The birth of Ishmael
1 Sarai, Abram’s wife had not borne him a child, but she had an Egyptian servant named Ha gar,
2 and she said to Abram, “Now, since Yahweh has kept me from having children, go to my servant; perhaps I shall have a child by her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
3 Abram had been in the land of Canaan ten years when Sarai, his wife, took Hagar, her Egyptian maid, and gave her to Abram her husband as wife.
4 He went in to Hagar and she became pregnant.
When she was aware of this, she began to despise her mistress.
5 Sa rai 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 Yahweh judge between me and you.”
6 Abram said to Sarai, “Your servant is in your power; do with her as you please.” Then Sarai treated her so badly that she ran away.
7 The angel of Yahweh found her near a spring in the wilderness
8 and said to her, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I’m run ning away from Sarai, my mistress.”
9 The angel of Yahweh said to her, “Go back to your mistress and humbly submit yourself to her.”
10 The angel of Yahweh said to her, “I will so increase your des cendants, that they will be too numerous to be counted.”
11 Then the angel of Yah weh said to her, “Now you are with child and you will have a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for Yahweh has heard your distress.
12 He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, defiant towards all his brothers.”
13 Hagar gave to Yahweh who spoke to her the name of El Roi, for she said: “I have seen the One who sees me.”
14 That is why this well is called the well of Lahai-roi. It is between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar gave birth to a son and Abram called the child Hagar bore him, Ishmael.
16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ish mael.
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Comments Genesis, Chapter 16
• 16.1 Abraham is concerned that God’s promise is not being fulfilled. This son whom God has promised to the old man, could he not per haps have it with Hagar, his other wife? For the child to be considered a son of Sarai, would it not be enough for her to adopt him according to the customs of those days? God remains silent and lets Abraham solve these problems in the way his still primitive conscience tells him.
But Abraham’s plan fails: the heir that God promised him will not be a son conceived and born “according to the flesh,” that is, by human means, but the son of a miracle. In this we see the freedom of God who prefers to fulfill his promises at the very time when they appear most impossible to achieve.
VISIONS AND ANGELS
What are we to think of these appearances of angels? Did they really happen or are these passages merely a way of speaking? Let us clarify the following:
– We must not confuse angels and the Angel of Yahweh. Only in the last books of the Old Tes tament (and naturally in the New Testament) are angels mentioned with the meaning that we give them: spiritual creatures who have their place in the ordering of the world and in the salvation of humans as for example in Zec 1 and 2 and also in Dn 9:21 and 10:12-21. Ancient Is raelites did, however, sometimes speak of the Angel of Yahweh or a Messenger of Yah weh to express things which they could not explain but which indicated an intervention by God.
When an epidemic providentially destroyed the Assyrian army, it was attributed to the Angel of Yahweh: see Isaiah 37:36 and also 2 Samuel 24:16. Since they knew that no one could see God, when someone had a vision, they spoke of the Angel of Yahweh: see Judges 6:11.
– The whole Bible shows that God reveals himself in many different ways to those who seek him. He speaks through events; he enlightens the hearts of those who read his Word; he speaks through our intuition and our dreams; he speaks through visions or words, and sometimes, as in the case of the prophets, in a more direct manner, in an intimate and spiritual way.
– We cannot, however, take literally all that is said about visions or words received from God because ancient people did not express themselves the way we do. When a person was reflecting or was tempted by evil, they sometimes expressed this inner meditation as a dialogue with different characters and would say that the devil or God dialogued with this person: see Joshua 7:10 and 1 Kings 3:4.
– It is quite possible that God did not act with ancient biblical people in the same way that he acts in our days. Now, after the coming of Christ, we have everything in him and in his church and we have no need of visions and appearances. God usually reserves them for those he leads on a special path. However, in the first centuries of biblical times, God re vealed himself much more through those more visible but inferior ways.
• 7. Go back to your mistress. This is a word of the Lord for so many people who suffer injustice, for girls who, in a liberal, class-conscious society, must accept humiliating tasks in order not to die of hunger with their parents; for the young people who, after a university education, realize that, except for a select few, modern society needs only sweepers and laborers.
Humbly submit yourself to her, not because her tyranny is just but because you, too, need to be freed from your arrogance. You are right in thinking that you are worth more than what society offers you, but if, through circumstances, the Lord humiliates you, trust in him and think that this humiliation prepares you for a greater mission than the one you were thinking about. If you remain conscious that God calls you to be a free person and one who frees others, he will give you the opportunity to do it.
Lahai-roi could be translated as the one who lives and sees. Of course, it is a popular etymology, but the text uses it to underline an important experience of Hagar: to have seen that God lives and sees us is enough to give us wings.