Genesis 16:1

Gen 16:1 Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name [was] Hagar.

Ver. 1. Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bare him no children.] God had foretold him of his children’s affliction, and yet gave him no child, but holds him still in suspense. He knows how to commend his favours to us by withholding them, Cito data cito vilescunt ; we account it scarce worth taking, that is not twice worth asking.

A handmaid, an Egyptian.] One of those maids, belike, that were given her in Egypt. {Gen 12:16}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

- The Birth of Ishmael

1. הנר hāgār, Hagar, “flight.” Hejrah, the flight of Muhammed.

7. מלאך mal'ak “messenger, angel.” A deputy commissioned to discharge a certain duty for the principal whom he represents. As the most usual task is that of bearing messages, commands, or tidings, he is commonly called a “messenger” ἄγγελος angelos). The word is therefore a term of office, and does not further distinguish the office-bearer than as an intelligent being. Hence, a מלאך mal'ak may be a man deputed by a man Gen 32:3; Job 1:14, or by God Hag 1:13; Mal 3:1, or a superhuman being delegated in this case only by God. The English term “angel” is now especially appropriated to the latter class of messengers.

1st. The nature of angels is spiritual Heb 1:14. This characteristic ranges over the whole chain of spiritual being from man up to God himself. The extreme links, however, are excluded: man, because he is a special class of intelligent creatures; and God, because he is supreme. Other classes of spiritual beings may be excluded - as the cherubim, the seraphim - because they have not the same office, though the word “angelic” is sometimes used by us as synonymous with heavenly or spiritual. They were all of course originally good; but some of them have fallen from holiness, and become evil spirits or devils Mat 25:31, Mat 25:41; Jud 1:6; Rev 12:7. The latter are circumscribed in their sphere of action, as if confined within the walls of their prison, in consequence of their fallen state and malignant disposition Gen. 3; Job 1:2; 1Pe 2:4; Rev 20:2. Being spiritual, they are not only moral, but intelligent. They also excel in strength Psa 103:20. The holy angels have the full range of action for which their qualities are adapted. They can assume a real form, expressive of their present functions, and affecting the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, or the roots of those senses in the soul. They may even perform innocent functions of a human body, such as eating Gen 18:8; Gen 19:3. Being spirits, they can resolve the material food into its original elements in a way which we need not attempt to conceive or describe. But this case of eating stands altogether alone. Angels have no distinction of sex Mat 22:30. They do not grow old or die. They are not a race, and have not a body in the ordinary sense of the term.

2d. Their office is expressed by their name. In common with other intelligent creatures, they take part in the worship of God Rev 7:11; but their special office is to execute the commands of God in the natural world Psa 103:20, and especially to minister to the heirs of salvation Heb 1:14; Mat 18:10; Luk 15:10; Luk 16:22. It is not needful here to enter into the uniquenesses of their ministry.

3d. The angel of Jehovah. This phrase is especially employed to denote the Lord himself in that form in which he condescends to make himself manifest to man; for the Lord God says of this angel, “Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in his inmost” Exo 23:21; that is, my nature is in his essence. Accordingly, he who is called the angel of the Lord in one place is otherwise denominated the Lord or God in the immediate context (Gen 16:7, Gen 16:13; Gen 22:11-12; Gen 31:11, Gen 31:13; Gen 48:15-16; Exo 3:2-15; Exo 23:20-23; with Exo 33:14-15). It is remarkable, at the same time, that the Lord is spoken of in these cases as a distinct person from the angel of the Lord, who is also called the Lord. The phraseology intimates to us a certain inherent plurality within the essence of the one only God, of which we have had previous indications Gen 1:26; Gen 3:22. The phrase “angel of the Lord,” however, indicates a more distant manifestation to man than the term Lord itself. It brings the medium of communication into greater prominence. It seems to denote some person of the Godhead in angelic form. שׁוּר shûr, Shur, “wall.” A city or place probably near the head of the gulf of Suez. The desert of Shur is now Jofar.

11. ישׁמעאל yı̂shmā‛ē'l, Jishmael, “the Mighty will hear.”

13. ראי אל 'êl rŏ'ı̂y, “God of vision or seeing.”

14. ראי לחי באר be'ēr-lachay-ro'ı̂y, Beer-lachai-roi, “well of vision to the living.” ברד bered, Bered, “hail.” The site is not known.

Sarah has been barren probably much more than twenty years. She appears to have at length reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that she would never be a mother. Nature and history prompted the union of one man to one wife in marriage, and it might have been presumed that God would honor his own institution. But the history of the creation of man was forgotten or unheeded, and the custom of the East prompted Sarai to resort to the expedient of giving her maid to her husband for a second wife, that she might have children by her.

Gen 16:1-6

A Mizrite handmaid. - Hagar was probably obtained, ten years before, during their sojourn in Egypt. “The Lord hath restrained me.” It was natural to the ancient mind to recognize the power and will of God in all things. “I shall be builded by her,” אבנה 'ı̂bāneh, built as the foundation of a house, by the addition of sons or daughters (בנים bānı̂ym or בנית bānôt). She thought she had or wished to have a share in the promise, if not by herself personally, yet through her maid. The faith of Sarah had not yet come fully to the birth. Abram yields to the suggestion of his wife, and complies with the custom of the country. Ten years had elapsed since they had entered the land they were to inherit. Impatience at the long delay leads to an invention of their own for obtaining an heir. The contempt of her maid was unjustifiable. But it was the natural consequence of Sarai’s own improper and imprudent step, in giving her to her husband as a concubine. Unwilling, however, to see in herself the occasion of her maid’s insolence, she transfers the blame to her husband, who empowers or reminds her of her power still to deal with her as it pleased her. Hagar, unable to bear the yoke of humiliation, flees from her mistress.

Gen 16:7-12

The angel of the Lord either represents the Lord, or presents the Lord in angelic form. The Lord manifests himself to Hagar seemingly on account of her relationship to Abram, but in the more distant form of angelic visitation. She herself appears to be a believer in God. The spring of water is a place of refreshment on her journey. She is on the way to Shur, which was before Mizraim as thou goest rewards Asshur Gen 25:18, and therefore fleeing to Egypt, her native land. The angel of the Lord interrogates her, and requires her to return to her mistress, and humble herself under her hands.

Gen 16:10

I will multiply. - This language is proper only to the Lord Himself, because it claims a divine prerogative. The Lord is, therefore, in this angel. He promises to Hagar a numerous offspring. “Ishmael.” “El,” the Mighty, will hear; but “Jehovah,” the Lord (Yahweh), heard her humiliation. Yahweh, therefore, is the same God as El. He describes Ishmael and his progeny in him as resembling the wild ass. This animal is a fit symbol of the wild, free, untamable Bedouin of the desert. He is to live in contention, and yet to dwell independently, among all his brethren. His brethren are the descendants of Heber, the Joctanites, composing the thirteen original tribes of the Arabs, and the Palgites to whom the descendants of Abram belonged. The Ishmaelites constituted the second element of the great Arab nation, and shared in their nomadic character and independence. The character here given of them is true even to the present day.

Gen 16:13-16

God of my vision - (El-roi). Here we have the same divine name as in Ishmael. “Have I even still seen” - continued to live and see the sun after having seen God? Beer-lahai-roi, the well of vision (of God) to the living. To see God and live was an issue contrary to expectation Exo 33:20. The well is between Kadesh and Bered. The site of the latter has not been ascertained. R. Jonathan gives חוּצא chelûtsā' the Ἔλουσα elousa of Ptolemy, now el-Khulasa, about twelve miles south of Beersheba. Rowland finds the well at Moyle or Muweilah, still further south in the same direction. The birth of Ishmael is in the sixteenth year after Abram’s call, and the eleventh after his arrival in Kenaan.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Gen_16:1-3

And Sarai Abrams wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife

Forestalling Gods appointed time

I.

THIS MAY BE THE TEMPTATION OF THOSE WHO YET HAVE FAITH IN GOD.

II. SUCH A COURSE APPEARS TO HAVE A RATIONAL WARRANT.

1. There was no human hope that the promise would be accomplished in that form in which they first understood it.

2. They were conforming to the common custom of the country.

3. The end they sought was worthy in itself.

III. ALL ATTEMPTS TO BE BEFOREHAND WITH PROVIDENCE IMPLY AN INFIRMITY OF FAITH.

1. They are signs of impatience.

2. It is not our duty to aid God in the accomplishment of His promises.

3. Religion hereby degenerates into fanaticism.

4. Such an interference with the means by which God accomplishes His purpose shows a want of confidence in His power. (T. H. Leale.)

Hagar, the slave girl

We might have expected that Abraham would have strenuously resisted every endeavour to induce him to realize for himself Gods promise about his seed. Surely he will wait meekly and quietly for God to fulfil His own word, by means best known to Himself. Instead of this he listened to the reasoning of expediency.

I. THE QUARTER WHENCE THESE REASONINGS CAME. Sarai.

1. It is always hard to resist temptation when it appeals to natural instinct or to distrusting fear.

2. We should be exceedingly careful before acting on the suggestions of anyone not as advanced as we are in the Divine life. What may seem right to them may be terribly wrong for us.

II. THE SORROWS TO WHICH THEY LED.

1. To Sarah.

2. To Hagar.

3. To Abraham.

III. THE VICTIM WHOSE LIFE COURSE WAS SO LARGELY INVOLVED. We mourn to see in her only one of myriads who have been sacrificed to the whim or passion, expediency or selfishness, of men. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

Carnal expedients

I. THE FOLLY OF CARNAL EXPEDIENTS. Their danger lies in many directions.

1. Look at the method of our justification and sanctification before God. Gods method is by faith, mans by works. The one is of promise, the other by natural means. The latter is illicit, and fails; only the former succeeds.

2. In providence. You may be looking for temporal prosperity; God may design it for you: but you have no right to seek it by covetousness or injustice, and making haste to be rich.

3. In gospel labours. You expect success, but it is delayed.

4. In regard to our sufferings and our hope of heaven. Some have been tempted to slay themselves, or those whom they have loved, in the midst of terrible affliction, to hasten their admission to glory, You may not have this temptation; but you may be restless, impatient, and unresigned. Say rather, All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.

5. In regard to the millennium, and the establishment of the gospel on earth. What hindrances and delays there are. Many seek to christianize the world by the sword, by pandering to human ignorance and superstition, or by indulging the lusts and passions of men. We must be faithful to principle, and leave results to God.

II. GODS MERCIFULNESS TO THE SORROWFUL SAINT. Thou God seest me. It suggests two things;

1. Gods omniscience; and--

2. His kind regard of His people. Let us think of it:

(1) In times of desolation and sorrow. You may be lonely and forsaken, but God sees you.

(2) In times of wandering and waywardness. Then let it rebuke us, and bring us to repentance and contrition.

(3) In times of temptation. Then let it deter us. How can we do this thing, and sin against God?

(4) In times of perplexity. Then let us seek His guidance--the guidance of His eye and hand.

(5) It suggests a contrast between this life and the next. (The Congregational Pulpit.)

Lessons

1. Gods promise and covenant can hardly keep up faith in His own, against the discouragements of sense.

2. Sensible helps at hand may be an occasion to doubt of Gods promise as being afar off. So was Hagar to Sarai (Gen_16:2).

3. Good souls in temptations may complain of this barrenness though God order it.

4. Sense of such wants may put souls upon unlawful means to have their desires of a seed.

5. Flesh persuades to take an uncertain peradventure in sense, rather than wait for Gods promise in certainty (Gen_16:2).

6. Temptation may carry saints not only to the motion but action of evil.

7. Such temptations may make saints do evil, for ends seeming good. So Sarai gives her to wife. (G. Hughes, B. D.)

The trial of faith--its infirmity

I. IT ORIGINATED AT A TIME AND IN A MANNER, the consideration of which may well enforce the solemn warning, Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall;--while it painfully illustrates that other affecting saying, that a mans worst foes may be those of his own household. This transaction took place (Gen_16:3) after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. During all that time he had walked with God, and God had done for him great things; he had trusted in the Lord, and had been delivered. He had found God faithful to him, and had been himself enabled to be faithful to God. In particular, he had very recently received a signal pledge of the Divine favour, and a strong confirmation of the hope set before him; and never, perhaps, had he stood higher, in respect of privilege, than now. And yet, at the very time when he stands so high, he is tempted, and he falls.

II. THE TEMPTATION ITSELF IS A VERY PLAUSIBLE ONE. It bears all the marks of that subtlety which, from of old, had been the characteristic of that old serpent, the devil. Observe the spirit and manner in which the proposal is made by Sarai, and received by Abram. It is plainly such as altogether to preclude the idea of this step being at all analogous to an ordinary instance of sin committed in the indulgence of sensual passion. Most unjustifiable as was the patriarchs conduct, it is not for a moment to be confounded with that of David, for example, whose melancholy fall was caused by the mere unbridled violence of an unlawful appetite. There is no room for the introduction of such an element as this on the occasion of Abrams connection with Hagar. It originated in the suggestion of his faithful wife, and had, for its single object, the fulfilment of the Divine promise, whose accomplishment otherwise seemed to be growing every day more manifestly and hopelessly impossible (Gen_16:1-2). (R. S.Candlish, D. D.)

Sarahs sin; or carnal policy no aid to Divine plans

Unbelief is very prolific of schemes; and surely this of Sarai is as carnal, as foolish, and as fruitful of domestic misery as could almost have been devised. Yet such was the influence of evil counsel, especially from such a quarter, that Abram hearkened to her voice. The father of mankind sinned by hearkening to his wife, and now the father of the faithful follows his example. How necessary for those who stand in the nearest relations, to take heed of being snares instead of helps one to another! It was a double sin: first, of distrust; and secondly, of deviation from the original law of marriage, and which seems to have opened a door of polygamy. (A. Fuller.)

Sarais expedient

Sarais impulse, even if mistaken, was admirable for its unselfish abnegation of what is most precious to her sex. It was such a sacrifice as only a woman had it in her power to make. Had Abram been a polygamist, or had the adhesion of his house to the primitive marriage law been less loyal than it was, there was one obvious escape from the difficulty. It is instructive that neither Abram nor his wife thought of a second marriage. The usages of the time suggested a different mode. For a childless wife to treat the children born of a favourite slave girl as legally as her own was a resource very foreign to the notions of our western Christendom. Nevertheless, it sprang not unnaturally out of two peculiarities of society in Abrams day. One of these was the disadvantage, amounting positively to social discredit, which attached to childlessness, at a time when the primeval injunction to replenish the earth still retained its full force. The other was the complete surrender of a serfs legal and social rights into the hand of his master, which in the East characterized domestic servitude. Every home slave stood at the disposal of his lord for whatever service the lord might require. His very children were not his own, but his masters. For a mistress, therefore, to seek by means of a female slave and favourite attendant what Providence had denied to herself, was regarded under such a state of feeling as neither immoral nor revolting. It was not even held to be any real departure from the law of monogamy, or any infraction of conjugal fidelity. There is no doubt, however, that it did involve a certain lowering of the original conception of marriage. It paved the way for concubinage of a less excusable description. And in the majority of cases, as in the present instance, it could scarcely fail to turn out ill. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 16:1. We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife. Herein though he may be excused, he cannot be justified; for from the beginning it was not so: and when it was so, it seems to have proceeded from an irregular desire to build up their families, for the more speedy peopling of the world.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Gen_16:1. Handmaid.] This term is used in the L

XX. and N.T. in the sense of a female slave. Hagar was a bondwoman, and according to ancient usage was entirely at the disposal of her mistress. (Gal_4:22.) An Egyptian. She probably entered the family of the patriarch during his sojourn in Egypt, and may have been one of the “maid-servants” presented to him by Pharaoh. (Gen_12:20.) Hagar. Flight, or a fugitive. The Arabs term the flight of Mohammed Hegira—a word derived from the same root. It is not likely that the name was given by her parents, but was bestowed afterwards in commemoration of the leading events of her history.

Gen_16:2. I may obtain children by her.] Heb. I may be builded by her. In Heb. the ideas of building and the raising of a family are closely allied. Ben, a son, is derived from the verb bana, to build. (Deu_25:9; Rth_4:11.)

5. My wrong be upon thee.] Heb. My wrong lieth upon thee; i.e., the wrong which I suffer. The Lord judge between me and thee. “I made the offer to thee, but the deed was thine; let God apportion the blame between us.” (Alford.)

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_16:1-3

FORESTALLING GOD’S APPOINTED TIME

Both Abram and Sarah had long been waiting for the fulfilment of God’s promise. They were sorely tried by the delays of Providence, for they were both far gone in the vale of years and the promised blessing had not come. Their hearts grew sore with hope deferred. In their impatience they seek by methods of their own to fulfil God’s word—to anticipate His time and purpose. They attempt to cross the ways of Providence with the lines of their own wisdom, and frantically to hasten their destination. This was their weakness; for God has His appointed time and way. Man’s duty is calmly to wait.

I. This may be the temptation of those who yet have faith in God. Abram and Sarah had the assured possession of God’s promise. They knew what was its meaning—that it pointed to a definite blessing. They believed in their hearts that the will of God concerning them, as so expressed, would be accomplished. Yet they are weary with waiting, and use an expedient of their own, as if they would assist Providence. Faith may be genuine, and yet betimes prove unsteady through the severe trials to which it is exposed. Faith has to seek its object through clouds and darkness, through delays, disappointments, and dangers; and it is therefore not surprising that it occasionally betrays weakness, or takes some unadvised step. The grace of God is pure and strong, but the results of it are modified injuriously by human infirmity, so that they fall beneath absolute perfection. Sarah, who is most to blame in this history, is yet declared by inspired authority to be an example of faith, and is classed among those renowned believers who all “obtained a good report through faith” (Heb_11:11; Heb_11:31).

II. Such a course appears to have a rational warrant. The conflict between faith and reason is not the growth of modern times, but one as old as human nature itself. The attempt to hasten the work of God by plans devised by our own wisdom can be defended on many plausible grounds. A sincere man must, in some way, justify such a course to himself, and reason can always aid him. Thus, a believer may unconsciously challenge Divine wisdom, while he thinks all the time that he is doing God’s service. The conduct of Abram and Sarah was capable of some defence on rational grounds. They were sincere, and no doubt their plan appeared to them right and reasonable.

1. There was no human hope that the promise would be accomplished in that form in which they first understood it. Abram thought that God would shortly give him a son, and Sarah expected to be the mother of the promised child. But Abram had now dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. He was already an old man, and his wife had been hopelessly barren for upwards of twenty years. They both still clung to the promise of God, and believed that in some way it would be accomplished. But now there was no human hope that the promise would be fulfilled in that precise form in which they first expected it. Therefore they might reasonably imagine that God had some other way for making His Word good, and that, by using the means which their own wisdom suggested, they were but working out His plan. Abram was assured that He should have an heir, of his own body begotten: but there was no distinct promise that Sarah should be the mother (Gen_15:4-5). In supposing that the blessing might be conveyed through another channel, they did not appear to be departing from the literal construction of the original promise.

2. They were conforming to the common custom of the country. In the East, such expedients were resorted to for perpetuating the household when all other hope seemed to be gone. “It was a method of raising a family by proxy, and it was a virtual adoption of the vicarious posterity—the concubine was said to bear the child ‘upon the knees’ of the wife” (Gen_30:3).—[Jacobus.] They were only adopting methods which they never heard spoken of with censure, and which seemed to be justified by the necessities of the case.

3. The end they sought was worthy in itself. They were assured that, in some way, mighty nations should spring from them—above all the Promised Seed by whom all the families of the earth should be blessed. It was not base passion that prompted them, but a noble desire to fulfil their exalted destiny. They may have employed a questionable policy, but on Sarah’s part, at least, it involved some high moral qualities—generosity, self-denial, and zeal.

III. All attempts to be beforehand with Providence imply an infirmity of faith. Faith may be real and yet show weakness in the time of great trial and perplexity. A really strong faith looks to the promise, and to that alone; leaving the ways and means for its accomplishment entirely to God. Such was the nature of Abram’s faith at first until he was betrayed into weakness by his wife. All human anticipations of God’s time and purpose, which He Himself in His wisdom has exactly determined, are wrong.

1. They are signs of impatience. Faith has not only to believe the promise of God and to repose a loving confidence in Himself, but also patiently to wait for Him. Waiting is as much a part of our religion as believing. It is the proper attitude of the soul in this state of probation. The trial of our faith worketh patience, and, when patience fails, faith is in that degree impaired.

2. It is not our duty to aid God in the accomplishment of His promises. God knows the whole case, and He has power and wisdom to fulfil His gracious purpose. We are but partial and imperfect judges of the ends He has in view and of the fittest means for attaining them. There is but one path plain and clear to us—the path of present duty. We have but to follow that path, for it is the only certainty upon which we can rely. God will take care of the end, and cause us to realise what we have believed. Faith in duty is faith in God. “He that believeth shall not make haste” (Isa_28:16). He shall not make haste to fulfil God’s promises, but rest in them meanwhile, and patiently wait the appointed time. True faith imparts a certain modesty to the habits of the soul. The attempt to assist Providence by the contrivances of our own short-sighted wisdom is presumption.

3. Religion hereby degenerates into fanaticism. In the history of religion fanaticism has chiefly assumed this form, viz., that men strive to realise God’s purposes before their time, and by means which show the hasty, intemperate zeal of short-sighted mortals, and partake not of the solemn and measured progress of the Divine plan. As God’s power is most seen in space, through which His works are scattered, so His wisdom is developed throughout the course of time. The attempt to force His purposes into unnatural ripeness is the very essence of fanaticism. Of such a nature is the communist theory of a perfect and contented human society, and those human anticipations of God’s kingdom on earth which were indulged in by such as the Fifth Monarchy men.

4. Such an interference with the means by which God accomplishes His purpose shows a want of confidence in His power. Faith has one great resource when perplexed by present appearances, and that is the power of God. With Him nothing is impossible. It might, after all, have been God’s design to show forth His power in a most marvellous manner by giving strength to Sarah to conceive at a time when it was naturally impossible. The delay might have been only for the purpose of showing forth His great power by the distinct evidence of His working. When the strength of nature decays, the power of God is most manifest. The faith of Sarah had in it an element of distrust, for it showed a want of confidence in the power of Him who quickens the dead, and calls the things that are not, as though they were. (Rom_4:17-18.)

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Gen_16:1. God held Abram long in suspense. The difficulties of faith are acknowledged in Scripture.

The faith of true believers may be exposed to a long trial, which may oppress the heart with a settled sorrow.

God’s providence may place natural difficulties in the very face of His most solemn promises.

God’s promises and covenant can scarcely maintain faith in His children against the discouragements of sense.

St. Paul, in the Galatians, dwells upon the name of Hagar, as being the name of Mount Sinai in Arabia, denoting the legal position. And it would seem that Sinai was so called because Hagar, in Arabic, signifies a rock. (Galatians 4.) And this incidental fact St. Paul uses to show the relation between the legal and the Gospel dispensations, and between the two classes of children in Abram’s house—the spiritual seed being those of Sarah (the free woman), represented by Isaac; the carnal being those of Hagar (the bondwoman), represented by Ishmael. Hagar represented the Mosaic Sinaitic dispensation, and her children were born in bondage to the law (Judaising), and yet, according to nature, having the husband; while Sarai typified the Gospel system, and represented the Church, long barren, till the gift of a progeny—the miraculous seed—according to promise. (Jacobus.)

Hagar, an Egyptian. Egypt stood then in the same relation to the covenant people as the world does now to the Christian Church. In their anxiety, believers are tempted to avail themselves of the provisions of the world instead of quietly waiting for God.

The things of faith are distant and mysterious. That which the world offers is near and clear. Egypt furnishes a ready solution; but God’s thoughts are above man’s thoughts.

In all their wanderings, the influence of the world follows the children of God, and becomes a constant source of trial and danger.

Gen_16:2. Sarai attributes her barrenness to the will of God. (Psa_127:3.) It is a noble form of faith which traces back all the events of the world to the highest cause; finds the origin and disposition of all things in the energy of a Living Will.

It is possible to acknowledge God’s power, and yet by our conduct virtually to deny it.

The virtue of a good confession may be well-nigh destroyed by those actions which really contradict our creed.

All the promises made to Abram depended upon “one who is to come forth out of his own bowels.” Such is the Lord’s express assurance, and yet he goes childless. His wife, as she herself represents the matter to him, is barren; and it would seem that she is contented to acknowledge her barrenness as hopeless, and to acquiesce in it as a dispensation of God. She does not speak angrily or impatiently, as Rachel did to Jacob, but meekly and submissively she says, “The Lord hath restrained me from bearing.” It is His will, and His will be done. But surely God can never intend that my barrenness should frustrate His purpose, and make void His promise. There must be some way of getting over this difficulty, and reconciling this apparent inconsistency between the promise that to thee a child is to be born—in whom, as the Great Reconciler, thou and thy posterity, and all the kindreds of men are to be blessed—and the Providence which allots to thee a barren, and now aged, spouse. There must be some new expedient to be adopted; some other plan to be tried. It may be that Sarai is to be a mother, as it were by substitute and by proxy, and is to obtain children by her maid; according to the custom already common. And if there be any hesitation about the lawfulness of the course recommended, may it not be justified by the manners of the country sanctioning the usage; by the entire absence of every grosser motive—the end sought being not self-gratification, but the higher good of himself, his children, and the whole human race; and by the necessity of the case, which shuts him up to some such plan? In circumstances so urgent and unprecedented, why should one so favoured and blessed of God have any remaining scruple? It is, in all views of it, an extraordinary position that he occupies; and what he does is not to be judged by common rules. Such was Abram’s temptation. (Candlish.)

Unbelief is very prolific of schemes; and surely this of Sarai is as carnal, as foolish, and as fruitful of domestic misery as could almost have been devised. Yet such was the influence of evil counsel, especially from such a quarter, that “Abram hearkened to her voice.” The father of mankind sinned by hearkening to his wife, and now the Father of the Faithful follows his example. How necessary for those who stand in the nearest relations, to take heed of being snares instead of helps one to another! The plea used by Sarai in this affair shows how easy it is to err by a misconstruction of Providence, and following that as a rule of conduct, instead of God’s revealed will. “The Lord,” says she, “hath restrained me from bearing,” and, therefore, I must contrive other means for the fulfilment of the promise. But why not inquire of the Lord? As in the crowning of Adonijah, the proper authority was not consulted.—(Fuller.)

There is a stage when grace itself, and the promise of fruitfulness which is connected with it, by acting on our impatience, may so excite as to lead the spirit of faith to try carnal means, even though for ends which God has promised. Indeed impatience, a zeal for God, without a corresponding faith in the zeal of the Lord of Hosts, is ever leading to this. Even to faith it is hard to wait on God, and let Him do His own work in His own way. Thus did Abram hearken to Sarai; and thus excited even by the truth, and with right ends, does the elect yet try his own resources. Christ the true seed is by many longed for ardently. Both in the Church and world we fain would see Him. But He tarries. Then Sarai speaks to those who, though men of faith, are so far from “being as dead,” that they are still full of self-will. The result is one scheme after another, all aiming to obtain the promised seed, by doing rather than by dying. Vain hope! Ishmaels enough may be thus gotten. Isaacs are not so born.—(Jukes: “Types of Genesis.”)

Abram’s temptation was similar to that of Jesus in the wilderness.

1. The temptation of Jesus had reference to a previous declaration of God. The voice from heaven, at His baptism, had declared that He was the Son of God. Therefore Satan rests his temptations upon that word. “If thou be the Son of God.”

2. Jesus was tempted to employ plausible means to secure His own preservation and advancement. Thus, to turn the stones into bread to preserve His life—by casting Himself from a pinnacle of the temple, to seek an extraordinary interference of Providence, and so attract public attention—by aiming at the world’s throne lest the world should give Him nothing but a cross. To Christ, therefore, we must look for a perfect example of uniform and complete resistance to temptation. Abram, as all other human examples, do but most serve for a beacon to warn us.

Nature may throw difficulties in the way of faith, but faith should be able to see through nature and behold God who is above it. The soul can only “endure as seeing Him who is invisible.”

Gen_16:3. Human experiments for reconciling sense and faith are possible. But God’s purpose cannot in this way be discovered.

There may be a self-sacrifice, in itself praiseworthy, but of no value in the sight of God because He does not demand it. To offer up a service to God, suggested by our own short-sighted activity, and when He does not require it, is of the nature of will-worship.

It is easy to persuade ourselves that we are carrying out the will of God, and acting up to the requirements of true religion, when we are only showing a fanatical devotion to an idea.

Faith in God may require long and patient waiting for Him, but there is no need that we should be anxious as to how He intends to accomplish His will.

Sarai, the wife of Abram, was undoubtedly a godly woman. She is commended as an example to all Christian matrons, who are her daughters as long as they do well. She “obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.” With him she came out from among her idolatrous kindred, and with him she was willing to lead the life of a stranger and pilgrim. During all the ten years which they had spent in the land of Canaan she was constantly and faithfully with her husband, sharing all his trials, and witnessing all the great things which the Lord did for him. She was heir, together with him, of the grace of life, and one by whom his prayers were not wont to be hindered. (1Pe_3:7.) Strange and sad, that at such a season, and from such a quarter, temptation should arise; that after a ten year’s walk with God, in the very height of privilege, in the full assurance of faith, the faithful companion of his pilgrimage and the helper of his joy should beguile and betray him! After such an instance, who can be secure?—at what season, or on what side, secure?—(Candlish.)

“After Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.” This clause is here thrown in as if to show the pressure of discouragement under which Sarai acted in this matter. Abram, after so long a sojourn in the land, yet remained childless. He was now eighty-five years old, and Sarai seventy-five. She was to be to Abram “for a wife”—to serve the purpose of a wife in this extremity. By the custom, the children of the concubine became the offspring of the wife herself, being regarded as obtained by proxy, and in a vicarious, substitutionary way, so that they were reckoned as hers by adoption. (Exo_21:7; Deu_21:10.) Abram might have felt himself at liberty to accede to this proposed arrangement, inasmuch as nothing had been said of Sarai in the case. So the Hebrews have viewed Abram’s conduct. The slave girl was at the disposal of the mistress—her personal property—according to the oriental custom; and it was only by the consent of Sarai that she could become the secondary wife of Abram. And this step was taken for a declared purpose, and to fulfil the promise of God. But the wrong was in the unbelief which could not trust God to work out His own plans and to fulfil His own promise without such human device. Sarai herself would soon see the wrong, and reap the bitter fruits.—(Jacobus.)

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

FIFTH SECTION

Abram’s Concession to Sarai’s Impatience. Abram and Hagar. Hagar’s Flight. The Angel of the Lord. Hagar’s Return, and Ishmael’s Birth

Gen_16:1-16

1Now Sarai, Abram’s wife [in the face of the previous promise], bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar [flight, fugitive]. 2And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing; I pay thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain [be builded], children by hen And 3Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

4And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. 5And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee. 6But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee [is good in thine eyes]. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.

7And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur [rocky. Josephus: Pelusium. Gesenius: Suez. Keil: Dschïfar]. 8And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence earnest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress, Sarai. 9And the angel of the Lord said unto her. Return to thy mistress, and submit [bow] thyself under her hands. 10And the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be [cannot be] numbered for multitude. 11And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael 12[God will hear]; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction [distress]. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren—[far and wide in a free country]. 13And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me [of true seeing]: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that [peculiarly] seeth me? 14Wherefore the well was called, Beer-lahai-roi [well of the life of seeing, or vision]; behold, it is between Kadesh [consecrated] and Bered [hail, gravel-like hail?].

15And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son’s name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. 16And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.

PRELIMINARY REMARK

For the difficulties growing out of the sexual relations in the history of the Patriarchs, see the Introduction, p. 80.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. According to Knobel, this section is a Jehovistic enlargement of a brief Elohistic original narrative. But the narrative bears upon its face a complete and living unity.

2. Sarai’s Fanatical Self-denial (Gen_16:1-4). Bare him no children. Not even yet, although he had already received (Genesis 15) the solemn assurance of the great promise. She was barren in Gen_11:30, and remained so after Gen_15:2. The childless state of Abram’s house was its great sorrow, and the more so, since it was in perpetual opposition to the calling, destination, and faith of Abram, and was a constant trial of his faith. Sarai herself, moreover, the consort of Abram, came gradually more and more to appear as a hindrance to the fulfilment of the divine promise, and as Abram, according to Genesis 15, had fixed his eye upon his head servant, Eliezer of Damascus, so now, Sarai fixes her eye upon her head maiden,1 Hagar the Egyptian. Hagar was probably added to the household of Abram during his residence in Egypt (Gen_12:10). She manifestly possessed a prominent place in his household, and appears to have brought to that position, not only mental gifts, but also an inward participation in the faith of the household.—The Lord hath restrained me from bearing.2 (The mother’s womb closed—a figurative description of the appointed barrenness). The barrenness, also, is traced back to the highest causality, the purpose of Jehovah (Gen_29:31; Gen_30:32; Psa_127:3; Isa_66:9). The sexual relations, and the declarations in regard to them, are sanctified by their ultimate end, their spiritual reference. The dejection, at least, the sorrow, breaks out in the words of Sarai, also, as they had in the utterance of Abram, Gen_15:3.—Go in unto. Euphemistic explanation of the sexual connection.—It may be that I may obtain (be builded) by her. As to the connection between בית ,בן ,בנה, see the lexicons. To be built, is to become a house; to become a house, is to obtain children, a family. Hagar should enlarge Sarai: Hagar’s child should be her child (see Gen_30:3). The concubine, viewed in the light of this reason, for which she is chosen, is not so much the concubine of the husband, as supplementary concubine of the wife. The moral idea of monogamy shines clearly through this obscurity in its manifestation, and so far this, “possession of concubines” (as Knobel expresses it) must be distinguished from the later polygamy, which appeared among the Jews. Sarai practises an act of heroic self-denial, but still, in her womanly and fanatical excitement, anticipates her destiny as Eve had done, and carries even the patriarch away with her alluring hope. The writer intimates how nobly generous she was in her error. This greatness clouded even the clear-sightedness of Abram.3 The narrator brings also into prominence the extenuating fact, that they had been already ten years in Canaan, waiting in vain for the heir of Canaan.—When she saw that she had conceived. “The unfruitful Hannah received the like treatment with Sarai, from the second wife of her husband (1Sa_1:6). It is still thus, to-day, in eastern lands (see Lane: ‘Manners and Customs,’ i. p. 198). The Hebrew regards barrenness as a great evil and a divine punishment (Gen_19:31; Gen_30:1; Gen_30:23; Lev_20:20), and fruitfulness as a great good and a divine blessing (Gen_21:6; Gen_24:60; Exo_23:26; Deu_7:14). The orientals regard these things in the same light still (see Volney: ‘Travels,’ ii. p. 359; Malcolm’s ‘History of Persia;’ and Winer: Real-wörterbuch, art. Kinder).” Knobel. Hagar, however, had not the position of a second wife, and erred, when in her disposition she assumed this position, instead of recognizing her subordination to her mistress. This subordination was assumed by Abram, and therefore he does not seem to have noticed her haughtiness and pride.4

3. Sarai’s Displeasure and Hagar’s Flight (Gen_16:5-6).—My wrong be upon thee. Precisely, wrong in an objective sense, wrong which I suffer. Sarai, in her indignation against the pride and insolence of Hagar, believed that Abram looked with approbation upon it, and therefore expresses herself as if offended.5 The overbent bow flies back with violence. This is the back-stroke of her own eager, overstrained course. Still, her words are against Abram; the consequences of her wrong should fall upon him; she would leave his conduct to the judgment of Jehovah, more as an appeal to his con-science, than as a decided condemnation.6—Behold thy maid is in thy hand. Abram adheres firmly to the original standpoint. He regards Hagar still as the servant, and the one who fulfils the part of Sarai, and so far justifies himself against Sarai. But this justification is turned now into the severe censure and affliction of Hagar, and this is the result of the wrong position into which he has allowed himself to be drawn.—Sarai dealt hardly with her. How, precisely, we are not told. Doubtless, through the harsh thrusting her back into the mere position and service of a slave. Hagar believed that she had grown above such a position, and flees. The proud, unyielding passion of the Ishmaelite for freedom, shows its characteristic feature in their ancestress. Some have ventured so far, as to suppose that Abram must have hastened after her, and brought her back, full of honor.

4. The intervention on the part of the Angel of Jehovah, and Hagar’s return (Gen_16:7-14).—The Angel of Jehovah. See the preliminary remarks to Genesis 12. [The expression מַלְאַךְ יְהוָֹה appears here for the first time. While the Angel of Jehovah is Jehovah himself, it is remarkable, that in the very meaning of the name, as messenger, or one who is sent, there is implied a distinction of persons in the Godhead. There must be one who sends, whose message he bears.—A. G.]7 That this Angel is identical with Jehovah, is placed beyond question in Gen_16:13-14. The disposition of Hagar, helpless, forsaken, with all her pride, still believing in God, warned by her own conscience, makes it altogether fitting that the Angel of Jehovah should appear to her, i.e., Jehovah himself, in his condescension—manifesting himself as the Angel.—She had found rest, by a fountain in the wilderness; and here, in her helplessness, self-reflection, and repentance, she gains the disposition or fitness for the vision. It was by the fountain in the way to Shur. “Shur, now Dschïfar, is the northwestern part of the desert of Arabia, bordering upon Egypt (comp. Exo_15:22; and Tuch: in der deutschen morgenländ. Zeitschrift, i. p. 175).” Keil. (Gen_25:18; 1Sa_15:7; 1Sa_27:8). A waste stretch of land, of five or six days’ journey, lying between Palestine and Egypt (see Knobel, p. 158). Her location was thus upon the old, worn path, leading from Hebron by Beersheba to Egypt. The respect which she enjoyed agrees with her personal, inward worth, as to her character and faith, but at the same time tends to the proper estimate of Ishmael, who, as the child of Abram, could not be left undistinguishable among the heathen. The Angel of the incarnation, even, could not permit that Hagar, in an erroneous zeal to become his future mother, should go on his own account into helpless sorrow. His first address sounds as the voice of her own awakened conscience: Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? Truly, out of a wilfully sundered relation of duty and piety, and out of the house of blessing. [The angel brings her to a sense of her true relation: Sarai’s maid, not Abram’s wife.—A. G.]—And whither goest thou? indeed, wilfully into guilt, disgrace, and sorrow. Her answer testifies to the oppression which she had experienced, but also to the voice of her own conscience.—From the face of my mistress, Sarai.—Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself. [Submit, humble thyself; the same word as that by which Sarai’s harsh-dealing is described.—A. G.] The command to return to duty comes first, then the promise. It carries the joyous sound of an innumerable progeny—the tribes of Ishmael.—Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard. Misery sighs; the sighs ascend to God; hence misery itself, if not sent as a curse, is a voiceless prayer to God. But this is true especially of the misery of Hagar, who had learned to pray in the house of Abram. “According to the later writers, it was the custom that the mother should name the child (Gen_4:1; Gen_4:25; Gen_19:37 ff; Gen_29:32 ff; Gen_30:6 ff; Gen_38:3 ff.).; but the Elohist allows the child to be named only by the father (Gen_5:3; Gen_16:15; Gen_17:19; Gen_21:3; comp. Gen_15:18).” Knobel. This distinction is obviously far-fetched. It is only on special occasions that the mother is referred to as giving the name to the child. In Gen_38:3-4, the father and mother are alternately concerned in giving the name. Abram himself afterwards appropriates the maternal naming of Ishmael.—And he will be a wild man (wild-ass man). The limitation of the promise is connected with the promise itself. Hagar must be cured of the proud delusion, that she is destined to become the mother of the believing people of Abram, and that therefore the hope of Abram depends upon her personal self-destination; a supposition which doubtless had taken firm possession of her mind, through the presupposition of Sarai herself. The image of the wild ass is not chosen in a contemptuous sense. “The figure of the פֶּרֶא, onager, in the desert, free, wild-roving and untamable animal, poetically described in Job_39:5-8, designates, in a striking manner, the Bedouin Arabs with their unrestrained love of freedom, as upon camel (Delûl) or horse, with spear in hand, they ride over the desert, noisy, hardy, frugal, delighting in the varied beauties of nature, and despising life in towns and cities:” and the words, his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him, describe the ceaseless feuds among themselves and with their neighbors, in which the Ishmaelites live.” Keil. Compare the characteristics of Esau, Gen_27:40. For the description of the Arabs in the books of travels, see Knobel, p. 158.8 Knobel thinks that here also the prophetic image is drawn after the descendants (the free sons of the desert), and finds besides that the promises (Gen_17:20; Gen_21:20,) “have a more favorable sound.” If this were true, it would be only the other side of the same figure. Hagar must know, above all other things, that Ishmael could not appropriate to himself the inheritance of blessing. This is intimated in the words, In the presence of all his brethren. He will thus have brethren, but shall dwell in the presence of all, a free man. Keil remarks, that עַל־פְּנֵי signifies primarily, eastward, according to Gen_25:9, but that there is more in the terms than a mere geographical notice, to wit, that Ishmael shall dwell independently, in the presence of all the descendants of Abram. But history has abundantly confirmed this promise. “Until to-day the Ishmaelites are in unimpaired, free possession of the great peninsula lying between the Euphrates, the isthmus of Suez, and the Red Sea, from whence they have spread over wide districts in North Africa and Southern Asia” (comp. Delitzsch, p. 377 ff.)9—And she called the name of the Lord (Jehovah). The naming f God by Hagar (אֵל־רֳאִי) has been variously interpreted. Hengstenberg, with Tuch, finds the explanation in the farther named well, “well of the life of seeing,” or “vision,” i.e. where a person has seen the face of God, and remains alive. Delitzsch holds this to be a verbal impossibility. We add, that the supposition as to the reality in this explanation, which appears also in Keil, is incorrect. We must distinguish between the patriarchal and legal periods. Of the legal period it is said: thou canst not see my face, for no man shall see me and live (Exo_33:20); that was true of Moses, so far as he was the mediator of his sinful people (see Exo_33:13). The prejudice in Israel, that no one could see the revelation of God and live (Jdg_13:22), took its origin from these words. But the sense of the words was, that the manifestation of God in the midst of the sinful people of Israel, and even for Moses, so far as he was the representative of the people, would be fatal. Hence the regulation requiring darkness in the holy of holies. But of Moses, viewed in and for himself, it is said: The Lord spake with him face to face (Exo_33:11). Moses, in and for himself, stood upon the patriarchal ground, but as the mediator of the people, he stood upon the ground of the law, and must first, through the sight of the grace of the Lord, be prepared for the sight of his glory (Exo_33:19). It is an error to confuse the two economies, patriarchal and legal. Here the Angel of the Lord reveals himself, there the law is ordained through the Angel. Here, those wearied of life, go in peace to their fathers, there death is the wages of sin. Here one sees God in the reality of true vision, there God retires into the darkness of the Holy of Holies. It is still a question, however, whether רֳאִי should mean, the one seeing my person (the participle from ראה with the suffix of the first person) as Hofmann, Baumgarten, and Delitzsch explain after the Chaldee: “thou art a God of sight, whose all-seeing eye will not overlook the helpless and forsaken, even in the most remote corner of the desert.” The meaning of the name Moriah (Gen_22:2; Gen_22:8; Gen_22:14) appears to be in favor of this reference of the seeing, to God. But here, also, the seeing of Jehovah, was perceived from the appearance of Jehovah, i.e. from his becoming seen (or visible). Keil quotes against the interpretation of Hofmann the expression רֹאֵנוּ (Isa_29:15) and רֹאָנִי (Isa_47:10), as a designation of the one seeing—who sees me. Thus: רֳאִי in pauseרֹאִי is a substantive, and designates the sight, the vision. Gesenius, Keil, and others: “God has manifested himself to her as a God of vision, who can be seen of the actual, most perfect sight, in his angel.”—For she said, Have I also looked after him. Do I see him still. This is not said in the sense of the popular judgment of the legal period: Am I actually still seeing, i.e. in the land of the living, after I have seen Jehovah? (Kiel, Knobel, etc.); but, what I now see in this wretched desert, is that still to be regarded as seeing, after I have seen the Angel of the Lord? (= the glory of the Lord?)10 This is a true, and in the highest degree, real characterizing of the glorious seeing in the condition of the vision (“I have seen thy throne, O Lord, from afar”). It is at the same time, in the highest degree natural, as Hagar expresses the contrast between the two conditions, that of the ordinary seeing and that of the highest seeing (vision).—Wherefore the well was called. Thus not the well of the life of seeing or life of vision (Hengstenberg, Keil), but where the life = the life-giver—quickener, manifests himself, who grants the vision.—Between Kadesh and Bered. “Although Bered is not mentioned elsewhere, Rowland has still, with great probability, pointed out the well of Hagar, mentioned again (Gen_24:62; Genesis 25, 11), in the fountain Ain Kadesh, lying in the camping-ground of the caravans moving from Syria to Sinai southward from Beersheba, Moyle, or Moilchi, Muweilch (Robinson: Palestine), which the Arabians call Moilahhi (or Mai-lahhi) Hadjar; who show there also a rocky dwelling, Beit-Hadjar (see Rowland, in Ritter’sErdkunde, xiv. p. 1086). Bered must lie to the west of this.” Keil.

5. Hagar’s Return (Gen_16:15-16). There are two points which must still be noticed here. First, that Abram receives the name Ishmael, with which, of course, the re-reception of Hagar is expressed; and secondly, the age of Abram, which is of importance in view of the next recurring revelation of Jehovah, as showing the lapse of time between them.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

See the Exegetical paragraphs.

1. Sarai’s character: noble generosity, self-denial, the female friend still more than the sister or wife of Abram, but woman-like, and in a fanatical way anticipating the patience of faith (see 1Pe_3:6).

2. The moral motive or impulse of seeking the heir of blessing, made availing to an erroneous and selfish degree, is here torn away from its connection with the love impulse or motive, and exalted above it in importance (see the Introduction, p. 81).

3. This substitution of the maid for the mistress must, however, be distinguished from polygamy in its peculiar sense. Hagar, on the contrary, regards herself—in the sense of polygamy, as standing with Sarai, and as the favored, fruitful wife, exalts herself above her. The shadow of polygamy resting upon patriarchal monogamy. Isaac’s marriage free from this. It has the purest New Testament form. Rebecca appears, indeed, to have exercised a certain predominant influence, as the wife often does this in the Christian marriage of modern times.

4. Abram’s wrong position between Sarai and Hagar—the result of his yielding to the fanaticism of Sarai.11

5. The Angel of the Lord (Genesis 12). The voice of the Angel and the voice of the awakened conscience one, and yet distinct.

6. The words of the Angel leading to conversion: 1. Clear description: Hagar, Sarai’s maid; 2. Whence earnest thou? 3. Whither wilt thou go? The beginning of conversion itself: simple, pure, clear knowledge.

7. Obligation and promises are not to be separated in the kingdom of God, for it is throughout a moral region. But the form changes according to the circumstances—now the higher (evangelical) promises and obligations, now the lower (preparatory) obligations and promises.

Gen_16:10. Gerlach: A blessing in its external form greater even than that promised to Abram, Gen_15:5. Still, even in the feebler splendor, we should recognize the great promised blessing of the father of believers. “Arabia, whose population consists to a large extent of Ishmaelites, is a living fountain of men whose streams for thousands of years have poured themselves far and wide to the east and west. Before Mohammed, its tribes were found in all border-Asia, in the East Indies as early as the middle ages; and in all Northern Africa it is the cradle of all the wandering hordes. Along the whole Indian Ocean, down to Molucca, they had their settlements in the middle ages; they spread along the coast to Mozambique; their caravans crossed India to China; and in Europe they peopled Southern Spain, and ruled it for seven hundred years.” Ritter.

8. Hagar’s satisfaction with the future of her son, a sign of her humiliation.12 The picture of Ishmael here the image of a scion of Abram and the maid (Goethe: “From my father comes the bodily stature, the bearing of the higher life; from my mother the joyful disposition and love of pleasure.” See Lange: Vermischte Schriften, i. p. 156.) The relation between ancestors and their descendants. The law of life which lies at the ground of the contrast between the son of the maid and the son of the free (Joh_1:13). The discord in the offspring of misalliances. Ed. Pöpping: “Travels in Chili, Peru, etc.” p. 139. On the color. These mixed progenies reward the dark mother with contempt, the white father, with aversion. “A large part of the Bedouins still lead a robber-life. They justify themselves in it, upon the ground of the hard treatment of Ishmael, their father, who, driven out of his paternal inheritance, received the desert for his possession, with the permission to take wherever he could find.” Gerlach. “The Arabian’s land, according to their assumed right, reaches as far as they are free to go.” Ritter.

9. The importance of the Arabs in history. Ishmael. God hears. The strong, world-historical “wild-ass,” springs out of the mercy of God towards the misery of Hagar. His hand against every man: this is true of the spiritual Ishmael, Mohammedanism, in its relation to other religions. It stands in a fanatical polemic relation.—The Arabians have never been overcome by any of the great world-conquerors, while they have made great and world-wide conquests.

10. Hagar’s expression in regard to her vision. The divine vision a look into the eternal world. Actual sight in the world of sense is no more sight, when compared with this.

11. The living God is a God of human vision, because he is a God of divine revelation.

12. The well of the living God, in which he makes men to see (the true seeing) a symbol of the gospel of the kingdom of God, of the Church in the desert of the world.

13. Hagar’s return laid the foundation for the world-historical dignity and honor of her son Ishmael.—Ishmael, also, must return to Abram’s house.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Gen_16:1-4. The fanatical anticipation of men, grasping after their destination, and its results, a judgment in favor of the more patient waiting and expectation: 1. In the history of Sarai; 2. the history of Eve; 3. in the history of the Church (the mediæval anticipation of the kingdom of glory).—The perils of the husband in his relations to the wife: 1. Her fanaticism (Sarai); 2. her sensuality (Hagar).—Sarai’s indignation: the reaction from fanatical, over-strained zeal.

Gen_16:4. Hagar’s pride: the exaltation which we experience, is easily destroyed if we are so disposed, through self-glorying.—The wrong position of Abram the result of his conduct not originating in himself.

Gen_16:7. The Angel of the Lord; or the most wretched in the kingdom of God, enjoy the highest revelations of his mercy.—The Angel of the Lord as an angel of conversion: 1. His address; 2. his question, Whence; 3. his question, Whither; 4. his instruction; 5. his promises; 6. the extent and order in his promises.—Hagar’s experience, that sight, is no more sight after the vision.—Man beholds by faith, because God looks upon him in grace.—At the wells in the desert.—Hagar’s return.—The perpetuation of the experience of Hagar, in the name Ishmael.—Abram eighty-six years old.—Age no security against folly.—God turns the follies of believers to their good.—Ishmael’s importance in history (field for missions in the East).

Starke: Gen_16:2. That was an abuse of the ruling power over her maid, and of the power of marriage which Sarai had over the body of her husband (1Co_7:3). Sarai, as well as Abram, was concerned in the sin, hence the defenders of concubinage and polygamy have no ground upon which to stand here.—(Foreign, and especially unbelieving servants of strange religions, may often work great injury to a master or a government).—We must not do evil that good may come (Rom_3:8).—Although a man may counsel with his wife, and follow her counsel, it must not be done to go into evil.—Lange: See, fellow-christian, what one’s own will and choice will do for a man! It enjoins often a greater denial than God requires of him.—Cramer: Gen_16:4. It is a common fault, that the morals of many are changed by their elevation to honor, and that prosperity brings pride (Pro_30:21-23).—Kindness is quite generally rewarded by ingratitude. Gen_16:7. A proof that the Angel of the Lord was the Son of God.

Gen_16:5. It is a common course with men to roll their guilt upon others.—Lange: Nothing is more injurious to the quiet comfort of marriage, and of the whole household, and to the training of children, than polygamy: it is impossible, therefore, that it should be in accordance with the law of nature.—The Same: Ishmael is the first of those, to whom God has assigned their name before their birth. After him there are five others: Isaac (Gen_17:19), Solomon (1Ch_22:9), Josiah (1Ki_13:2), Cyrus (Isa_45:1)? and John (Luk_1:13). Lastly, Jesus, the Saviour, is the seventh (Mat_1:21).—Luther: The positions in life are very unlike. Therefore we should remember and hold to this consolation, which the Angel shows: lo, thou art a servant, a maid, poor, etc. Let this be for thy comfort, that thy God looks alike upon masters and servants, rich and poor, sinners and saints.—Cramer: It is according to the ordinance of God, that one should be lord, another servant, etc. (1Co_7:10).—Bibl. Tub.: Thou hast sinned, humble thyself, take cheerfully the chastisement; nothing is more wholesome than that which will bow our proud spirits into humility (2Sa_24:10; 2Sa_24:14).

Gen_16:14. He who not only holds Hagar in life, but is also the life itself (Joh_11:25; Deu_32:46), the living God (Deu_5:26; Psa_42:3, etc.).—In this God we shall find the true living springs of all good and mercy (Psa_36:9; Jer_2:13; Jer_17:13; Isa_55:1).

Lisco: Sinful helping of ourselves.—Man must not only leave the end to God, but also the means (Rom_11:36).

Gen_16:7. The (not one) Angel of the Lord, the uncreated Angel of the Covenant (Mal_3:1).

Gen_16:13. These words designate the reality of that revelation made to her and for her good.—The breach of the divine ordinance soon avenges itself, for the unnatural relation in which the slave had been placed by her mistress herself, prepared for the mistress the most vexatious grief.—Gerlach: The Angel of the Lord, is the divine revealer of God, the leader of the patriarchs (Gen_48:16); the one who calls and animates Moses (Exo_3:2); the leader of the people through the wilderness (Exo_14:19, etc.; Isa_63:9); the champion of the Israelites in Canaan (Jos_5:13); and still farther, the leader and ruler of the covenant-people (Jdg_2:1 ff; Jdg_6:11; Jdg_13:13); then he who in Isaiah is the Angel of his face or presence (Isa_63:9); in Daniel, Michael (and by whom Gabriel was sent to the prophet, Dan_10:13 ?) in Zechariah, measures the new building of Jerusalem (Gen_2:1); and in Malachi is the Angel of the Covenant (Gen_3:1).—Calwer, Handbuch: Mohammed is a son of Ishmael, and Abram’ is thus, according to the flesh, the ancestor of Islam.—The Arabian, even now, grounds upon this passage, in his pride and delusion, a claim that the rights of primogeniture belong to Ishmael instead of Isaac, and asserts his own right to lands and goods, so far as it pleases him.—Vengeance for blood rules in him, and in many cases, also, the work of the robber is seen all along his path.

Gen_16:12. In the presence of all his brethren: the Israelites, Midianites, Edomites, and the Moabites and Ammonites, who were descended from Lot.—Schröder: Gen_16:7. The Angel of the Lord finds Hagar; that presupposes he had sought her (Deu_32:10).—God meets thee in thy desert; he comes to thee in thy conscience; he kindles in thee the sparks into a flame, and comes to thy help in his grace (Berleb. Bibel).—Islamism occupies incontestably the place of a middle link between revelation and heathenism; as even the Koran calls the Ishmaelites, an intermediate nation (Ziegler: it names it thus in another sense, however).—God tries us in such changes: comfort follows sorrow; hope succeeds to despondency; and life to death. (Portraiture of the Arabian, of the wild-ass. The Arabian = son of the morning—Jdg_6:3; Jdg_6:33; Jdg_8:10).

Gen_16:16. Moses records the age of Abram, that we might know how long he had to wait for Isaac the promised son, whom Sarai should bear (Calvin).—Passavant: Impatience.

Gen_16:1-6. Ah, should God grant us our own way, permit us to order our present, to arrange our future, to adorn our houses, without consulting with him, it would be no good and joyful thing to us. Whoever has, as to his way, separated himself from him, and sought afar from him, without his wisdom, happiness, salvation, life, acts unwisely, wickedly. His light is obscure, his step uncertain, the ground trembles beneath him, and his lights (lamps) are soon extinguished in darkness.—The woman has learned, in Abram’s house, to recognize the God over all gods.—Schwenke: Gen_16:7. She believes that her departure from the house of Abram would determine him to hasten after her and bring her back, etc. She sits down by the fountain, vainly waiting, until Abram should come to lead her home. Her pride is broken.—The call of the Angel.—That was the call of the good shepherd, who would bring back the wandering sheep. Thus even now the two peoples who received the promise, the descendants of Ishmael and Israel, stand as the monument of the divine veracity, as peculiar and even singular instances; guarding with the greatest care their nationality, practising their old customs and usages, and preserving, in their exclusiveness, their spiritual strength (destination?)

Footnotes:

[1][Here, of course, her slave, bond-woman.—A. G.]

[2][Heb., shut me up.—A. G.]

[3][Abram yields to the suggestion of Sarai without opposition, because, as the prophet Malachi says, ii.15, he sought the seed promised by God. Keil, p. 152.—A. G.]

[4][And it was this apparent indifference which probably was the source of Sarai’s sense of injury. She was led from it to suspect that the affections of her husband were transferred.—A. G.]

[5][She felt that Abram ought to have redressed her wrong—ought to have seen and rebuked the insolence of the bond-woman.—A. G.]

[6][The appeal is hasty and passionate—springing from a mind smarting under the sense of injury—and not calm and reverential.—A. G.]

[7][The phraseology indicates to us a certain inherent plurality within the essence of the one only God, of which we have had previous indications, Gen_1:1; Gen_1:26; Gen_3:22. Jacobus, p. 277.]

[8][All the modern travellers speak of these same qualities as still existing among the Arabs.—A. G.]

[9][Kalisch remarks in substance: “Every addition to our knowledge of Arabia and its inhabitants, confirms more strongly the biblical statements. While they have carried their arms beyond their native tracts, and ascended more than a hundred thrones, they were never subjected to the Persian Empire. The Assyrian and Babylonian kings had only transitory power over small portions of their tribes. Here the ambition of Alexander the Great and his successors received an insuperable check, and a Roman expedition, in the time of Augustus, totally failed. The Bedouins have remained essentially unaltered since the time of the Hebrews and the Greeks.”—A. G.]

[10][Amidst the variety of versions of these phrases, the general sense is obvious. There is a recognition of the gracious and quickening presence of God revealed to her, and a devout wonder that she should have been favored with such a vision. If we render the name which Hagar gives to Jehovah, as the Hebrew seems to demand, “Thou art a God of vision, or visibility,” i.e. who hast revealed thyself, then the reason for this name is given in the fact, that she had enjoyed this vision. This would be true, whether the surprise she expresses was because she survived the sight (vision), or because she here enjoyed such a vision at all. This fact also gives the name to the well—not the well of the living one seeing me, but of the living—and of course, life-giving, who here revealed himself.—It is true, that the Heb. ראי takes a different pointing in the 14th verse, from that which it bears in the phrase rendered, “Thou God seest me;” but the sense given above seems, on the whole, most consistent, and is one which the words will bear.—A.G.]

[11][A thousand volumes written against polygamy, would not lead to a clearer, fuller conviction, of the evils of that practice, than the story under review, Bush, Notes, p. 259.—A. G.]

[12][This appears, too, in the answer which she makes to the question of the angel: Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress, Sarai.—A. G.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 16 Abraham and Hagar

1. Sarai’s suggestion (Gen 16:1-3)

2. Abram’s action (Gen 16:4)

3. Sarai and Hagar (Gen 16:5-6)

4. Hagar in the wilderness (Gen 16:7-9)

5. The birth of Ishmael announced (Gen 16:10-14)

6. Ishmael born (Gen 16:15-16)

The fifteenth chapter may be called Abram’s faith chapter. The sixteenth is the chapter of unbelief. It was impatience which forced Sarai and Abram to act for themselves. Unbelief is impatience and impatience is unbelief. Faith waits patiently for the Lord, and on the Lord, to act. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” Abram and Sarai attempted to help the Lord to fulfill His promise. What a failure they made of it! On account of it there was great trouble in his house.

But the incident has a deeper meaning. Read Gal 4:21-31. This gives us the typical meaning and how the Lord overruled even this failure. Sarai represents the covenant of grace; Hagar the law covenant. Hagar was an Egyptian; Sarai a princess. The law brings into bondage, grace makes free.

Abram was eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born. The next chapter tells us that Abram was ninety and nine years old when the Lord spoke to him again. Thus for thirteen years Abram’s life seems to have been barren of communications from the Lord. What a harvest of the flesh.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16:1-16 While waiting for their promised son to be born, Abram and Sarai attempted an alternate plan that was not in keeping with faith.

16:1-3 Abram and Sarai faced the tension of her being barren and beyond childbearing years. By custom, a barren woman could give her servant to her husband as a slave-wife; the child born to that union was considered the wife’s child and could be adopted as the heir. Sarai’s suggestion, unobjectionable by custom, set a problematic human plan in motion. God’s promises would be fulfilled by faith.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

It seemeth that she had respect to God’s promise, which could not be accomplished without issue.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife. Herein, though some excuse may be made for him, he cannot be justified, for from the beginning it was not so; and, when it was so, it seems to have proceeded from an irregular desire to build up families for the speedier peopling of the world and the church. Certainly it must not be so now. Christ has reduced this matter to the first institution, and makes the marriage union to be between one man and one woman only. Now,

I. The maker of this match (would one think it?) was Sarai herself: she said to Abram, I pray thee, go in unto my maid, Gen 16:2. Note, 1. It is the policy of Satan to tempt us by our nearest and dearest relations, or those friends that we have an opinion of and an affection for. The temptation is most dangerous when it is sent by a hand that is least suspected: it is our wisdom therefore to consider, not so much who speaks as what is spoken. 2. God's commands consult our comfort and honour much better than our own contrivances do. It would have been much more for Sarai's interest if Abram had kept to the rule of God's law instead of being guided by her foolish projects; but we often do ill for ourselves.

II. The inducement to it was Sarai's barrenness.

1. Sarai bare Abram no children. She was very fair (Gen 12:14), was a very agreeable, dutiful wife, and a sharer with him in his large possessions; and yet written childless. Note, (1.) God dispenses his gifts variously, loading us with benefits, but not overloading us: some cross or other is appointed to be an alloy to great enjoyments. (2.) The mercy of children is often given to the poor and denied to the rich, given to the wicked and denied to good people, though the rich have most to leave them and good people would take most care of their education. God does herein as it has pleased him.

2. She owned God's providence in this affliction: The Lord hath restrained me from bearing. Note, (1.) As, where children are, it is God that gives them (Gen 33:5), so where they are wanted it is he that withholds them, Gen 30:2. This evil is of the Lord. (2.) It becomes us to acknowledge this, that we may bear it, and improve it, as an affliction of his ordering for wise and holy ends.

3. She used this as an argument with Abram to marry his maid; and he was prevailed upon by this argument to do it. Note, (1.) When our hearts are too much set upon any creature-comfort, we are easily put upon the use of indirect methods for the obtaining of it. Inordinate desires commonly produce irregular endeavours. If our wishes be not kept in a submission to God's providence, our pursuits will scarcely be kept under the restraints of his precepts. (2.) It is for want of a firm dependence upon God's promise, and a patient waiting for God's time, that we go out of the way of our duty to catch at expected mercy. He that believes does not make haste.

4. Abram's compliance with Sarai's proposal, we have reason to think, was from an earnest desire of the promised seed, on whom the covenant should be entailed. God had told him that his heir should be a son of his body, but had not yet told him that it should be a son by Sarai; therefore he thought, "Why not by Hagar, since Sarai herself proposed it?" Note, (1.) Foul temptations may have very fair pretenses, and be coloured with that which is very plausible. (2.) Fleshly wisdom, as it anticipates God's time of mercy, so it puts us out of God's way. (3.) This would be happily prevented if we would ask counsel of God by the word and by prayer, before we attempt that which is important and suspicious. Herein Abram was wanting; he married without God's consent. This persuasion came not of him that called him.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

CHAPTER XVI

Sarai, having no child, gives Hagar her maid to Abram

for wife, 1-3.

She conceives and despises her mistress, 4.

Sarai is offended and upbraids Abram, 5.

Abram vindicates himself; and Hagar, being hardly used

by her mistress, runs away, 6.

She is met by an angel, and counselled to return to

her mistress, 7-9.

God promises greatly to multiply her seed, 10.

Gives the name of Ishmael to the child that should be

born of her, 11.

Shows his disposition and character, 12.

Hagar calls the name of the Lord who spoke to her,

Thou God seest me, 13.

She calls the name of the well at which the angel met

her, Beer-laharoi, 14.

Ishmael is born in the 86th year of Abram's age, 15, 16.

NOTES ON CHAP. XVI

Verse 1. She had a handmaid, an Egyptian] As Hagar was an Egyptian, St. Chrysostom's conjecture is very probable. that she was one of those female slaves which Pharaoh gave to Abram when he sojourned in Egypt; see Ge 12:16. Her name הגר hagar signifies a stranger or sojourner, and it is likely she got this name in the family of Abram, as the word is pure Hebrew.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. Now Sarai, Abram’s wife. Moses here recites a new history, namely, that Sarai, through the impatience of long delay, resorted to a method of obtaining seed by her husband, at variance with the word of God. She saw that she was barren, and had passed the age of bearing. And she inferred the necessity of a new remedy, in order that Abram might obtain the promised blessing. Moses expressly relates, that the design of marrying a second wife did not originate with Abram himself, but with Sarai, to teach us that the holy man was not impelled by lust to these nuptials; but that when he was thinking of no such thing, he was induced to engage in them, by the exhortation of his wife. It is, however, asked, whether Sarai substituted her handmaid in her place, through the mere desire of having offspring? So it seems to some; yet to me it is incredible, that the pious matron should not have been cognizant of those promises, which had been so often repeated to her husband. Yea, it ought to be fully taken for granted, among all pious persons, that the mother of the people of God, was a participator of the same grace with her husband. Sarai, therefore, does not desire offspring (as is usual) from a merely natural impulse; but she yields her conjugal rights to another, through a wish to obtain that benediction, which she knew was divinely promised: not that she makes a divorce from her husband, but assigns him another wife, from whom he might receive children. And certainly if she had desired offspring in the ordinary manner, it would rather have come into her mind to do it by the adoption of a son, than by giving place to a second wife. For we know the vehemence of female jealousy. Therefore, while contemplating the promise, she becomes forgetful of her own right, and thinks of nothing but the bringing forth of children to Abram. A memorable example, from which no small profit accrues to us. For however laudable was Sarai’s wish, as regards the end, or the scope to which it tended; nevertheless, in the pursuit of it, she was guilty of no light sin, by impatiently departing from the word of God, for the purpose of enjoying the effect of that word. While she rejects upon her own barrenness and old age, she begins to despair of offspring, unless Abram should have children from some other quarter; in this there is already some fault. Yet, however desperate the affair might be, still she ought not to have attempted anything at variance with the will of God and the legitimate order of nature. God designed that the human race should be propagated by sacred marriage. Sarai perverts the law of marriage, by defiling the conjugal bed, which was appointed only for two persons. Nor is it an available excuse, that she wished Abram to have a concubine and not a wife; since it ought to have been regarded as a settled point, that the woman is joined to the man, ‘that they two should be one flesh.’ And though polygamy had already prevailed among many; yet it was never left to the will of man, to abrogate that divine law by which two persons were mutually bound together. Nor was even Abram free from fault, in following the foolish and preposterous counsel of his wife. Therefore, as the precipitancy of Sarai was culpable, so the facility with which Abram yielded to her wish was worthy of reprehension. The faith of both of them was defective; not indeed with regard to the substance of the promise, but with regard to the method in which they proceeded; since they hastened to acquire the offspring which was to be expected from God, without observing the legitimate ordinance of God. Whence also we are taught that God does not in vain command his people to be quiet, and to wait with patience, whenever he defers or suspends the accomplishment of their wishes. For they who hasten before the time, not only anticipate the providence of God, but being discontented with his word, precipitate themselves beyond their proper bounds. But it seems that Sarai had something further in view; for she not only wished that Abram should become a father, but would fain acquire to herself maternal rights and honors. I answer, since she knew that all nations were to be blessed in the seed of Abram, it is no wonder that she should be unwilling to be deprived of participation in his honor; lest she should be cut off, as a putrid member, from the body which had received the blessing, and should also become an alien from the promised salvation.

Bare him no children. This seems added as an excuse. And truly Moses intimates that she did not seek help from the womb of her maid, before necessity compelled her to do so. Her own words also show, that she had patiently and modestly waited to see what God would do, until hope was entirely cut off, when she says, that she was restrained from bearing by the Lord. (Genesis 16:2.) What fault then shall we find in her? Surely, that she did not, as she ought, cast this care into the bosom of God, without binding his power to the order of nature, or restraining it to her own sense. And then, by neglecting to infer from the past what would take place in future, she did not regard herself as in the hand of God, who could again open the womb which he had closed.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

XVI.

THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN.

(1) Now Sarai.—The history of Abram is given in a succession of brief narratives, written possibly by the patriarch himself; and though papyrus was known at Ur (Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., i. 343, ii. 430), yet the absence of any convenient writing material for ordinary use would oblige men in those ancient days to content themselves with short inscriptions, like those tablets of clay brought from Ur, many of which now in the British. Museum are said to be considerably older than the time of Abram. The narrator would naturally make but few alterations in such precious-documents, and hence a certain amount of recapitulation, like that which we find in the Books of Samuel, where again we have not a narrative from one pen, but the arrangement of materials already ancient. As, however, the Divine object was the revealing to mankind of the way by which God would raise up man from the fall, the narrator would be guided by inspiration in his choice of materials, and in the omission of such things as did not fall in with this purpose; and the evident reverence with which he deals with these records is a warrant to us of their genuineness. Such additions as the remark that the “Valley of Shaveh” was many centuries later called “the King’s Dale” (Gen_14:17; 2Sa_18:18) are generally acknowledged to have been the work of Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue, after the return from the exile.

Hagar.—As this word apparently comes from the Arabic verb to flee, it cannot have been her original name, unless we suppose that she really was an Arab fugitive who had taken refuge in Egypt. More probably she was an Egyptian woman who had escaped to Abram when he was in the Negeb, and had then received this appellation, which virtually means run-away.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–6. Hagar and her Flight into the Desert. (J, P.)

1. handmaid] or “maidservant,” as in Gen_12:16. The wife generally had a female slave, who was her own property, and not under the husband’s control: see Gen_29:24; Gen_29:29; Gen_30:3-7; Gen_30:9; Gen_30:12.

an Egyptian] It is natural to connect Hagar’s Egyptian origin with the sojourn in Egypt mentioned in chap. 12, or with the journeys in the Negeb (Gen_12:9, Gen_13:1).

The theory that the “Egypt” (Miṣraim) of which Hagar was a native was the land of a N. Arabian tribe (Muṣri) has been suggested by Winckler on account of the mention of Muṣri in N. Arabia in the cuneiform inscriptions. His theory supposes that the Muṣri of N. Arabia was at an early time confounded by the Israelites with the more famous, but similarly sounding, Miṣri, “an inhabitant of Egypt.” But, in view of the continual intercourse between Palestine and Egypt, as shewn by the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, the theory is improbable, and uncalled for. Egypt, at an early period, embraced the Sinaitic peninsula.

Hagar] The name “Hagar” is associated with that of wandering Arab tribes, called the Hagrites, 1Ch_5:10; 1Ch_5:19-20; 1Ch_27:31, with which should be compared the Hagarenes of Psa_83:6, “the tents of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; Moab, and the Hagarenes.”

Whether the story of Hagar, in this chapter, in any way bears upon the meaning of her name, is more than we can say for certain. But, in Arabic, hagara = “to flee,” and the well-known word hegira, the epoch of Mohammed, is his “flight” from Mecca.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children,.... She is before said to be barren, and he to be childless, Gen 11:30; God had promised him a seed, but as yet he had none, which was a trial of his faith; he had been married many years to Sarai his wife, she was his wife when they came out of Ur of the Chaldees, and how long before cannot be said; they stayed and dwelt some time at Haran, the Jews (x) say five years, and they had been now ten years in the land of Canaan, Gen 16:3; and were advanced in years, the one being seventy five, and the other eighty five, so that there was no great probability of having any children, wherefore the following step was taken:

and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar; no doubt but she had many, but this was a principal one, that might be over others, and was chiefly entrusted with the care and management of family affairs under her mistress; she might be the daughter of an Egyptian, born in Abram's house, as Eliezer was the son of a Syrian of Damascus, born there also; or she might be one of the maidservants Pharaoh, king of Egypt, gave to Abram, Gen 12:16; the Jews (y) have a tradition, that she was a daughter of Pharaoh, who, when he saw the wonders done for Sarai, said, it is better that my daughter should be a handmaid in this house, than a mistress in another, and therefore gave her to Sarai; others say (z) she was a daughter of his by a concubine, but neither is probable: from her came the people called Hagarites, Ch1 5:10, and Hagarenes, Psa 83:6; and there were a people in Arabia called Agraei, both by Strabo (a) and Pliny (b); and the latter speaks of a royal city in that country called Agra, which seem to have their names from this person. Melo (c), an Heathen writer, speaking of Abram, says, that he had two wives, one of his own country, and akin to him, and the other an Egyptian, a servant; of the Egyptian he beget twelve sons, who, going into Arabia, divided the country among them, and were the first that reigned over the inhabitants of it; as to her twelve sons, he mistakes, for these were not Hagar's sons by Abram, but her grandsons, the sons of Ishmael, see Gen 17:20.

(x) Seder Olam Rabba, p. 2. (y) Targum Jon. & Jarchi in loc. Bereshit Rabba, sect. 45. fol. 40. 2. (z) Pirke Eliezer, c. 26. (a) Geograph. l. 16. p. 528. (b) Hist. Nat. l. 6. c. 28. (c) Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 19. p. 420, 421.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The Circumstances connected with the Birth of Ishmael

1, 2. Abraham was now eighty-five years old, Sarah was seventy-five, and the promise of an heir seemed no nearer fulfilment. Despairing of offspring herself, Sarah persuades Abraham to take her Egyptian maid Hagar as a secondary wife, intending, according to ancient custom, to regard the issue as her own. But her lack of faith in God's promises was productive of very unhappy consequences.

4. Hagar] The Arabs claim descent from Hagar through Ishmael. Her name, which means 'flight,' is akin to the word Hegira, used of the flight of Mohammed from Medina to Mecca (622 a.d.), an event from which the Mohammedans date their era.

Her mistress was despised in her eyes] because she was fruitful while Sarah was barren: cp. Hannah and Peninnah (1Sa_1:6). It was accounted a great disgrace and a sign of God's displeasure to be without offspring: cp. Gen_30:23.

5. My wrong be upon thee] i.e. May the blame for the wrong done to me (by Hagar's conduct) fall on thee.

7. The angel of the Lord] see on Exo_3:2. Shur] The word means 'wall' and was probably applied to the chain of fortresses on the NE. frontier of Egypt. The Desert of Shur was the wilderness bordering on these fortresses which were built to keep out Asiatic invaders.

7, 8. Hagar might flee from the presence of Sarah, but not from the knowledge and sight of God. He finds her, and addresses her, as He did Adam, when he concealed himself in the Garden of Eden: cp. Exo_1:8, Exo_1:9.

10. A promise fulfilled in the Arab race: see on Gen_16:4.

11. Ishmael] 'E1 (God) hears.'

12. A wild man] RV 'as a wild-ass among men.' The wild ass is of an untameable nature, ever roving: cp. Job_39:5. Such was Ishmael, and such are his Arab descendants. He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren] i.e. shall preserve his independenee, though close to them; a true forecast of the history of Ishmael's descendants. But another translation gives, 'He shall dwell to the east of his brethren.'

13. Have I also here, etc.] Hagar realises that she still lives though God has looked upon her.

14. Beer-lahai-roi] 'the well of the living one who hath seen' God: see on Genesis 21 for St. Paul's references to Hagar.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. Handmaid — A family servant, whose special duty it was to wait upon the mistress of the household. The Sept. has παιδισκη, a young girl, or a young female slave. From her being here called an Egyptian, we infer that Abram obtained her during his sojourn in Egypt, when he received from Pharaoh “menservants and maidservants.” Gen_12:16. The name Hagar means flight. So, also, the well-known Arabic word hezrah or hegira, used so commonly in the flight of Mohammed from Mecca. It may have been given to Sarai’s handmaid after her flight from her mistress, and used here proleptically; or it may have been given her on account of her departure out of Egypt.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now Sarai Abram"s wife bare him no children (literally, bare not to him, notwithstanding the promise; the barrenness of Sarai being introduced as the point of departure for the ensuing narrative, and emphasized as the cause or occasion of the subsequent transaction): and she had literally, to her (there was)a handmaid, an Egyptian (obtained probably while in the house of Pharaoh (Gen_12:16) whose name was Hagarflight," from hagar, to flee. Cf. Hegirah, the flight of Mahomet. Not her original designation, but given to her afterwards, either because of her flight from Egypt (Ambrose, Wordsworth), or because of her escape from her mistress (Michaelis, Bush, "Speaker"s Commentary"). Though not the imaginary or mythical (Bohlen), it is doubtful if she was the real (Ainsworth, Bush), ancestor of the Hagarenes. (1Ch_5:10, 1Ch_5:19, 20 27:31; Psa_83:6, Psa_83:8)

HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Gal_4:22 Gal_4:31) The unspiritual, carnal mind is the bond slave, which must give way to the true heir. All true religious life is a response to revelation. In his light we see light.

II THE REVELATION TO HAGAR MAY BE CONNECTED WITH HER PERSONAL HISTORY. She turned back with a new light in her heart. Submission and obedience are commanded, but abundant reward is promised. Our life is under the eye of Jehovah and in his hand. "Thou God seest me" is the cry of a grateful memory, the note of a bright future. The nearness of God, his knowledge, may be not terror, but blessing, angels round about us, gracious sunshine of love in which we are invited to walk as children of light. R.

HOMILIES BY W. ROBERTS Vers. 1-6.

The maid, the mistress, and the master.

I HAGAR"S SINS.

1. Pride.

2. Contempt.

3. Insubordination.

4. Flight.

II SARAI"S FAULTS.

1. Tempting her husband.

2. Excusing herself.

3. Appealing to God.

4. Afflicting her servant.

III ABRAM"S INFIRMITY.

1. Yielding to temptation.

2. Perpetrating injustice.

3. Acquiescing in oppression. W.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hagar probably was one of those maid-servants which the king of Egypt (among other gifts) bestowed upon Abram, chap. xii. 16. Concerning her we have four things in this chapter,

I. Her marriage to Abram her master, ver. 1-3.

II. Her misbehaviour towards Sarai her mistress, ver. 4-6.

III. Her discourse with an angel that met her in her flight, ver. 7- 14.

IV. Her delivery of a son, ver. 15, 16.

We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife. Herein, though he may be excused, he cannot be justified; for from the beginning it was not so: and when it was so, it seems to have proceeded from an irregular desire to build up their families, for the speedier peopling of the world. But now we must not do so? Christ has reduced this matter to the first institution, and makes the marriage union to be between one man and one woman only.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

As the promise of a lineal heir (Gen 15:4) did not seem likely to be fulfilled, even after the covenant had been made, Sarai resolved, ten years after their entrance into Canaan, to give her Egyptian maid Hagar to her husband, that if possible she might "be built up by her," i.e., obtain children, who might found a house or family (Gen 30:3). The resolution seemed a judicious one, and according to the customs of the East, there would be nothing wrong in carrying it out. Hence Abraham consented without opposition, because, as Malachi (Mal 2:15) says, he sought the seed promised by God. But they were both of them soon to learn, that their thoughts were the thoughts of man and not of God, and that their wishes and actions were not in accordance with the divine promise. Sarai, the originator of the plan, was the first to experience its evil consequences. When the maid was with child by Abram, "her mistress became little in her eyes." When Sarai complained to Abram of the contempt she received from her maid (saying, "My wrong," the wrong done to me, "come upon thee," cf. Jer 51:35; Gen 27:13), and called upon Jehovah to judge between her and her husband,

(Note: בּיניך, with a point over the second Jod, to show that it is irregular and suspicious; since בּין with the singular suffix is always treated as a singular, and only with a plural suffix as plural.)

Abram gave her full power to act as mistress towards her maid, without raising the slave who was made a concubine above her position. But as soon as Sarai made her feel her power, Hagar fled. Thus, instead of securing the fulfilment of their wishes, Sarai and Abram had reaped nothing but grief and vexation, and apparently had lost the maid through their self-concerted scheme. But the faithful covenant God turned the whole into a blessing.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

Genesis 16

Here we find unbelief casting its dark shadow across the spirit of Abraham, and again turning him aside, for a season, from the path of simple, happy confidence in God. "And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold the Lord hath restrained me from bearing." These words bespeak the usual impatience of unbelief; and Abraham should have treated them accordingly, and waited patiently on the Lord for the accomplishment of His gracious promise. The poor heart naturally prefers anything to the attitude of waiting. It will turn to any expedient - any scheme - any resource, rather than be kept in that posture. It is one thing to believe a promise, at the first, and quite another thing to wait quietly for the accomplishment thereof. We can see this distinction constantly, exemplified in a child. If I promise my child anything, he has no idea of doubting my word; but yet, I can detect the greatest possible restlessness and impatience in reference to the time and manner of accomplishment. And cannot the wisest sage find a true mirror in which to see himself reflected, in the conduct of a child? Truly so. Abraham exhibits faith, in Gen. 15 and yet he fails is patience, in Gen. 16. Hence the force and beauty of the apostle’s word, in Hebrews 6, "followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." God makes a promise, faith believes it; hope anticipates it; patience waits quietly for it.

There is such a thing, in the commercial world, as "the present worth" of a bill or promissory note, for if men are called upon to wait for their money, they must he paid for waiting. Now, in faith’s world, there is such a things as the present worth of God’s promise; and the scale by which that worth is regulated, is the heart’s experimental knowledge of God; for according to my estimate of God, will be my estimate of His promise; and moreover, the subdued and patient spirit finds its rich and full reward in waiting upon Him for the accomplishment of all that He has promised.

However, as to Sarah, the real amount of her word to Abraham is this, "the Lord has failed me; it may be, my Egyptian maid will prove a resource for me." Anything but God for a heart under the influence of unbelief. It is often truly marvellous to observe the trifles to which we will betake ourselves, when once we have lost the sense of God’s nearness, His infallible faithfulness, and unfailing sufficiency. We lose that calm and well-balanced condition of soul, so essential to the proper testimony of the man of faith; and, just like other people, betake ourselves to any or every expedient, in order to reach the wished-for end, and call that "a laudable use of means."

But it is a bitter thing to take ourselves out of the place of absolute dependence upon God. The consequences must be disastrous. Had Sarah said, ’Nature has failed me, but God is my resource,’ how different it would have been! This would have been her proper ground; for nature really had failed her. But, then, it was nature in one shape, and therefore she wished to try nature in another. She had not learnt to look away from nature in every shape. In the judgement of God, and of faith, nature in Hagar was no better than nature in Sarah. Nature, whether old or young, is alike to God; and, therefore, alike to faith; but, ah! we are only in the power of this truth when we are experimentally finding our living centre in God Himself. When the eye is taken off that Glorious Being, we are ready for the meanest device of unbelief. It is only when we are consciously leaning on the only true, the only wise, the living God, that we are enabled to look away from every creature stream. It is not that we shall despise God’s instrumentality. By no means. To do so would be recklessness and not faith. Faith values the instrument, not because of itself, but because of Him who uses it. Unbelief looks only at the instrument, and judges of the success of a matter by the apparent efficiency thereof, instead of by the sufficiency of Him who, in grace, uses it. Like Saul, who, when he looked at David, and then looked at the Philistine, said, "thou are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for thou art but a youth." Yet the question in David’s heart was not as to whether he was able, but whether Jehovah was able.

The path of faith is a very simple and a very narrow one. It neither deifies the means, on the one hand, nor despises it, on the other. It simply values it, so far as it is evidently God’s means, and no further. There is a vast difference between God’s using the creature to minister to me, and my using it to shut Him out. This difference is not sufficiently attended to. God used the ravens to minister to Elijah, but Elijah did not use them to exclude God. If the heart be really trusting in God, it will not trouble itself about His means. It waits on Him, in the sweet Assurance that by what means soever He pleases, He will bless, He will minister, He will provide.

Now, in the case before us, in this chapter, it is evident that Hagar was not God’s instrument for the accomplishment of His promise to Abraham. He had promised a son, no doubt, but He had not said that this son would be Hagar’s; and, in point of fact, we find from the narrative, that both Abraham and Sarah "multiplied their sorrow," by having recourse to Hagar; for "when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes." This was but the beginning of those multiplied sorrows, which flowed from hastening after nature’s resources. Sarah’s dignity was trampled down by an Egyptian bond-woman, and she found herself in the place of weakness and contempt. The only true place of dignity and power is the place of felt weakness and dependence. There is no one so entirely independent of all around, as the man who is really walking by faith, and waiting only upon God; but the moment a child of God makes himself a debtor to nature or the world, he loses his dignity, and will speedily be made to feel his loss. It is no easy task to estimate the loss sustained by diverging, in the smallest measure, from the path of faith. No doubt, all those who walk in that path will find trial and exercise; but one thing is certain, that the blessings and joys which peculiarly belong to them are infinitely more than a counterpoise; whereas, when they turn aside, they have to encounter far deeper trial, and nought but that.

"And Sarai said, My wrong be upon thee." When we act wrong, we are, oft-times, prone to lay the blame on some one else. Sarah was only reaping the fruit of her own proposal, and yet she says to Abraham, "My wrong be upon thee;" and then, with Abraham’s permission, she seeks to get rid of the trial which her own impatience had brought upon her. "But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarah dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face." This will not do. "The bond-woman" cannot be got rid of by hard treatment. When we make mistakes, and find ourselves called upon to encounter the results thereof, we cannot counteract those results by carrying ourselves with a high hand. We frequently try this method, but we are sure to make matters worse thereby. If we have done wrong, we should humble ourselves and confess the wrong, and wait on God for deliverance. But there was nothing like this manifested in Sarah’s case. Quite the reverse. There is no sense of having done wrong; and, so far from waiting on God for deliverance, she seeks to deliver herself in her own way. However, it will always be found that every effort which we make to rectify our errors, previous to the full confession thereof, only tends to render our path more difficult. Thus Hagar had to return, and give birth to her son, which son proved to be not the child of promise at all, but a very great trial to Abraham and his house, as we shall see in the sequel.

Now, we should view all this in a double aspect: first, as teaching us a direct practical principle of much value; and secondly, in a doctrinal point of view. And, first, as to the direct, practical teaching, we may learn that when, through the unbelief of our hearts, we make mistakes, it is not all in a moment, nor yet by our own devices, we can remedy them. Things must take their course. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." This is an unalterable principle, meeting us, again and again, on the page of inspiration, and also on the page of our personal history. Grace forgives the sin and restores the soul, but that which is sown must be reaped. Abraham and Sarah had to endure the presence of the bond-woman and her son for a number of years, and, then, get rid of them in God’s way. There is peculiar blessedness in leaving ourselves in God’s hands. Had Abraham and Sarah done so, on the present occasion, they would never have been troubled with the presence of the bond-woman and her son; but, having made themselves debtors to nature, they had to endure the consequences. But, alas! we are often "like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke," when it would be our exceeding comfort to "behave and quiet ourselves as a child that is weaned of his mother." No two figures can be more opposite than a stubborn bullock and a weaned child. The former represents person senselessly struggling under the yoke of circumstances, and rendering his yoke all the more galling by his efforts to get rid of it; the latter represents one meekly bowing his hand to everything, and rendering his portion all the sweeter, by entire subjection of spirit.

And, now, as to the doctrinal view of this chapter. We are authorised to look at Hagar and her son, as figures of the covenant of works, and all who are thereby brought into bondage. (Gal. 4: 22-25) "The flesh" is, in this important passage, contrasted with "promise;" and thus we not only get the divine idea as to what the term "flesh" implies, but also as to Abraham’s effort to obtain the seed by means of Hagar, instead of resting in God’s "promise." The two covenants are allegorised by Hagar and Sarah, and are diametrically opposite the one to the other. The one gendering to bondage, inasmuch as it raised the question as to man’s competency "to do" and "not to do," and made life entirely dependent upon that competency. "The man that doeth these things shall live in them." This was the Hagar-covenant. But the Sarah-covenant reveals God as the God of promise, which promise is entirely independent of man, and founded upon God’s willingness and ability to fulfil it. When God makes a promise, there is no "if’ attached thereto. He makes it unconditionally, and is resolved to fulfil it; and faith rests in Him, in perfect liberty of heart. It needs no effort of nature to reach the accomplishment of A divine promise. Here was, precisely, where Abraham and Sarah failed. They made an effort of nature to reach a certain end, which end was absolutely secured by a promise of God. This is the grand mistake of unbelief. By its restless activity, it raises a hazy mist around the soul, which hinders the beams of the divine glory from reaching. "He could there do no mighty works, because of their unbelief." One great characteristic virtue of faith is, that it ever leaves the platform clear for God to show Himself; and truly, when He shows Himself, man must take the place of a happy worshipper.

The error into which the Galatians allowed themselves to be drawn, was the addition of something of nature to what Christ had already accomplished for them by the cross. The gospel which had been preached to them, and which they had received, was the simple presentation of God’s absolute, unqualified, and unconditional grace. "Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth crucified among them." This was not merely promise divinely made, but promise divinely and most gloriously accomplished. A crucified Christ settled everything, in reference both to God’s claims and man’s necessities. But the false teachers upset all this, or sought to upset it, by saying, "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." This, as the apostle teaches them, was, in reality, "making Christ of none effect." Christ must either be a whole Saviour, or no Saviour at all. the moment a man says, "except ye he this or that, ye cannot be saved," he totally subverts Christianity ; for in Christianity I find God coming down to me, just as I am, a lost, guilty, self-destroyed sinner; and coming, moreover, with a full remission of all my sins, and a full salvation from my lost estate, all perfectly wrought by Himself on the cross.

Hence, therefore, a man who tells me, "you must be so and so, in order to be saved," robs the cross of all its glory, and robs me of all my peace. If salvation depends upon our being or doing ought, we shall, inevitably, be lost. Thank God, it does not; for the great fundamental principle of the gospel is, that God is ALL - man is NOTHING. It is not a mixture of God and man. It is all of God. The peace of the gospel does not repose, in part, on Christ’s work;, and, in part, on man’s work; it reposes wholly on Christ’s work, because that work is perfect - perfect for ever; and it renders all who put their trust in it as perfect as itself.

Under the law, God, as it were, stood still to see what man could do; but, in the gospel, God is seen acting, and as for man, he has but to "stand still and see the salvation of God." This being so, the inspired apostle hesitates not to say to the Galatians, "Christ is become of no effect unto you; whosoever of you are justified by law, (en nomo,) ye are fallen from grace." If man has anything to do in the matter, God is shut out; and if God is shut out, there can be no salvation, for it is impossible that man can work out a salvation by that which proves him a lost creature; and then if it be a question of grace, it must be all grace. It cannot be half grace, half law. The two covenants are perfectly distinct. It cannot be half Sarah and half Hagar. It must be either the one or the other. If it be Hagar, God has nothing to do with it; and if it be Sarah, man has nothing to do with it. Thus it stands throughout. The law addresses man, tests him, sees what he is really worth, proves him a ruin, and puts him under the curse; and not only puts him under it, but keeps him there, so long as he is occupied with it so long as he is alive. "The law hath dominion over a man so long as he liveth;" but when he is dead, its dominion necessarily ceases, so far as he is concerned, though it still remains in full force to curse every living man.

The gospel, on the contrary, assuming man to be lost ruined, dead, reveals God as He is - the Saviour of the lost - the Pardoner of the guilty - the Quickener of the dead. It reveals Him, not as exacting ought from man; (for what could be expected from one who has died a bankrupt) but as exhibiting His own independent grace in redemption. This makes a material difference and will account for the extraordinary strength of the language employed in the Epistle to the Galatians: "I marvel" - "Who hath bewitched you" - "I am afraid of you" - "I stand in doubt of you" - "I would they were even cut off that trouble you." This is the language of the Holy Ghost, who knows the value of a full Christ, and a full salvation; and who also knows how essential the knowledge of both is to a lost sinner. We have no such language as this in any other epistle; not even in that to the Corinthians, although there were some of the grossest disorders to be corrected amongst them. all human failure and error can be corrected by bringing in God’s grace; but the Galatians, like Abraham in this chapter, were going away from God, and returning to the flesh. What remedy could be devised for this? How can yon correct an error which consists in departing from that which alone can correct anything? To fall from grace, is to get back under the law, from which nothing can ever be reaped but "the curse." May the Lord establish our hearts in His own most excellent grace!

C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hagar Given to Abraham

v. 1. Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bare him no children; and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

v. 2. a. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath constrained me from bearing; I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. The fact of Sarai’s barrenness had been mentioned at the time of their coming to Canaan, Gen 11:30. It is repeated here for the sake of the emphasis upon the miracle which the Lord wrought in her case. Ten years had now passed by, and yet, in spite of the promise, Gen 15:4, Sarai remained without a child. She therefore be came impatient and suggested to Abram that, since the Lord hindered her from bearing, denied her offspring, her Egyptian slave Hagar might be the one through whom she was to have children, that her family might be built up through the slave. According to the custom of the Orient the children of slaves belonged to the master and mistress, Exo 21:4; 1Ch 2:35.

v. 2. b. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

v. 3. And Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. Although Abram also should have shown more faith and patience, he consented to the plan of his wife, not for fleshly reasons, but with the earnest desire for offspring, forth at seed which was to be as the stars of the heaven in number.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 16:13

When Hagar fled into the wilderness from the face of her mistress she was visited by an angel, who sent her back; but together with this implied reproof of her impatience, he gave her a word to strengthen and console her. In this mixture of humbling and cheering thoughts she recognised the presence of her Lord, and hence "she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me." Such was the condition of men before Christ came: favoured with some occasional notices of God’s regard for individuals, but for the most part instructed merely in His general providence. But under the New Covenant this distinct regard of Almighty God for every one of us is clearly revealed. When the Eternal Son came on earth in our flesh, God began to speak to us as individuals. There was a revelation face to face.

I. It is very difficult, in spite of the revelation made in the Gospel, to master the idea of this particular providence of God. We conceive that God works on a large plan, but we cannot realise that He sees and thinks of individuals. In trouble, especially when the world fails us, we often despair, because we do not realise the loving-kindness and presence of God.

II. In order that we may understand that in spite of His mysterious perfections He has a separate knowledge and regard for individuals, God has taken upon Him the thoughts and feelings of our own nature, which we all understand is capable of such personal attachments. The most winning property of our Saviour’s mercy is its dependence on time and place, person and circumstance—in other words, its tender discrimination. Even Judas was followed and encompassed by His serene though grave regard till the very hour he betrayed Him.

III. Consider our Lord’s behaviour to the strangers who came before Him. Judas was His friend, but we have never seen Him. Let His manner toward the multitude of men in the Gospels assure us how He will look on us. Almighty as He is, He could display a tender interest in all who approached Him.

IV. God beholds thee individually, whoever thou art, He calls thee by thy name. Thou wast one of those for whom Christ offered up His last prayer, and sealed it with His precious blood. What a thought is this!—a thought almost too great for our faith. What am I, that God the Holy Ghost should enter into me and draw up my thoughts heavenward "with plaints innumerable"?

J. H. Newman, Selection from Parochial and Plain Sermons, p. 204.

Advent brings with it the thought that we shall one day, every one of us, stand before our Judge, the All-seeing, the All-knowing. There are some things in religion which are among its plainest and most familiar teachings, which yet, when we come to think of what they really mean, seem almost too tremendous to bear. Among them is this truth—that the eye of God is always upon us. The Bible everywhere takes it for granted, and appeals to it.

I. We all know that if there is anything true in the world, it is that God, who made us, must see and know all that we are and all that we do. What is the good, then, of fighting against what is inevitable, what is so certain? We ought to live and learn to live all day long with the thought that God’s eye is upon us, if no other reason, for this one alone—that this is the truth, that this is the real condition under which we must live.

II. The thought of God’s eye upon us is usually looked upon as a thought to restrain and bridle us in the hour of temptation and carelessness; and so it is. But is this all? Is it fixed on us only to make us feel our infinite distance from Him who is our Father and our God, only to make us shrink and tremble before Him? In our cowardice and with our selfish love of forbidden things we miss what is meant not merely to restrain us, but to be the greatest and most unfailing of our comforts. The thought that God sees us always is His great encouragement and help to His children in doing right. His eye is not the eye of a Judge and Ruler only, but of a Shepherd and Father, the Lover of the souls of men, these poor souls of ours and of our brethren, not sparing even His own Son for them. So in those bitter times, which seem to shut out all remaining hope while we are here, we shall know and feel that we are being watched by an eye of tenderness and sympathy deeper and truer than even that of any man on earth for his suffering friend. And so may we prepare ourselves for that day when our eyes shall be unsealed and we shall meet and behold each other.

R. W. Church, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 345.

References: Gen 16:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii., No. 85, and vol. xxxi., No. 1869. Gen 17—R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 279.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

BIRTH OF ISHMAEL

Genesis 16

IN this unpretending chapter we have laid bare to us the origin of one of the most striking facts in the history of religion: namely, that from the one person of Abram have sprung Christianity and that religion which has been and still is its most formidable rival and enemy, Mohammedanism. To Ishmael, the son of Abram, the Arab tribes are proud to trace their pedigree. Through him they claim Abram as their father, and affirm that they are his truest representatives, the sons of his first-born. In Mohammed, the Arabian, they see the fulfilment of the blessing of Abram, and they have succeeded in persuading a large part of the world to believe along with them. Little did Sarah think when she persuaded Abram to take Hagar that she was originating a rivalry which has run with keenest animosity through all ages and which oceans of blood have not quenched. The domestic rivalry and petty womanish spites and resentments so candidly depicted in this chapter, have actually thrown on the world from that day to this one of its darkest and least hopeful shadows. The blood of our own countrymen, it may be of our own kindred, will yet flow in this unappeasable quarrel. So great a matter does a little fire kindle. So lasting and disastrous are the issues of even slight divergences from pure simplicity.

It is instructive to observe how long this matter of obtaining an heir for Abram occupies the stage of sacred history and in how many aspects it is shown. The stage is rapidly cleared of whatever else might naturally have invited attention, and interest is concentrated on the heir that is to be. The risks run by the appointed mother, the doubts of the father, the surrender now of the mothers rights, -all this is trivial if it concerned only one household, important only when you view it as significant for the race. It was thus men were taught thoughtfully to brood upon the future and to believe that, though Divine, blessing and salvation would spring from earth: man was to co-operate with God, to recognise himself as capable of uniting with God in the highest of all purposes. At the same time, this long and continually deferred expectation of Abram was the simple means adopted by God to convince men once for all that the promised seed is not of nature but of grace, that it is God who sends all effectual and determining blessing, and that we must learn to adapt ourselves to His ways and wait upon Him.

The first man, then, whose religious experience and growth are recorded for us at any length, has this one thing to learn, to trust Gods word and wait for it. In this everything is included. But gradually it appears to us all that this is the great difficulty, to wait; to let God take His own time to bless us. It is hard to believe in Gods perfect love and care when we are receiving no present comfort or peace; hard to believe we shall indeed be sanctified when we seem to be abandoned to sinful habit; hard, to pass all through life with some pain, or some crushing trouble, or some harassing anxiety, or some unsatisfied craving. It is easy to start with faith, most trying to endure patiently to the end. It is thus God educates His children. Compelled to wait for some crowning gift, we cannot but study Gods ways, It is thus we are forced to look below the surface of life to its hidden meanings and to construe Gods dealings with ourselves apart from the experience of other men. It is thus we are taught actually to loosen our hold of things temporal and to lay hold on what is spiritual and real. He who leaves himself in Gods hand will one day declare that the pains and sorrows he suffered were trifling in comparison with what he has won from them.

But Sarah could not wait. She seems to have fixed ten years as the period during which she would wait; but at the expiry of this term she considered herself justified in helping forward Gods tardy providence by steps of her own. One cannot severely blame her. When our hearts are set upon some definite blessing things seem to move too slowly, and we can scarcely refrain from urging them on without too scrupulously enquiring into the character of our methods. We are willing to wait for a certain time, but beyond that we must take the matter into our own hand. This incident shows, what all life shows, that whatever be the boon you seek, you do yourself an injury if you cease to seek it in the best possible form and manner, and decline upon some lower thing which you can secure by some easy stratagem of your own.

The device suggested by Sarah was so common that the wonder is that it had not long before been tried. Jealousy or instinctive reluctance may have prevented her from putting it in force. She might no doubt have understood that God, always working out His purposes in consistency with all that is most honourable and pure in human conduct, requires of no one to swerve a hairs-breadth from the highest ideal of what a human life should be, and that just in proportion as we seek the best gifts and the most upright and pure path to them does God find it easy to bless us. But in her case it was difficult to continue in this belief; and at length she resolved to adopt the easy and obvious means of obtaining an heir. It was unbelieving and foolish, but not more so than our adoption of practices common in our day and in our business which we know are not the best, but which we nevertheless make use of to obtain our ends because the most righteous means possible do not seem workable in our circumstances. Are you not conscious that you have sometimes used a means of effecting your purpose, which you would shrink from using habitually, but which you do not scruple to use to tide you over a difficulty, an extraordinary device for an extraordinary emergency, a Hagar brought in for a season to serve a purpose, not a Sarah accepted from God and cherished as an eternal helpmeet. It is against this we are here warned. From a Hagar can at the best spring only an Ishmael, while in order to obtain the blessing God intends we must betake ourselves to Gods barren-looking means.

The evil consequences of Sarahs scheme were apparent first of all in the tool she made use of Agur the son of Jakeh says: "For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear. For a servant when he reigneth, and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married, and a handmaid that is heir to her mistress." Naturally this half-heathen girl, when she found that her son would probably inherit all Abrams possessions, forgot herself, and looked down on her present, nominal mistress. A flood of new fancies possessed her vacant mind and her whole demeanour becomes insulting to Sarah. The slave-girl could not be expected to sympathise with the purpose which Abram and Sarah had in view when they made use of her. They had calculated on finding only the unquestioning, mechanical obedience of the slave, even while raising her practically to the dignity of a wife. They had fancied that even to the deepest feelings of her womans heart, even in maternal hopes, she would be plastic in their hands, their mere passive instrument. But they have entirely miscalculated. The slave has feelings as quick and tender as their own, a life and a destiny as tenaciously clung to as their God-appointed destiny. Instead of simplifying their life they have merely added to it another source of complexity and annoyance. It is the common fate of all who use others to satisfy their own desires and purposes. The instruments they use are never so soulless and passive as it is wished. If persons cannot serve you without deteriorating in their own character, you have no right to ask them to serve you. To use human beings as if they were soulless machines is to neglect radical laws and to inflict the most serious injury on our fellow-men. Mistresses who do not treat their servants with consideration, recognising that they are as truly women as themselves, with all a womans hopes and feelings, and with a life of their own to live, are committing a grievous wrong, and evil will come of it.

In such an emergency as now arose in Abrams household, character shows itself clearly. Sarahs vexation at the success of her own scheme, her recrimination and appeal for strange justice, her unjustifiable treatment of Hagar, Abrams Bedouin disregard of the jealousies of the womens tent, his Gallio-like repudiation of judgment in such quarrels, his regretful vexation and shame that through such follies, mistakes, and wranglings, . God had to find a channel for His promise to flow-all this discloses the painful ferment into which Abrams household was thrown. Sarahs attempt to rid herself with a high hand of the consequences of her scheme was signally unsuccessful. In the same inconsider ate spirit in which she had put Hagar in her place, she now forces her to flee, and fancies that she has now rid herself and her household of all the disagreeable consequences of her experiment. She is grievously mistaken. The slave comes back upon her hands, and comes back with the promise of a son who should be a continual trouble to all about him. All through Ishmaels boyhood Abram and Sarah had painfully to reap the fruits of what they had sown. We only make matters worse when we endeavour by injustice and harshness to crush out the consequences of wrong-doing. The difficulties into which sin has brought us can only be effectually overcome by sincere contrition and humiliation. It is not all in a moment nor by one happy stroke you can rectify the sin or mistake of a moment. If by your wise devices you have begotten young Ishmaels, if something is every day grieving you and saying to you, "This comes of your careless inconsiderate conduct in the past," then see that in your vexation there is real penitence and not a mere indignant resentment against circumstances or against other people, and see that you are not actually continuing the fault which first gave birth to your present sorrow and entanglement. When Hagar fled from her mistress she naturally took the way to her old country. Instinctively her feet carried her to the land of her birth. And as she crossed the desert country where Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia meet, she halted by a fountain, spent with her flight and awed by the solitude and stillness of the desert. Her proud spirit is broken and tamed, the fond memories of her adopted home and all its customs and ways and familiar faces and occupations, overtake her when she pauses and her heart reacts from the first excitement of hasty purpose and reckless execution. To whom could she go in Egypt? Was there one there who would remember the little slave girl or who would care to show her a kindness? Has she not acted madly in fleeing from her only protectors? The desolation around her depicts her own condition. No motion stirs as far as her eye can reach, no bird flies, no leaf trembles, no cloud floats over the scorching sun, no sound breaks the death-like quiet; she feels as if in a tomb, severed from all life, forgotten of all. Her spirit is breaking under this sense of desolation, when suddenly her heart stands still as she hears a voice utter her own name "Hagar, Sarais maid." As readily as every other person when God speaks to them, does Hagar recognise Who it is who has followed her into this blank solitude. In her circumstances to hear the voice of God left no room for disobedience. The voice of God made audible through the actual circumstances of our daily life acquires a force and an authority we never attached to it otherwise.

Probably, too, Hagar would have gone back to Abrams tents at the bidding of a less authoritative voice than this. Already she was softening and repenting. She but needed some one to say, "Go back." You may often make it easier for a proud man to do a right thing by giving him a timely word. Frequently men stand in the position of Hagar, knowing the course they ought to adopt and yet hesitating to adopt it until it is made easy to them by a wise and friendly word.

In the promise of a son which was here given to Hagar and the prediction concerning his destiny, while there was enough to teach both her and Abram that he was not to be the heir of the promise, there was also much to gratify a mothers pride and be to Hagar a source of continual satisfaction. The son was to bear a name which should commemorate Gods remembrance of her in her desolation. As often as she murmured it over the babe or called it to the child or uttered it in sharp remonstrance to the refractory boy, she was still reminded that she had a helper in God who had heard and would hear her. The prediction regarding the child has been strikingly fulfilled in his descendants; the three characteristics by which they are distinguished being precisely those here mentioned. "He will be a wild man," literally, "a wild ass among men," reminding us of the description of this animal in Job: "Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwelling. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing." Like the zebra that cannot be domesticated, the Arab scorns the comforts of civilised life, and adheres to the primitive dress, food, and mode of life, delighting in the sensation of freedom, scouring the deserts, sufficient with his horse and spear for every emergency. His hand also is against every man, looking on all as his natural enemies or as his natural prey; in continual feud of tribe against tribe and of the whole race against all of different blood and different customs. And yet he "dwells in the presence of his brethren"; though so warlike a temper would bode his destruction and has certainly destroyed other races, this Ishmaelite stock continues in its own lands with an uninterrupted history. In the words of an authoritative writer: "They have roved like the moving sands of their deserts; but their race has been rooted while the individual wandered. That race has neither been dissipated by conquest, nor lost by migration, nor confounded with the blood of other countries. They have continued to dwell in the presence of all their brethren, a distinct nation, wearing upon the whole the same features and aspects which prophecy first impressed upon them."

What struck Hagar most about this interview was Gods presence with her in this remote solitude. She awakened to the consciousness that duty, hope, God, are ubiquitous, universal, carried in the human breast, not confined to any place. Her hopes, her haughtiness, her sorrows, her flight, were known. The feeling possessed her which was afterwards expressed by the Psalmist: "Thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Thou tellest my wanderings; put Thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy book?" Even here where I thought to have escaped every eye, have I been following and at length found Him that seeth me. As truly and even more perceptibly than in Abrams tents, God is with her here in the desert. To evade duty, to leave responsibility behind us, is impossible. In all places we are Gods children, bound to accept the responsibilities of our nature. In all places God is with us, not only to point out our duty but to give us the feeling that in adhering to duty we adhere to Him, and that it is because He values us that He presses duty upon us. With Him is no respect of persons. the servant is in his sight as vivid a personality as the mistress, and God appears not to the overbearing mistress but to the overborne servant.

Happy they who when God has thus met them and sent them back on their own footsteps, a long and weary return, have still been so filled with a sense of Gods love in caring for them through all their errors, that they obey and return. All round about His people does God encamp, all round about His flock does the faithful Shepherd watch and drive back upon the fold each wanderer. Not only to those who are consciously seeking Him does God reveal Himself, but often to us at the very. farthest point of our wandering, at our extremity, when another days journey would land us in a region from which there is no return. When our regrets for the past become intolerably poignant and bitter; when we see a waste of years behind us barren as the sand of the desert, with nothing done but what should but cannot be undone; when the heart is stupefied with the sense of its madness and of the irretrievable loss it has sustained, or when we look to the future and are persuaded little can grow up in it out of such a past, when we see that all that would have prepared us for it has been lightly thrown aside or spent recklessly for nought, when our hearts fail us, this is God besetting us behind and before. And may He grant us strength to pray, "Show me Thy ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths. Lead me in Thy truth and teach me: for Thou art the God of my salvation; on Thee do I wait all the day."

The quiet glow of hopefulness with which Hagar returned to Abrams encampment should possess the spirit of every one of us. Hagars prospects were not in all respects inviting. She knew the kind of treatment she was likely to receive at the hands of Sarah. She was to be a bondwoman still. But God had persuaded her of His care and had given her a hope large enough to fill her heart. That hope was to be fulfilled by a return to the home she had fled from, by a humbling and painful experience. There is no person for whom God has not similar encouragement. Frequently persons forget that God is in their life, fulfilling His purposes. They flee from what is painful; they lose their bearings in life and know not which way to turn; they do not fancy there is help for them in God. Yet God is with them; by these very circumstances that reduce them to desolateness and despair He leads them to hope in Him. Each one of us has a place in His purpose; and that place we shall find not by fleeing from what is distressing but by submitting ourselves cheerfully to what He appoints. Gods purpose is real, and life is real, meant to accomplish not our present passing pleasure, but lasting good in conformity with Gods purpose. Be sure that when you are bidden back to duties that seem those of a slave, you are bidden to them by God, Whose purposes are worthy of Himself and Whose purposes include you and all that concerns you.

There are, I think, few truths more animating than this which is here taught us, that God has a purpose with each of us; that however insignificant we seem, however friendless, however hardly used, however ousted even from our natural place in this worlds households, God has a place for us; that however we lose our way in life we are not lost from His eye; that even when we do not think of choosing Him He in His Divine, all-embracing love chooses us, and throws about us bonds from which we cannot escape. Of Hagar many were complacently thinking it was no great matter if she were lost, and some might consider themselves righteous because they said she deserved whatever mishap might befall her. But not so God. Of some of us, it may be, others may think no great blank would be made by our loss; but Gods compassion and care and purpose comprehend the least worthy. The very hairs of your head are all numbered by Him. Nothing is so trivial and insignificant as to escape His attention, nothing so intractable that He cannot use it for good. Trust in Him, obey Him, and your life will yet be useful and happy.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

Now

This word is used in English to introduce a new part of the story and background information about Sarai. (See: Background Information)

female servant

"slave-girl." This type of slave would serve the woman of the household.

from having children

"from giving birth to children"

I will have children by her

"I will build my family through her"

Abram listened to the voice of Sarai

"Abram did what Sarai said"

she looked with contempt on her mistress

"she despised her mistress" or "she thought that she was more valuable than her mistress"

her mistress

Here this refers to Sarai. A mistress has authority over her slave. AT: "her owner" or "Sarai"

translationWords

Sarah

Abraham

servant

Egypt

Hagar

Yahweh

had relations with

Canaan

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

שפחה מצרית A HANDMAID, AN EGYPTIAN — She was a daughter of Pharaoh; when he saw the miracles which had been performed for Sarah’s take he said, “It is better for my daughter to be a handmaid in this man’s house than be mistress in another man’s house” (Genesis Rabbah 45:1).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

ושרי אשת אברם לא ילדה לו, as mentioned already in Genesis 11,30 ותהי שרי עקרה, "Sarai was barren." Now when Sarai realized that her husband was already 85 years old, and she still had not been able to bear a child for him, while she herself had already reached the age of 75, she thought that she had no longer any hope of conceiving herself. She therefore reasoned to herself, that seeing G'd had promised Avram that he would have children of his own who would inherit the land of Canaan, G'd must have referred to his siring children from another woman. She reasoned further that it would be in her own best interest that any children born to her husband should be born by a woman under her control so that she would experience the joy of motherhood at least vicariously.

ולה שפחה מצרית, had Hagar been of Canaanite origin, Avram would not have agreed to sleep with her. Her name is mentioned out of respect for Avram, [whose sleeping with an anonymous woman would have place him in a bad light. Ed.]

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.