Abram and Hagar Have Ishmael

16:1-16

16 Now Sarai, the wife of Abram, had not born children for him, but she had an Egyptian maidservant, and her name was Hagar. 2 So Sarai said to Abram, “Behold please, Yahweh has prevented me from bearing children. Please go to my maidservant. Perhaps I can be built up from her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So Sarai, the wife of Abram, took Hagar, her Egyptian maidservant, at the end of ten years that Abram had lived in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife for him. 4 Then he went to Hagar, and she conceived. And she saw that she had conceived, and her mistress was despised in her eyes.

5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “My wrong is on you! I myself put my maidservant into your arms, but she sees that she has conceived, and I am despised in her eyes! May Yahweh judge between me and you!” 6 Then Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your maidservant is in your hand. Do to her what is good in your eyes.” Then Sarai afflicted her, and she fled from her face.

7 Then the angel of Yahweh found her at a spring of water in the wilderness, at the spring beside the road of Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, maidservant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the face of Sarai, my mistress.” 9 Then the angel of Yahweh said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit under her hands.”

10 Then the angel of Yahweh said to her, “I will greatly increase your offspring, so that they cannot be counted because of their abundance.”

11 Then the angel of Yahweh said to her,

“Behold, you are pregnant,

and you will bear a son,

and you will call his name Ishmael,

because Yahweh has listened to your misery.

12 And he will be a wild donkey of a man,

his hand against everyone

and the hand of everyone against him,

and he will live in the faces

of all of his brothers.”

13 Then she called the name of Yahweh who had spoken to her, “You are El Roi,” because she said, “Have I really seen here the back of the one who sees me?” 14 For that reason they call the well Beer Lahai Roi. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.

15 Then Hagar bore a son for Abram, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 And Abram was a son of 86 years when Hagar bore Ishmael for Abram.