The birth of Ishmael
16
📚✭Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children, and she had a maidservant, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. 2 📚And Sarai said to Abram, “Now look, the LORD has kept me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maidservant. It may be that I can obtain children through her”. And Abram listened to Sarai’s voice.3 📚And Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar, her Egyptian maidservant, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. 4 📚And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.
5 📚And Sarai said to Abram, “The wrong I suffer be on you. I gave my maidservant into your arms, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The LORD judge between me and you”.
6 📚But Abram said to Sarai, “Look, your maidservant is in your hand. Do whatever you please to her”. And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she ran away from her presence.
7 📚✭And the angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the desert, by the spring on the way to Shur.
8 📚And he said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant, from where have you come? And where are you going?” And she said, “I’m running away from the presence of my mistress Sarai”.
9 📚And the angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority”. 10 📚✭And the angel of the LORD said to her, “I will increase the number of your offspring exceedingly, so that they will be too many to count”.
11 📚✭And the angel of the LORD said to her, “See, you are with child. You will give birth to a son, and shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard of your misery✭. 12 📚And he will be a wild man. His hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand will be against him. And he will live in the presence of all his brothers”.
13 📚And she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are the God who sees me”, for she said, “Here have I also seen him who sees me✭?” 14 📚✭Therefore the well was called Beer Lahai Roi. To this day, it is between Kadesh and Bered.