Genesis 16

     Ten years have passed since Abram and Sarai returned from Egypt and God reaffirmed His promise to them of an heir. In verses 1-3, Sarai now takes center stage, and she convinces Abram to sleep with her Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, because, in Sarai’s words, “…the Lord hath restrained me from bearing…” (v.2). Sarai believed that, through Hagar, she and Abram would have the male heir promised to them by God. This custom of the barren wife of a patriarch giving her husband a handmaid through which offspring may be produced was a common marriage law and custom of the Middle Eastern peoples of this time period. Verse 3 states that Hagar became Abram’s second wife.
         Many things are made clear from just these three verses:
      1) Had Abram trusted God to take care of him and all his household during the famine, there would be no handmaid from Egypt for Sarai to give to him now. As we’ll see later in this chapter, this union between Abram and Hagar had consequences that affected not only all of Abram’s descendants, but all the people and nations of the world to this present day. So often in our lives, one choice, or one decision, or one action on our part can have far-reaching consequences that we could never have anticipated. This is why it’s so vital and important that we trust God and walk by faith because He can see so much farther down the road than we can.
       2) Abram didn’t fulfill his role as patriarch and leader of his house. He made the same error in judgment as Adam did in the garden of Eden. Instead of remaining faithful to God and His promise and waiting on Him and His timing, Abram listened to his wife and allowed her to make a bad choice that only brought them both conflict and grief later on. Abram should have told Sarai ‘No’ and remained firm in his commitment to the Lord. As was the case a decade earlier during the great famine, Abram displayed a lack of trust in God and His providence.
       3) Because of his lack of leadership and his weak faith, Abram bowed to his wife’s cajoling and faulty reasoning, and the two of them decided to take matters into their own hands. Notice Sarai’s words in verse 2. She blames God for her barren womb! Instead of just admitting that she’s tired of waiting for God to give them a son, she blames God for her own poor choice and the resulting action. How often have we done the same in our own lives? I have even done this myself over the past year, complaining to God why He’s given me a specific calling and then not yet fulfilling that desire so that I am forced to give into sin and temptation because I’m too weak to fight it on my own. We can’t judge Abram and Sarai too harshly, for we have all committed this same error at some point in our lives – and more than once, I’m sure. Abram was now 85 years old, and Sarai was also well past the normal age of conception for women of this era, so it’s hard to be upset with them for trying to act on their own to rush God’s timing. From their point of view, having a baby at this stage of their lives was an impossibility, even for God.
       4) Polygamy is never part of God's plan! God made it clear from the very beginning, in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, that the proper, correct, and holy way of marriage was only one man and one woman. Period. Starting with Abram, Sarai, and Hagar, every single instance of polygamy in the Bible, and especially when it involves God’s chosen people, has always had disastrous consequences. Not once throughout scripture is there ever a record of a polygamous marriage of the man of God that God has ever blessed or approved of.
        (This includes even the story of Hannah and her firstborn son, Samuel. Even though the first chapter of 1 Samuel says that Elkanah worshipped the Lord and obeyed the Levitical law by going up to Shiloh every year to offer sacrifices in the temple, that doesn’t mean that God approved of this man having two wives. Verse 6 of that chapter clearly states that there was much conflict between Hannah and Peninnah. One wonders if Hannah would have been as much troubled and vexed about her barrenness had she been the only wife of Elkanah.)
       God can – and often does – bless individuals of a polygamous marriage. (See the stories of King David and King Solomon.) But never once is it ever written in scripture that God specifically blesses the actual institution of polygamy. What is recorded instead is all the disastrous consequences of such sin. In other words, just because everyone is doing it doesn’t make it right. In the case of Abram and Sarai in Genesis 16, their second major mistake was giving into a marriage custom and a tradition of the heathen nations around them instead of following God and His divine plan. This was a grievous error committed by the children of Israel so often throughout the OT.
 
        Verses 4-6: As planned, Hagar conceives, and this causes strife and tension between her and Sarai. The wording of verse 4, “…her mistress was despised in her eyes…”, implies that Hagar acted proud and smug in Sarai’s presence, lording the pregnancy and its implication as a gift from God over the much older and barren matriarch of the household. This, of course, led to anger, jealousy and resentment from Sarai who, in turn, demanded that Abram do something about it. And again, Abram, rather than stepping up as the man of the house and telling Sarai that this was her plan from the beginning and she should just live with it, instead chooses the cowardly option: he tells her that Hagar is hers to do with as she pleases. So Sarai acts harshly towards Hagar, punishing her so severely that the handmaid flees from their presence into the nearby wilderness.
 
      Verses 7-14: When taking rest by a spring of water, Hagar receives a visit from the angel of the Lord. When comparing this title to other instances of the same use in the OT (Genesis 17:1-22, 22:11-18, 31:11-13, Judges 5:23, 6:11-24, 13:3-22, 2 Samuel 24:16, Zechariah 1:12, 3:1, 12:8), we can safely conclude that this was a theophany: a preincarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. (This is why the character of Melchizedek cannot be a theophany. His description and the instances of his appearance in the OT do not match any of the above listed references to known appearances of Christ.)
         What stands out the most to me in these verses is God’s visit to Hagar, a completely unknown character to us in the saga of Abram and the origins of the nation of Israel. It seems at first that God is focused on Abram and Sarai because He has chosen them to be the parents of a great nation. But because of Abram and Sarai’s sin, this poor handmaid, who very likely had no choice in the matter of marriage to Abram, was suddenly thrust in the middle of a marriage squabble between Abram and Sarai, and now finds herself all alone in the desert, pregnant with a child that is despised by Sarai, and very far from her homeland of Egypt.
      It's tempting for us to be unsympathetic towards Hagar, especially since she provoked Sarai by acting proud and haughty due to the pregnancy, and especially since we today know what became of Hagar and Ishmael’s descendants. But God doesn’t react that same way. Quite the opposite, in fact. Here he comforts her, telling her that she will give birth to a son, and that she will call his name Ishmael, which means “God hears”. This was to be a reminder to Hagar of God’s special intervention on her behalf. God’s attributes of love, grace and mercy are, once again, on full display. Over and over throughout the Bible and human history, God has always reached out to the poor, the downtrodden, the distressed, the destitute and the weak, even – and especially – if such circumstances may be the results of their own poor decisions and actions!
         God also gives Hagar a warning of what would come of Ishmael and his descendants. The description and idiom given in verse 12 indicate that there would be strife and conflict between Ishmael and the future son of Abram and Sarai. This is a prophecy of the present day conflict that has always existed between the Jewish and Arab nations throughout human history. Had Abram and Sarai waited upon God and not taken matters into their own hands, things might have turned out very differently for Israel and all the other nations of the world.
        Hagar called the name of the well “Beer-lahai-roi”, which means “The One who lives and sees me”. (v.13-14)
 
      Verses 15-16: Hagar returns to Abram and Sarai, presumably refreshed and humbled by her experience. She gives birth to Ishmael in Abram’s 86th year.