Hagar and Ishmael
1Abram's wife was Sarai. She did not have any children. Sarai had a slave woman who came from the land of Egypt. The name of her slave was Hagar. 2Sarai said to Abram: ‘The Lord has not given me any children. You must go and have sex with my slave girl Hagar and if she has a baby, that baby will be my child.’
Abram listened to his wife Sarai and he did what she said. 3So Sarai gave her slave girl, Hagar, to her husband, Abram, to sleep with him. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan for 10 years.
4Abram had sex with Hagar and she became pregnant. When Hagar saw that she was going to have the baby of Abram, she became very proud and she started to think that she was better than Sarai, her owner.
5Then Sarai said to Abram: ‘This is not right and it is your fault. I hope that God will punish you for what you have done to me. I gave you my slave girl to sleep with, but now that she is pregnant, she has started mocking me and thinks that she is better than I am.’
6Abram said to Sarai: ‘She is your slave. Do with her what you want.’
Then Sarai started doing bad things to Hagar, so bad that Hagar ran away.
7The Angel_of_the_Lord came to Hagar at a fountain in the desert on the road to the town of Shur. 8The Angel_of_the_Lord asked her: ‘Hagar, slave of Sarai, where do you come from and where are you going?’
Hagar said to the Angel: ‘I am running away from my owner Sarai.’
9Then the Angel_of_the_Lord said to Hagar: ‘You must go back to your owner Sarai. Be her slave and respect her.’
10The Angel_of_the_Lord also said to her: ‘I will give you many descendants, so many that no one will be able to count them.’
11Then the Angel_of_the_Lord said to her:
‘Hagar, you are pregnant
and you will have a baby boy.
His name must be Ishmael,
because the Lord listened to you
when you asked Him to help you.
Ishmael will have many descendants,
so many that no one will be able to count them all.
12But your son Ishmael will be
like a wild donkey.
He will be an enemy of all people
and all people will be his enemies.
He will live far away from his family.’
13After the Lord had talked to Hagar, she worshipped Him and said: ‘Here I have seen the God who sees me.’
14That is why people gave the fountain a new name. Its name then became: ‘The Fountain of the Living One who sees us’. The fountain is between the town of Kadesh and the town of Bered.
15Hagar had a baby boy. He was the son of Abram. Abram said his name was Ishmael. 16Abram was 86 years old when Ishmael was born.
