Genesis
Chapter 16
Ishmael
Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not borne him a child, but she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar.
And she said to Abram:
“Now, since the Lord has kept me from having children, go to my servant; perhaps I shall have a child by her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
Abram had been in the land of Canaan for ten years when Sarai, his wife, took Hagar, her Egyptian maid, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.
He had intercourse with her, and she became pregnant. When she became aware of this, she despised her mistress.
Sarai said to Abram:
“May this injury done to me be yours. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, I count for nothing in her eyes. Let the Lord judge between me and you.”
Abram said to Sarai:
“Your servant is in your power; do with her as you please.”
Then Sarai treated her so poorly that she ran away.
The angel of the Lord found her near a spring in the wilderness.
And said to her:
“Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”
She said:
“I’m running away from Sarai, my mistress.”
The angel of the Lord said to her:
“Go back to your mistress and humbly submit yourself to her.”
The angel of the Lord said to her:
“I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to be counted.”
Then the angel of the Lord said to her:
“Now you are with child, and you will have a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your distress.
He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, defiant towards all his brothers.
Hagar gave to the Lord who spoke to her the name ‘God who sees,’ for she said:
“I have seen the One who sees me.”
That is why this well is called the well of Beer-lahai-roi. It is located between Kadesh and Bered.
Hagar gave birth to a son, and Abram named him Ishmael, the child that Hagar bore.
Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.
Commentaries
Ishmael.
The promise of offspring (12:2f; 13:16; 15:5) has yet to be fulfilled. Sarah can no longer conceive, so she resorts to the common practice of the time to obtain a son through her Egyptian slave (1.3). As the same Mosaic law stipulates, “you shall not take slaves from your own people” (Lv 25:44), this detail indicates that the story is not ancient. What is very old is the antagonistic relationship between the Israelites and the Ishmaelites. This narrative establishes the historical opposition that has existed between Jews and Arabs. Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, although rejected by Sarah for her lack of respect, is not rejected by the Lord. To her, as matriarch of the Ishmaelite people, God also promises numerous offspring (10), but without territory. With subtlety, the writer relegates all these people to live on the fringes of the territory as a “wild foal,” “separated from their brothers” (12), subjected to them, according to the order given to their mother herself: “submit to her” (9). We must not overlook two fundamental aspects to consider in this episode: the limitations of the redactors and the liberating Gospel of Jesus.