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Genesis 16

1Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian slave woman named Hagar. 2Sarai said to Abram, “Please listen. Yahweh has prevented me from giving birth. Please go in to my slave woman. Perhaps I can be built up through her.” Abram listened to Sarai's voice. 3Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave woman, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4He went in to Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became contemptible in her eyes. 5Sarai said to Abram, “The wrong done to me is upon you! I put my slave woman in your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, I became contemptible in her eyes. May Yahweh judge between me and you.” 6Abram said to Sarai, “Look, your slave woman is in your hand. Do to her what is good in your eyes.” Sarai afflicted her, and she fled from her presence.

7Yahweh's messenger found her beside a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the road to Shur. 8He said, “Hagar, Sarai's slave woman, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from the presence of Sarai my mistress.” 9Yahweh's messenger said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to affliction under her hands.” 10Yahweh's messenger said to her, “I will greatly multiply your offspring, so that they cannot be counted for their multitude.” 11Yahweh's messenger said to her, “Look, you are pregnant and will bear a son. You are to name him Ishmael, because Yahweh has heard your affliction. 12He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. He will dwell in the presence of all his brothers.”

13She called Yahweh, who was speaking to her, by the name, “You are El-roi,” for she said, “Have I really seen him here and lived afterward?” 14That is why the well was called Beer-lahai-roi. Look, it is between Kadesh and Bered. 15Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

Translation notes 4

16:1–6 — Slavery; building. Hagar is an enslaved woman given as a wife; the narrative does not record her consent. Sarai's “be built up” pictures obtaining a family through her. Abram places Hagar back under Sarai's control. “Afflicted” names harsh treatment, not a neutral disagreement between equals.

16:7–11 — Messenger; return. “Messenger” is the ordinary Hebrew word also translated angel. The messenger speaks with divine authority, and verse 13 identifies Yahweh as the speaker without explaining the relationship further. The command to return repeats the root for affliction in a reflexive form: Hagar is told to submit under the hands that afflicted her. Its difficulty is retained. Ishmael means “God hears.”

16:12 — Wild donkey; brothers. The wild donkey image evokes an untamed, independent life. The hostile hands are explicit, but the final phrase can mean before, alongside, or in defiance of his brothers. “In the presence of” retains the underlying spatial relation without forcing hostility into that clause as well.

16:13–14 — Seeing. El-roi can mean “God who sees me” or “God of seeing.” Hagar's following sentence is exceptionally compressed, literally involving seeing here “after the one who sees me.” The draft understands survival after a divine encounter, supplying “him” and “lived” to make that interpretation readable. Seeing the departing divine figure is another serious interpretation; the exact after/seeing relation remains uncertain. Beer-lahai-roi is traditionally understood as “well of the Living One who sees me.”