From: Genesis 16:1-12, 15-16
The Birth of Ishmael
[1] Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian maid
whose name was Hagar; [2] and Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the Lord has
prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it may be that I shall
obtain children by her." And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. [3] So,
after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife,
took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to Abram her husband as a
wife. [4] And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that
she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. [5] And Sarai
said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my maid to your
embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with
contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!" [6] But Abram said to
Sarai, "Behold, your maid is in your power; do to her as you please." Then
Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.
[7] The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the
spring on the way to Shur. [8] And he said, "Hagar, maid of Sarai, where
have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am fleeing from my
mistress Sarai." [9] The angel of the Lord said to her, "Return to your
mistress, and submit to her." [10] The angel of the Lord also said to her,
"I will so greatly multiply your descendants that they cannot be numbered
for multitude." "And the angel of the Lord said to her, "Behold, you are
with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call his name Ishmael; because
the Lord has given heed to your affliction. [12] He shall be a wild ass of a
man, his hand against every man everyman's hand against him; and he shall
dwell over against all his kinsmen."
[15] And Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the name of his son, whom
Hagar bore, Ishmael. [16] Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore
Ishmael to Abram.
Commentary:
16:1-6. Sarah, too, seems to be impatient about the delay in the fulfillment
of the divine promise to give Abraham descendants. Therefore, she resorts to
a custom of the time designed to increase the number of children. It was not
strictly speaking polygamy but rather a means the lawful wife used in order
to give her husband children. From what we know of Babylonian laws of the
time, if the slave-girl became pregnant and then began to look down on her
mistress, she could be punished and revert to being treated as a slave. That
is what Hagar fears will happen, so she runs away.
The patriarchs follow the customs of their time; some of which (as in this
case) were morally defective. In the light of the teaching of the Bible
taken as a whole, we can see that behavior of this sort was a consequence of
man's original sin, and we can also see that God gradually led man back to a
morality that was fully in keeping with human dignity as reflected in the
Creation accounts. Consider, for example, what Jesus has to say on the
subject of marriage (Mt 5:31-32). However, prior to that, God educates
mankind bit by bit and to do so he tolerates imperfect customs and types of
behavior "in order" to lead mankind towards those higher goals. "The books of
the Old Testament provide an understanding of God and man and make clear to
all men how a just and merciful God deals with mankind. These books, even
though they contain matters imperfect and provisional, nevertheless show us
authentic divine teaching" ("De Verbum", 15).
16:7-16. This is the first appearance in the Bible of the "angel of the
Lord"; here it means God himself coming out to meet man by making himself
visible in some way. Also, the passage includes a tradition which explains
the name of a place in the Negeb desert linked to stories about the
patriarchs. According to 25:11 Beer-Iahai-roi was where Isaac was based.
Both this place-name (Lahai-roi in Hebrew sounds like "the living one who
sees me") and Ishmael's name ("God heard") are given an etymological
explanation.
Ishmael is the ancestor of the desert Arabs who live on the fringes of
cultivated lands. By stressing the link between Abraham and lshmael the text
wants to show the connections (sometimes tense, yet always familial) between
the Jews and these Arabs. The main thing the biblical account shows us is
that God loves and protects this people too and he has compassion towards
anyone who suffers-in this case, the Egyptian slave.
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.