Genesis
Summary
Genesis 16 describes how Sarai, being childless, gives her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abram to bear a child. Hagar conceives but begins to despise Sarai, who then mistreats her. Hagar flees into the wilderness, where an angel of the Lord finds her, tells her to return, and promises to multiply her descendants through her soon-to-be-born son, Ishmael.
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar;
so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from bearing children. Please go, sleep with my servant; perhaps I can build a house through her." Abram heard the voice of Sarai.
So after Abram had been living in Canaan for ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian servant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.
He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she had conceived, she began to despise her mistress.
Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she has conceived, she despises me. May the LORD judge between me and you."
"Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do to her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.
The [1] (Angel of the LORD) found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.
And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" "I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai," she answered.
Then the Angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit under her hands."
The Angel of the LORD added, "I will increase your seed so much that they will be too many to number."
The Angel of the LORD also said to her: "Behold, you are now with child and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael (God hears), for the LORD has heard your affliction.
He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in defiance of all his brothers."
She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "Thou art El Roi (The God Who Sees Me)," for she said, "I have truly seen the One who sees me."
That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne.
Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.