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GENESIS 16
Human impatience and incomplete knowledge disfigures God’s will and plans. -- (DATE: Around 1866 before Christ)
DISCOVER Genesis 16: Hearing all this from her husband Abram, the barren Sarai could not see how God’s promise could possibly come to pass. Unless what he had meant was not for her to bear the child personally, but rather her Egyptian maid Hagar for her. Therefore she went to her husband and told him that since the LORD was preventing her from having children, he should go in to her maid, so Sarai could obtain a child through her. Not wanting any trouble with his wife, Abram followed her suggestion, so that in the tenth year since he had come to Canaan, Sarai gave him her maid Hagar as a (second) wife. -- Soon after Hagar conceived a child from Abram, she became contemptuous of her former mistress, for she carried her husband’s future heir and his first wife didn’t. When Sarai couldn’t deal with this humiliation any longer, she went to her husband and vented her frustration, saying that the wrong that was happening to her be on him. For since she had given him her maid and he had made her pregnant she looked at her with contempt. The LORD was to judge between her and her husband. (Not wanting to get dragged into the fight between the two women,) Abram told her that Hagar was still her maid. If she didn’t like how she treated her, she held all the power to rectify this. Thus Sarai dealt harshly with the haughty woman, so much so that Hagar soon couldn’t bear to live with her any longer and fled into the wilderness. -- There by a spring of water, on the way to Shur, between Kadesh and Bered (in the arid southern part of Canaan), the angel of the LORD found Hagar and asked why she was there. She told him that she was fleeing her mistress Sarai. But the angel of the LORD said that she was to return and submit to Sarai. He also told Hagar that the LORD would surely multiply her offspring and make them into a great nation. As for the son she would bear, she was to name him Ishmael, because the LORD had listened to her lamentations. (NOTE: The Hebrew word “Ishmael” literally means: “God listens”.) He would grow to be a wild donkey of a man, with his hand against everyone and everyone against him. But he would have the strength to dwell over and against all his kinsmen. -- Joyous that God, whom she called a God of Seeing, had witnessed her plight and given her encouragement, she returned and bore Abram a son and named him Ishmael, when Abram was already eighty-six years old.
PRAYER: Our merciful and loving God we thank you for this wonderful insight into your heart. You saw the plight of the fleeing maid Hagar and for the sake of your chosen man, Abram, you encouraged her with wonderful but also sobering words through your angel. Thank you for how you patiently dealt with Abram’s lack of faith, who with his wife Sarai failed to trust you for getting an heir through Sarai. Thank you that you did not destroy Abram in your just anger for his disbelief, but that you gave him his firstborn son Ishmael through the slave girl Hagar. At the same time you also promised Hagar that there would be enmity between the sons of Isaac, who was to be born from Sarai, and the sons of Ishmael, who was born by Hagar. And this is the case until today. We bow down in awe, trembling before your just judgments on our sins. Amen.
QUESTION 16: How was Ishmael described by the angel of the LORD before his birth? Was his birth a blessing or a curse for the descendants of Abram?