Genesis

Chapter Sixteen

Preface

Whereas previous chapters have reflected the spiritual strength and faith in God of Abram, in this chapter the reader is exposed to a moment of spiritual weakness in both Abram and his wife, Sarai.  Yet, the reader may be assured that God knew before time all the “ups and downs” of Abram’s life; and now, as one looks back through corridors of history and studies the prophecies of God, one can clearly see that all was in accordance with God’s Master Plan for this world and the human race.  The child of God may also take solace in the fact that God never forsakes His servant even though there are periods of spiritual lapse in his life.

But this chapter is of special benefit to the Christian who is under grace.  The Apostle Paul painted a clear picture of the contrast between Law and Grace, using the facts within this chapter and subsequent chapters as an illustration.  Using the example of Abram’s two sons, one from the bondswoman (Sarai’s maid) and from the free (Sarai), he unmistakably and unambiguously informed his readers that law and grace cannot cohabit (Galatians 4:21-31).  And this is probably the most serious mistake Christians make today.  They are saved by grace (faith), and then become convinced that they must live through obedience under their own power in accordance with the law—not only the law contained in Scripture, but often many and sundry self-imposed prohibitions, those which they dream-up and those absorbed from the dictates of others.  They miss the mark when they fail to realize that living for Jesus is accomplished by the same means (faith) they came to know Him (Colossians 2:6).  It is only when they come to this realization and live by the principle of faith that God is able to fully unleash the power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life, enabling the believer to live the “victorious Christian experience.”

Genesis 16:1-6

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar.  So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the LORD has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.  Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.  So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.  Then Sarai said to Abram, “My wrong be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The LORD judge between you and me.”  So Abram said to Sarai,”"Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please.” And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence.

Here is an example of individuals not fully surrendered to God, both as to themselves and as to the circumstances surrounding them.  Although Abram was fully aware of God’s promises—the Abrahamic Covenant—regarding pledged future descendants, he relinquished his position of faith and submitted to the nagging of his unbelieving wife.  Nevertheless, Abram was fully responsible for his decision to take her “advice.”

So, instead of following God’s will and waiting on Him, Abram succumbed to the persuasion of his wife (Sarai) to father a child by her maidservant (Hagar), which was probably acquired from Pharaoh during their sojourn in Egypt.  The meaning of Hagar in Hebrew is stranger or sojourner.  Abram went into Hagar, and from the result of this contact she eventually bore him a son, an event which transpired after Abram had been in Canaan for ten years.

Was Abraham’s [Abram’s] taking Hagar to bed an immoral act?  Why did Abraham do it?  In Abraham’s day, custom permitted a childless wife to give her maid to her husband as a surrogate mother.  Any child conceived was considered to be the child of the wife, not the servant.  So even though the act fell short of God’s created ideal for marriage, measured by the standards of the day Abraham’s act was not immoral.

Abraham, however, did not inquire whether this union was God’s will.  Instead, he reluctantly gave in to the urging of Sarah.  The results were not what Sarah [Sarai] expected.  When Hagar’s pregnancy demonstrated that Abraham was capable of fathering children, Hagar felt and showed contempt for her mistress.  Later, when Abraham and Sarah had Isaac, the hostility between the two women was so great that Sarah insisted both Hagar and Ishmael be sent away.  Hostility still dominates in the Middle East between Jews (Abraham’s [Isaac’s] descendants) and Arabs (Ishmael’s descendants). (Bible Difficulties Solved, by Larry Richards, Fleming H. Revell, 1993)

The following excerpt from A Commentary and Critical Notes of the Holy Bible by Adam Clarke, LL.D., F.S.A., &c., Abingdon Press, affirms the previous comments.

It must not be forgotten that female slaves constituted a part of the private patrimony or possessions of a wife, and that she had a right, according to the usages of those times, to dispose of them as she pleased, the husband having no authority in the case. . . . The “slave” being the absolute property of the mistress, not only her person, but the fruits of her labor, with all her children, therefore, which were born of the slave, were considered as the children of the mistress.  It was on this ground that Sarai gave her slave to Abram; and we find, what must necessarily be the consequences in all cases of polygamy, that strifes and contentions took place.

The Bible is unique in that it takes great pain not to cover up the frailties and sins of God’s children.  In this case, God is faithful in recording the marital misdeed of Abram and Sarai.  Although He never approved of it, it is to all God’s children’s benefit that the truth is known.  And the “unintended consequence” of this misdeed from a human point-of-view, although known and established in God’s Master Plan, has affected mankind from then until now.  It should also be noted that the major sin in this historical account was not that Abram had intercourse with someone not his true wife; it was the disbelief evidenced by Abram and Sarai regarding God and His covenant with Abram.

When Hagar became pregnant her “motherly instincts” took over.  Not wishing to relinquish the “ownership” of her child to Sarai, she gave way to bitterness and hatred toward Sarai.  This poisoned the relationship between the two, for which Sarai then appears to blame Abram.  As a result of this, Abram relinquishes his responsibility as head of the home by placing any further decisions solely on the shoulders of Sarai.  Sarai responds by mistreating Hagar and driving her out of the house.

For three things the earth is perturbed, yes, for four it cannot bear up:  for a servant when he reigns, a fool when he is filled with food, a hateful woman when she is married, and a maidservant who succeeds her mistress. (Proverbs 30:21-23)

Genesis 16:7-16

Now the Angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.  And He said, “Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.”  The Angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand.”  Then the Angel of the LORD said to her, “I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude.”  And the Angel of the LORD said to her: “Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has heard your affliction.  He shall be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”  Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?”  Therefore the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; observe, it is between Kadesh and Bered.  So Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.  Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

The “Angel of the Lord” that appeared to Hagar when she was at a “spring of water” was Jesus Christ in one of His preincarnate appearances, known as a Chritophany.

The Angel of the Lord (Jehovah) is the Lord Jesus Christ in a preincarnate appearance.  A study of the passages in which He is mentioned makes it clear that He is God, and that He is the Second Person of the Trinity.

First, the Scriptures show that He is God.  When He appeared to Hagar, she recognized that she was in the presence of God; she referred to Him as “the-God-Who-Sees” (Gen 16:13).  Speaking to Abraham on Mount Moriah, the Angel Identified Himself as “the LORD” (Heb. “YHWH,” or Jehovah; Gen. 22:16).  Jacob heard the Angel introduce Himself as the God of Bethel (Gen. 31:11-13).  When blessing Joseph, Israel used the names “God” and “the Angel” interchangeably (Gen. 48:15, 16).  At the burning bush, it was “the Angel of the Lord” who appeared (Ex. 3:2), but Moses “hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” (Ex. 3:6).  The Lord who went before Israel in a pillar of cloud (Ex. 13:21) was none other than “the Angel of God” (Ex. 14:19).  Gideon feared that he would die because, in seeing the Angel of the Lord, he had seen God (Judg. 6:22, 23).  The Angel of the Lord told Manoah that His name was Wonderful (Judg. 13:18), one of the names of God (Isa. 9:6).  When Jacob struggled with the Angel, he struggled with God (Hos. 12:3, 4).  These are convincing proofs that when the Angel of the Lord is referred to in the OT, the reference is to Deity.

John F. Walvoord (as quoted by Chafer) gives four arguments to support this:

“(a) The Second Person is the Visible God of the New Testament.  (b) The Angel of Jehovah of the Old Testament no longer appears after the incarnation of Christ.  (c) Both the Angel of Jehovah and Christ are sent by the Father.  (d) The Angel of Jehovah could not be either the Father or the Holy Spirit.”  As for the fourth evidence, Walvoord goes on to explain that the Father and the Spirit are invisible to man and both have the attribute of immateriality.  He concludes, “There is not a single valid reason to deny that the Angel of Jehovah is the Second Person, every known fact pointing to His identification as Christ of the New Testament.”

As the Angel of Jehovah, Christ is distinguished from other angels in that He is uncreated.  The words translated “Angel” in both Testaments mean “messenger”; He is the “Messenger” of Jehovah.  Thus, as Chafer says, He is an “angel” only by office.

(Believers Bible Commentary, William MacDonald, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995)

The Angel of the Lord was kind to Hagar, since her involvement in the sin of Abram and Sarai was none of her doing; nevertheless, she too would have to live with the consequences.  The Lord instructed her to return to Sarai and submit to her.  Christians often reach the crossroad of submission, only to flee into the wilderness.  The path of submission is never easy, but it is the only one that allows a Christian to fulfill God’s purpose in and through his life and the only one in which he will experience peace, joy and power in and for Christian living.

The Lord informed Hagar that her descendants through the birth of Abram’s son would be exceedingly great, so many in fact that man would not be able to number them.  But that was not all that God told her regarding the son within her womb.  He also informed her that, “He shall be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”  This became true not only of Ishmael, but as representative of all his descendants, this wild state would be and has been their state of mind and existence.

Have you looked at this verse in light of about four thousand years of history in the Middle East?  What is going on out there today?  The descendants of Ishmael are wild men—that has been the story of those Bedouin tribes [Ishmaelites—the Bedouins and wandering Arabs] of the desert down through the centuries, and it is a fulfillment of the prophecy that God gave.  They will tell you that they are sons of Abraham, but they are also sons of Ishmael. (Thru the Bible commentary by J. Vernon McGee, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1081)

Again, the comments of theologian Adam Clarke (see his reference above) regarding the Ishmaelites are most cogent, as follow:

God Himself has sent them out free—He has loosed them from all political restraint.  The wilderness is their habitation; and in the parched land, where no other human beings could live, they have their dwellings.  They scorn the city, and therefore have no fixed habitations; for their multitude, they are not afraid; for when they make depredations on cities and towns, they retire into the desert with so much precipitancy that all pursuit is eluded.  In this respect the crying of the driver is disregarded.  They may be said to have no lands, and yet the range of the mountains is their pasture—they pitch their tents and feed their flocks, wherever they please; and they search after every green thing—are continually looking after prey, and seize on every kind of property that comes in their way.

It is farther said, “His hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”—Many potentates among the Abyssinians, Persians, Egyptians and Turks, have endeavored to subjugate the wandering or wild Arabs; but, though they have had temporary triumphs, they have been ultimately unsuccessful.  Sesostris, Cyrus, Pompey, and Trajan, all endeavored to conquer Arabia, but in vain.  From the beginning to the present day they have maintained their independency, and God preserves them as a lasting monument of His providential care, and an incontestable argument of the “truth of Divine Revelation.”  Had the Pentateuch no other argument to evince its Divine origin, the account of Ishmael and the prophecy concerning his descendants, collated with their history and manner of life during a period of nearly four thousand years, would be sufficient.  Indeed the argument is so absolutely demonstrative, that the man who would attempt its refutation, in the sight of reason and common sense would stand convicted of the most ridiculous presumption and folly.

The country which these free descendants of Ishmael may be properly said to possess, stretches from Aleppo to the Arabian Sea, and from Egypt to the Persian Gulf; a tract of land not less than 1800 miles in length, by 900 in breadth.

Egyptians, as was Hagar, had a very limited concept of God.  God was not a “personal” Being.  In fact, the Egyptians had many gods, which evolved from human form.  But never did an Egyptian believe there could be a close connection with any of them.  But now Hagar experienced a “close encounter” with the preincarnate Christ, a most unusual, and this commentator believes a very startling experience.  Hagar was so amazed that she even named the Angel of the Lord, “You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees.”   How perceptive she became in light of her experience.  She then returned to Abram and Sarai and had the child, who was then named Ishmael.  The name Ishmael means God hears.  God heard Hagar’s misery.  Abram was 86 years old when Ishmael was born.

This commentator agrees again with theologian Adam Clarke (see previous reference for him) regarding this chapter, which is a fitting comment for the end of this commentary, as follows:

In all transactions between God and man, mentioned in the Sacred Writings, we see one uniform agency; the great Mediator [Christ] in all, and through all; God ever coming to man by Him, and man having access to God through Him.  This was, is, and ever will be the economy of grace.  “The Father hath sent Me—and no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.”  God forbid that He should have cause to complain of us, “Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life.”