Sarai's Plan, Hagar's Burden
16 1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had not given him any children. But she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar. 2 Sarai said to Abram, "Look, our Father has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my servant; perhaps I can build a family through her." And Abram did what Sarai said. a a v2 In that culture a servant could bear a child on behalf of the household, and the child would be received as the family's own. 3 So after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai his wife took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "The wrong done to me is on you! I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May our Father judge between you and me."
6 "Look, your servant is in your hands," Abram said to Sarai. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated her, and Hagar fled from her.
7 The messenger of our Father found Hagar near a spring in the wilderness, the spring beside the road to Shur. b b v7 The messenger of YHWH speaks as our Father himself — appearing to Hagar in form she can meet, hear, and answer. 8 "Hagar, servant of Sarai," he said, "where have you come from, and where are you going?" "I am running away from my mistress Sarai," she replied.
9 "Go back to your mistress," the messenger of our Father told her, "and submit to her authority." 10 And the messenger of our Father said to her, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too many to count." 11 The messenger of our Father also said to her: "You are now pregnant and will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for our Father has heard of your misery." c c v11 The name Ishmael means "God hears" — naming what our Father had just done for Hagar in her affliction. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.
13 She called the name of our Father who spoke to her, "You are El Roi — my Father who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." d d v13 El Roi means "God who sees." Hagar — alone and afraid in the wilderness — gives our Father this name because he saw her and met her there. 14 That is why the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named the son she had borne Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.