This post was created in June 2017.
19 July 2022 -- I've since abandoned this specific project, and am working on something a bit different. This page remains for anyone who might find it interesting.
This post is the latest in the series begun here. It was made in the same way, and the same permissions and restrictions apply.
Translation
1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, gave him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. 2 So Sarai said to Abram, “You see that Yahweh has kept me from having children. Please, sleep with my slave. Maybe I will have children by her.” And Abram did as Sarah requested. 3 So Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram as his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she realized that she was pregnant, she began view her mistress with contempt.
5 Sarai said to Abram, “May you be punished for my mistreatment! I gave my slave into your embrace, and when she saw that she was pregnant, she viewed me with contempt. May Yahweh judge between us!”
6 And Abram said to Sarai, “Look — your slave is under your control. Do to her what you will.” So Sarai treated her harshly, and she ran away from her.
7 A messenger of Yahweh found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, Sarai’s slave, where are you coming from? And where are you going?
And she said, “I am running away from Sarai my mistress.”
9 The Yahweh’s messenger said to her, “Go back to your mistress and submit yourself to her.”
10 And Yahweh’s messenger said to her, “I will multiply your descendants greatly, so that they are too numerous to count.”
11 And Yahweh’s messenger said to her, “Now you are pregnant, and will give birth to a son, and you will call his name Ishmael, because Yahweh has heard about your oppression. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him. He will live opposite all his brothers.”
13 And she named Yahweh, who had spoken to her, “El Roi,” because she said, “Have I also seen here the one who sees me?” 14 For this reason, the well was called Beer Lahai Roi. It is there between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar gave birth to a son. And Abram named his son, whom Hagar gave birth to, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
Notes
Skinner notes that the concerns addressed in this chapter are addressed in the Code of Hammurabi, #146. “If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid-servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants” (Charles Horne translation, 1915). However, Skinner does not see the parallel as establishing an early date for Genesis, because similar customs persisted as far as modern Egypt.
1. Egyptian. This points to the idea that Ishmaelites were partially of Egyptian origin (Skinner).
2. sleep with. Hebrew, go in to, a euphemism for sexual relations. Accordingly, I’ve translated it with an English euphemism for sexual relations.
have children by her. Literally, be built from her, an idiom for having children. The idea indicates that Sarah intends to adopt the product of Abraham’s union with Hagar, but this is not to be the case, as later chapters will make clear.
did as Sarah requested. Literally, listened to the voice of Sarah. To “listen to the voice of” someone is a biblical idiom for carrying out someone’s request. Compare the repeated requests that the Israelites should listen to the voice of Yahweh, and God punishing Adam because you listened to the voice of your wife (Genesis 3:17).
4. she began to view her mistress with contempt. Literally, she began to have contempt for her mistress in her eyes. Hagar’s contempt for Sarah makes even more sense in light of the fact that biblically, fertility and infertility were considered to be controlled by God (Skinner). Thus, Hagar could easily see this as a sign that God favored her over Sarah.
5. May you be punished for my mistreatment! Literally, my mistreatment [may it be] upon you. Another interpretation merely has Sarah indicating my these words that her mistreatment is the responsibility of Abraham, rather than a wish that he be punished.
6. your slave is under your control. Literally, your slave is in your hand. “Is this a statement of fact, or does it mean that Abram now hands Hagar back to her mistress’s authority?” (Skinner).
7. an messenger of Yahweh. An ongoing feature about these sorts of stories is that there is an ambiguity as to whether a person sees the “messenger of Yahweh” or Yahweh himself. See Sam Meier, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, “Angel of Yahweh.” Meier’s argument is that originally, this story and others simply had “Yahweh,” to which a later editor added “messenger of” for theological reasons.
the way to Shur. The Wadi Tumilat. See Wikipedia.
11. Ishmael means, “May El hear.” El is a title applied both to Yahweh in the Bible, and to the high god of the Canaanite pantheon. See Wikipedia.
12. opposite. Hebrew, al-pnei, meaning either “across from,” “in front of,” or “against.”
13. El Roi. “El (who) sees me.” El as in verse 11.
Kadesh. There is some ambiguity about the location of Kadesh, but it must be somewhere along the southern edge of the land of Canaan. The name may apply to two or more sites.
Bered. The location of Bered is unknown. See Joseph Blenkinsopp (25 May 2015). Abraham: The Story of a Life. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 189.