Genesis 16 - Call Him Ishmael
How Abram became father of the--Arabs?!
This story has few, if any, surprises--except, perhaps, for the fact that this "minor" incident from millennia ago still has an enormous impact on the geopolitical situation today!
The Story
Sarah (detail) at a very advanced age, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo 1726-1728 (Wikipedia)
Although both Abram and Sarai have reached a very advanced age, they are still without children--despite the god's promise that Abram's offspring will be as numerous as (a) dust; (b) stars; or (c) both.
Without reference to this--perhaps just out of a plain old desire to have a family--Sarai hatches a plan: Abram is to sleep with Hagar, Sarai's Egyptian maid (read "slave"), and start a family through her. Presumably, this would mean some sort of adoption, or the bairn might just be the old couple's de facto kid.
So Abram says, "Well, alright, if you insist, dear" and beds the (probably much younger) maid, who does indeed get pregnant.
And that's when the trouble begins--from then 'til now.
Because Hagar, being fecund and all, seems to look down on "barren" old Sarai (who is, like, 75 or 76, so what did they expect?). And Sarai, being the First Lady of this new "nation," goes to her husband and says, remarkably, "This is all your fault," and seems to invoke the god as being on her side.
With what I imagine to be a shrug, Abe replies that hey, she's your maid, you can do whatever you want with her. So Sarai does, and what she wants is to abuse her.
To the point where Hagar runs away, but turns back after she meets "the angel of the Lord" at a well, who tells to go back to Abram's place, because her descendants (like Abram and Sarai's) will also be "too many to count." Her son will be named Ishmael, a "wild ass of a man" who will be constantly fighting with everyone.
Hagar buys it, calls the place "The Well of the Living One who sees me," and heads home, where she makes Abram a first-time father at the age of 86.
Ishmael
I hope you find the title "Call Him Ishmael" as funny as I did. If not, reread Moby Dick--but just the first line. Ishmael is the narrator of the work of cetology, and is only peripherally related to the newborn main character of our story.
Like the infant, Ishmael the narrator is something of a wanderer, living on the fringe of things, watching. Of course, one wanders in a desert, the other on a sea, but both are places of limited foliage. Both Ishmaels are also survivors: just as Ishmael the infant survives the perilous circumstances of his birth, so Ishmael the sailor (SPOILER ALERT!) is the only one to survive the disaster at sea resulting from Captain Ahab's relentless pursuit of the White Whale.
But enough about the derived Ish; let's look at the original.
Abraham and Hagar (and Sarai), after Rembrandt (Wikipedia)
Some see him as the result of a sort of sacrilegious shortcut. The god had promised a great nation and, in their "golden years," Abram and Sarai were running out of options. The text does not specifically say that Sarai was gaming the system; she innocently says in the King James, "it may be that I may obtain children by her." Not, "it may be that we can have innumerable offspring by her." Still, how could that not be part of the motive, at least in the back of her mind? There's still that whole leave-your-estate-to-Eliezer-the-slave thing to deal with, too.
Now, this Ishmael, at his very birth, was a complication, because he would be the progenitor of the Arabs (sometimes called "the Ishmaelites"), who would be in contention with the Jews from the get-go, literally. As the angel tells his mother Hagar before his birth (verse 12, again in the KJV), "And he will be a wild ass of a man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren." The NIV renders that last bit, "he will live in hostility toward all his brothers" (though they admit that it may just say, "he will live to the east of his brothers." Hebrew can be tricky! See the Footnote below.)
Anyway, the Arabs traditionally claimed him as their patriarch, as the Jews did/do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the Prophet Muhammed is said to be one of his direct descendants (as are all Arabs).
We will see more about him and his (and especially his mother's) struggles in coming chapters.
Slave Rape
I must admit I haven't read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but if the TV adaptation does it any justice, it's chilling. The chillingest part is that women who can bear children are forced to submit to "masters" against their will to bear their children.
And that is exactly what is going on here.
Sarah presenting Hagar to Abraham, by Adriaen van der Werff (1699) (Wikipedia)
The Bible is not clear on the matter, but I have to assume that Hagar had little choice here. The "man of faith" Abram rapes her--there is just no other word for it--at the suggestion of his wife. When Hagar gets pregnant and Sarai objects to her "despising" looks--real, imagined, or manufactured out of jealousy--she blames her husband for it, and this "man of faith" says, "Do whatever you want with her." We don't know exactly what Sarai did, but it was bad enough that it caused a pregnant woman to run off into the desert alone.
Then, as we shall see in a moment, the god (or his agent) shows up and tells her to go back. This is starting to make me mad. That this was an "accepted practice" of the day makes the actions of the patriarchal pair no less heinous in my eyes. Some have suggested Sarai was consumed by guilt at not having provided an heir, and was moved by her conscience yada yada yada. Still not acceptable.
I have also seen Hagar condemned for "despising" Sarai. There is no indication that she said anything untoward; and who can blame her for a little show of pride in being able to conceive when Sarai could not? Even if she was wrong, it seems the punishment was out of proportion to the offense. And have you noticed? Hagar the lowly Egyptian slave is the only person the god (or his angel) speaks to in this chapter.
One thing "the faithful" like to say is that Sarai tried to make an end run around "God's will" (by supplying Hagar to Abram instead of waiting for the god to do his thing) and by doing so brought no end of trouble into the world (the Arabs and, ultimately, the Muslims, whom missionary types see as one of their "biggest challenges"). Well, malarkey, as a man I admire says. The trouble was started by raping a slave (let alone having a slave in the first place) and then mistreating her in a way that could only have been brutal. These are the people some hold up as models of sanctity.
The Angel of the Lord
This chapter is the first appearance of the Angel of the Lord, who will pop in (one imagines literally) from time to time--by one count, the term itself appears 65 times (but four of them are in this story alone).
Now, this is not just your everyday, garden variety of angel.
Hagar and the Angel (Agar et l'ange) by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1871) (Wikipedia) In fact, Hagar twice encountered an angel in the desert; the second time Ishmael was with her. That may be him on the ground, but I tried to find one that might represent the first occasion, and not the second. Oh, well. (Get it?)
,_1871,_NGA_50806.jpg){kind=link}
The first thing we need to understand is that the Hebrew word for "angel," mal'ak, simply means "messenger," and is translated as such 98 times in the King James rendering of the Hebrew scriptures (but 111 times as "angel/s," and four times as "ambassadors").
So this is a messenger from the god, but could arguably be the god himself, what the scholars call "theophanies," appearances of the actual god. Some True Believers would call this "a pre-incarnation appearance of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity" (that is, Jesus Christ), what they call a "Christophany"; others that it is more like an avatar of the god.
Others say, "Sometimes an angel is just an angel."
One of my favorite theories is that the word mal'ak is stuck in there, interpolated. So the original, more primitive story just said, for instance:
The LORD found Hagar by a spring in the desert...
and then it was changed to
The angel of the LORD found Hagar by a spring in the desert...
as a sort of "distancing" of the god, keeping him all holy and mysterious, not like those pagan gods that just run around on earth all the time, showing up willy-nilly. (Never mind that "walking in the garden" bit in Genesis 3.)
--------
Okay. The Text. And the Footnotes.
The Text: Sarai Has a Cunning Plan (16:1-3)
16:1 Now Abram's wife Sarai had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian handmaid named Hagar.
16:2 Sarai told Abram, "Look, because the LORD has prevented me from bearing children, I implore you to go to my maid--so I may have a child through her." And Abram did as Sarai suggested.
16:3 So, when Abram had been living in the land of Canaan for ten years, Sarai gave her Egyptian maid Hagar to her husband, to be his wife.
16:1 an Egyptian handmaid: In 12:20, Pharaoh released Abram from Egypt "with his wife and all he had." This may have included the slave girl Hagar.
16:2 prevented: KJV restrained
16:2 I implore you to go to my maid: The results of Sarai's bad idea are discussed in the first two "Mini-Sermons" above.
16:3 for ten years: So, he was around age 85.
16:3 to be his wife: a euphemism papering over the ugly facts of the case: the rape of a slave woman
The Text: The Plan Backfires (16:4-6)
16:4 Abram slept with Hagar, and she conceived--but when she had done so, she despised her mistress.
16:5 So Sarai told Abram, "The wrong [done to me] is your fault. I gave my maid to you, and when she saw that she had conceived, she despised me. The LORD will judge which of us is right!"
16:6 But Abram told Sarai, "Look, your maid is in your hands; do what you want with her." So Sarai dealt harshly with Hagar, and she ran away.
16:4 slept with: KJV went in unto. Again, a highly "filtered" version of what happened.
16:5 "The wrong [done to me] is your fault": KJV "My wrong be upon thee" I have no idea how Sarai could think this is Abram's fault; judging by his response in verse 6, he doesn't seem too fazed by the whole thing.
16:5 "to you": KJV "into thy bosom"
16:5 "The LORD will judge which of us is right!": KJV "the LORD judge between me and thee." (I love that expression!)
16:6 she ran away: perhaps on her way back to Egypt?
The Text: Hagar meets the Angel of the LORD (16:7-14)
16:7 The angel of the LORD found Hagar by a spring in the desert, the one on the road to Shur.
16:8 And he said, "Hagar, maid of Sarai, where did you come from? And where will you go?" And Hagar said, "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai."
16:9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Return to your mistress, and put yourself in her hands."
16:10 The angel of the LORD continued, "I will multiply your descendants until they're too many to count."
16:11 And the angel of the LORD said to her, "You're pregnant, and will bear a son whom you shall call Ishmael, because he has heard that you're miserable.
16:12 "He will be a wild ass of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him; even so, he will live in the presence of all his brothers."
16:13 And she called the LORD that spoke to her, "The God who sees me"; for as she said, "I have here seen the One who sees me."
16:14 For this reason the well was called Be'er-lahai-roi; you will find it between Kadesh and Bered.
16:7 The angel of the LORD: See the "Mini-Sermon" above.
16:7 a spring in the desert: KJV a fountain of water in the wilderness. If one were to search for a person in the desert, the water sources would be the place to start. Clever angel (of the LORD).
16:8 "where did you come from?": Since he just called here "maid of Sarai," it seems likely that he already knew. See the Lesson on Genesis 3 where the god "called to Adam, and said to him, 'Where are you?'"
16:9 "Return to your mistress": This seems like bad advice.
16:10 "I will multiply your descendants..." I get the feeling that ancient people will put up with anything if you just promise them their descendants will be numberless.
16:11 Ishmael: "God hears." In every case I can think of, Biblical names ending in -el are something about the god (remember Elohim, El Elyon, etc.?) Shama means "to hear"; Shema Yisrael is one of the most famous Jewish prayers, found in Deuteronomy Chapter 6 and beginning: Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad ("Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One.") We'll talk about this a lot more when we get to Deuteronomy.
16:12 "a wild ass of a man": KJV sanitizes this to "a wild man"; the word appears nine other times, and every time is translated "wild ass/es." What an image!
16:12 "he will live in the presence of all his brothers": The translation here is problematic. KJV has, "he will dwell in the presence of all his brothers." NIV: "he will live in hostility toward all his brothers," but with a footnote saying it could also be, "he will live to the east of all his brothers." Others have things like "He will live apart from all his relatives." There is no consensus, and I cannot even find an attempt to reconcile these. In the context of the verse, though (indicating a kind of mutual combat), propinquity would suggest something about "presence" or perhaps "hostility."
16:13 the LORD that spoke to her: This would seem to indicate that it was "the LORD," and not merely his angel.
16:13 "The God who sees me": KJV "Thou God seest me"; Hebrew El Ro'i. El, again, is "God." Ro'i (pronouced roh-ee, like "Oh, me!") is the verb "to see." It seems to bear no relation to the English name "Elroy," derived from French for "the king" (le roi, pronounced a little like the first three letters of "Rwanda").
16:14 Be'er-lahai-roi: "Well of the Living One who sees me." Be'er is just "well." Lahai is "life" (L'chaim!), and ro'i was discussed in 16:13.
16:14 between Kadesh and Bered: two places in the south of Palestine--on the road to Egypt
The Text: The Birth of Ishmael (16:15-16)
16:15 Hagar bore Abram's son, and Abram called the son Hagar bore Ishmael.
16:16 Abram was eighty-six years old at the time Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
16:16 Abram was eighty-six years old: KJV fourscore and six years old--and he's not finished begatting!
--------
And now you know how it got started. In the next lesson: All men cringed--and one laughed!
'Til soon!