still unfulfilled. Waiting wears people down. Sarai gives Hagar to Abram as a secondary wife, hoping to gain a child by her. It was a common custom of the time, but it was not God’s way.

BSA: wife (“a secondary wife, a concubine”): Hagar gains a lesser marriage standing, yet she remains under Sarai’s household, which sets up the conflict.

Genesis 16:4

Hagar conceives, and her new status goes to her head. She looks down on Sarai, the one whose barrenness she has just relieved. The plan meant to fix the problem has created a bigger one: broken relationships inside the household.

BSA: despise (“treat with contempt, lightly esteem”): Hagar began to treat Sarai as of little weight, reversing the household’s order.

Genesis 16:5

Sarai now blames Abram, though the plan was hers. She feels wronged and asks the LORD to judge between them. Human schemes that bypass God often end in blame. Her hurt is real, but she does not see her own part.

BSA: wrong (“injustice, violence”): Sarai calls her pain an injustice, even though she had designed the arrangement herself.

Genesis 16:6

Abram steps back and hands Hagar over to Sarai. Sarai then treats her so harshly that Hagar runs away. The one with the least power carries the cost of everyone else’s impatience. Hagar flees into the wilderness, alone and pregnant.

BSA: harshly (“cruelly, roughly”): Sarai’s treatment was oppressive, and it drove a pregnant girl into the desert.

Genesis 16:7

Hagar has no one, but the angel of the LORD finds her. The spring in the desert on the road to Shur, which leads toward Egypt, would be a natural place for a traveler to stop. God comes to the one everyone else has used and abandoned.

BSA: angel (“messenger of God, heavenly representative”): This messenger speaks for the LORD and is soon spoken of as the LORD Himself.

See also: Psalm 139:7-10.

Genesis 16:8

The angel calls her by name and by her place, then asks two questions. He is not short of information. He asks so that Hagar will face her own situation and say it aloud. She answers only the first: she is running away.

BSA: running away (“fleeing, escaping”): Hagar admits what she is doing, though she cannot say where she is headed.

Genesis 16:9

The angel tells her to go back and submit. It is a hard word. She is not told to endure forever without hope, though. God sends her back with a promise attached, for the sake of her child and the household in which he will be born.

BSA: submit (“be occupied, humble yourself”): The word means to be brought low, to place oneself under another’s hand.

Genesis 16:10

Before saying anything more, God gives Hagar a promise very like the one given to Abram. Her descendants will be countless. A slave woman, unseen by all, receives a promise of greatness. God’s care extends to people the world overlooks.

BSA: multiply (“increase, grow”): The same word is used of God’s promises to Abraham, showing He is generous to Hagar too.

See also: Genesis 15:5.

Genesis 16:11

God tells her the child’s sex and gives his name: Ishmael, meaning God hears. The name will remind her all her life that the LORD heard her misery. Her son is a living memorial that God listens to the afflicted.

BSA: heard (“listened to, hearkened”): God truly listened to Hagar’s suffering, and the boy’s name carries that fact.

Hebrew: יִשְׁמָעֵאל (Yishma’el, H3458) — “God hears.” The name joins the verb to hear with the word for God. Every time she called her son, she spoke of a God who listens.

See also: Psalm 34:17.

Genesis 16:12

Ishmael is pictured as a wild donkey of a man, free, untamed and hard to hold. His life will be marked by conflict with those around him. It is a frank word about his character and his descendants, yet he will still live near his kin.

BSA: hostility (“a state of opposition or conflict”): The prophecy describes ongoing friction with neighbors and relatives, not a single quarrel.

Genesis 16:13

Hagar names the LORD, the only person in Scripture who gives God a name. She calls Him the God who sees me. In the desert she had expected to be unseen, but she has been seen and has lived. Her wonder is that she met God and was not destroyed.

BSA: sees (“looks upon, knows intimately”): God’s seeing is not a passing glance; He knows her and cares for her.

Hebrew: אֵל רֳאִי (El Ro’i, H413) — “God of seeing.” Hagar’s name for God can mean the God who sees me. It says that being seen by God is comfort, not only exposure.

See also: Psalm 139:1-3.

Genesis 16:14

The well is named Beer-lahai-roi, a reminder of this meeting. It lay between Kadesh and Bered, in the southern region. Places later become memorials of what God did there. Isaac will live near this well after Abraham’s death.

BSA: well (“spring, water source”): The same water that kept Hagar alive became a lasting witness to God’s care.

See also: Genesis 25:11.

Genesis 16:15-16

Hagar returns, bears Ishmael, and Abram names him as God had instructed. Abram is eighty-six, so the promise of Sarai’s own son is still thirteen years away. Ishmael is loved and acknowledged, even though he is not the child of promise.

BSA: bore (“gave birth to, beget”): Hagar bore Abram a real son, and the family’s story is now bound up with his.

See also: Genesis 17:1; Genesis 21:17-18.