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Sarah, being barren, gives her maid Hagar to Abram Gen.16:1. But Sarah, Abram's wife, did not bear him any child. She had an Egyptian maid named Hagar. A necessary introductory note that prepares for the subsequent narrative. Ten whole years have passed (Gen. 16:3) since Abram and Sarai received the divine promise of numerous offspring, and the latter has not yet given birth to a single son. Gen.16:2. And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the Lord hath shut up my womb, that I should not bear; come in to my maid: Humbly considering herself the main culprit for the failure to fulfill the divine promise of offspring and wanting to assist Abram in obtaining it, Sarah generously renounces her rights to her husband and voluntarily offers him as his wife her own maid Hagar, whom they had taken from Egypt, probably among other gifts that the Egyptians provided them with (Gen. 12:16, 13:1). The very name of this servant “Hagar” means flight and was given to her either by prophecy, or rather, by the subsequent memory of her twice running away from her mistress’s house (Gen. 16:6, 21:14). maybe I will have children from her. The Hebrew text says differently: “so that I can build my house (banch) from her, lean on her,” “be strengthened through her”; Slavic (from LXX-i): “may I make children from her.” Through this, Sarah’s very act becomes much clearer: obviously, she bases her hopes here on the customary law of that era, by virtue of which the husband’s children born from a maid were considered his legitimate children and, therefore, belonged equally to both spouses, i.e. both husband and wife (Gen. 30:3). Abram listened to Sarai's words. Although Abram’s act violated the purity of the marriage union (Gen. 2:24), his excuse was, firstly, that he did it not out of his own passion, but out of obedience to his wife, and secondly, that in committing this act he pursued not personal, base interests, but higher, theocratic goals (Mal. 2:15). Gen.16:3. And Sarah, Abram's wife, took her maidservant, Hagar the Egyptian, after Abram's sojourn in the land of Canaan was ten years, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. The name wife is applied here to Hagar not in the proper and strict sense, but in the sense of a temporary concubine, as she is more accurately called elsewhere (Gen. 25:6); but at the same time, she was, so to speak, a legal concubine, taken with the consent, approval and even at the request of the wife, so in this case she was a wife of second rank for Abram. Hagar's Arrogance and Sarah's Complaint Against Her Gen.16:4. He went in to Hagar and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, she began to despise her mistress. Throughout the ancient East, and among the Jews in particular, having many children was considered a special sign of divine blessing and family pride (Gen. 24:60; Exod. 23:26; Deut. 7:14); while infertility, on the contrary, was seen as misfortune and dishonor (Gen. 30:1, 23; Luke 1:48, etc.). It is not surprising that the young servant Hagar, imbued with such views, could forget herself before her destitute mistress. Gen.16:5. And Sarai said to Abram: You are guilty of my offense; I have given my maidservant into your bosom; and she, seeing that she had conceived, began to despise me; “Sarah is punished for her impatience; She herself offered her maid to her husband so that the promise would be fulfilled as soon as possible, and now she feels that a new mistress is rising in the house. But, without calculating the consequences of her action, she now blames Avram for everything” (Vlastov). Let the Lord be the judge between me and you. “Words from a distressed soul! - says John Chrysostom: and if the forefather had not had so much wisdom and he had not had great respect for Sarah, he would have been indignant and offended by such cruel words. But this respectable husband forgave her everything, knowing the weakness of the sex.” However, it is not difficult to understand the difficult state of mind of Sarah, in which both the jealousy of the destitute wife and the dignity of the offended mistress spoke at the same time. Hagar's flight into the desert and the appearance of Jehovah's Angel to her there Gen.16:6. Abram said to Sarah, Behold, your maid is in your hands; do with her what you please. With these words, Abram wisely tames the domestic quarrel that has begun between the mistress and the maid, indicating the actual role of the former and her legal rights in relation to the latter. And Sarah began to oppress her, But Sarah did not find sufficient generosity in herself, but showed some biased severity towards Hagar. Here is a new example of the fact that Scripture in no way glosses over or even weakens the shortcomings of the righteous. The proud maid did not want to endure such humiliation and chose to flee to the desert of Sur (Gen. 16:7), which lay on the route between Egypt and Assyria (Gen. 25:18; 1 Sam. 15:7, 27:8) in the northwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, now known as “Jifar.” The road led along it from Palestine to the land of the pharaohs, where it was most natural for Hagar to go, as to her native country. Gen.16:7. And the Angel of the Lord found her at a spring of water in the desert, at a spring on the road to Sur. In the Hebrew original there is “Maleah-Jehovah”, similar to the other “Maleah-Elohim” (Gen. 21:17, 31:11). On the issue of this famous figure of Old Testament revelations, there is a whole huge literature, all the works of which are divided into two opposing categories: one defends the view that “Maleah-Jehovah” was an ordinary created being, although higher in the rank of Angels; in works of another category, the truth is affirmed that under the form “Maleah-Jehovah” the appearances of God himself, namely the Logos or the Son of God, took place. Representatives of the first view (Augustine, Origen, Jerome, Hoffmann, Baumgarten, Tolluk, Delitzsch, Kurtz) are affirmed on the following grounds: 1) the term “maleach” or “angel” usually means a class of spiritual-created beings (Gen. 19:1, 22:12; Job 4:18; Ps. 90, etc.); 2) in the New Testament ἄγγελος Κυρίου (angel of the Lord) (Matthew 1:20; Luke 2:9) is constantly called a created angel; 3) the philological origin of the term “maleah” itself indicates its dependent and subordinate state (2 Kings 24:16; Zech. 1:12) and 4) finally, the very revelation of God under such a humanoid form could not be understood then, i.e. before the coming of the Savior into the world. None of these motives is decisive. The evidence of representatives of the other camp (Genstenberg, Keil, Lange, Gevernik, Nitsch, Ebrard, Ehler, Baumgarten, Wordsword, from the Russians: A. Glagolev, A. Lebedev, Yastrebov, etc.) boils down to the following main theses: 1) “Maleah-Jehovah” clearly identifies Himself with Jehovah (Gen. 16:10) and with Elohim (Gen. 22:12); 2) those to whom He appears usually take Him for God himself (Gen. 16:13, 18:23–33, 28:12–22; Exod. 3:6; Judges 6:15, 20–23); 3) biblical authors constantly talk about Him as God, calling him Jehovah (Gen. 16:13, 18:1, 22:16; Ex. 3:2, etc.); 4) the doctrine of the plurality of persons in the Godhead, on which this view is based, is in agreement with both early allusions to it (Gen. 1:26, 11:7) and with later revelations; 5) the organic unity of the two covenants requires that their central point be one and the same Person, namely the Logos - the Son of God, and does not allow that in the Old Testament such a person was a created being - “Maleah-Jehovah”. A comparison of the arguments of both sides quite clearly indicates the superiority of the latter, i.e. about understanding the “Jehovah Angel” as one of the types of theophany, namely the Old Testament form of the personal revelation of the Son of God. Gen.16:8. And the Angel of the Lord said [to her]: Hagar, Sarina's maid! The very words of this address, better than any reproach, should have brought the forgotten slave to her senses. Gen.16:9. The Angel of the Lord said to her: Return to your mistress and submit to her. “The angel does not condemn either Hagar or Sarah,” says M. Philaret, “he only restores their mutual relationship. From this we can conclude that what happened between Sarah and Hagar was more likely a misunderstanding than an ill-intentioned quarrel; Hagar probably thought that it was indecent for someone conceived by Abram to remain a servant; Sarah was afraid that her maid would become her mistress” (Vlastov). The Lord's prophecy regarding Hagar's descendants Gen.16:10. And the Angel of the Lord said to her: By multiplying I will multiply your descendants, so that it will not be possible to count them from the multitude. It is very important to note here that the Angel of the Lord speaks here on His own behalf as only God himself usually speaks. This is one of the main reasons for recognizing divine dignity in the person of the Angel of the Lord. Since Hagar became the wife of Abram, she, to some extent, became the heir to those promises of numerous offspring that were given by God to the ancestor of the Jews. This prophecy about the descendants of Hagar through her son Ishmael was brilliantly justified in history, namely in the fate of those twelve nomadic tribes who, under the general name of Ishmaelites, as well as Hagarites or Saracens, occupied most of the Arabian desert (Gen. 25:12-16) and repeatedly emigrated from here to Africa, Spain, Persia and even India. Gen.16:11. And the Angel of the Lord said to her: Behold, you are with child, and you will give birth to a son, and you will call his name Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your suffering; The second half of this phrase actually serves as an explanation for the name Ishmael, which literally means: “God hears.” Gen.16:12. he will be among people like a wild ass; The wild ass, or onager, which is repeatedly and artistically depicted in the Bible (Job 39:5-8; Isaiah 32:14), is, by all accounts, a strikingly vital and faithful type of the Bedouin - that wild son of the desert. his hands are against everyone, and the hands of everyone are against him; The future fate of these nomads is depicted just as powerfully and picturesquely, whose entire restless life alternates between bold raids and cruel retribution for them. he will live in the presence of all his brothers. The descendants of the two brothers - Ishmael and Isaac - will not mix with each other, but will live separately and independently of each other; they will not always be in good, but always close proximity to each other. Gen.16:13. And [Hagar] called the Lord who spoke to her by this name: A remark from the writer of everyday life, which is of great importance in the question of establishing the identity of the Jehovah Angel. These words of Hagar have exactly the same meaning for us. In addition, they contain Hagar’s confession of faith in divine Providence and God’s omniscience (Ps. 139:11, 12; Job 34:21–22; Am. 9:2–3). This is expressed even more clearly by the Slavic translation: “You are God, looking upon me,” i.e. who showed His providential power on me. Gen.16:14. Therefore, that source is called: Beer-lahai-roi ***. The proper name of this source in the Slavic text is replaced by a translation that explains the meaning of its name: “I have seen before me”; from here it is clear that Hagar, according to the generally accepted custom in the East, in order to perpetuate the memory of the epiphany that happened to her at the source, renamed this source itself in honor of him. It is located between Kadesh and between Bared. The well of Hagar, mentioned twice more in the Bible (Gen. 24:62, 25:11), according to one learned geographer of Palestine (Reland in Ritter), is most likely to be seen in the source of Ain Kadesh, in the valley lying south of Beersheba, along which caravans go from Syria to Sinai and which the Arabs call "Milhi" or "Muvelkh", the name by which they designate and Hagar, and where they show the cave - “Hagar’s bed.” Gen.16:15. Hagar bore Abram a son; And [Abram] called the name of his son, born of Hagar, Ishmael. Enlightened by the revelation that had been given to her, Hagar returned to Abram’s house, reconciled with Sarah and soon became a mother, giving birth to a son, whom Abram, according to the command given in revelation, named Ishmael. This also confirms the reality of Hagar’s former vision. Gen.16:16. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Abram Ishmael. A remark by the writer of everyday life, which he probably drew from tradition, which jealously preserved all the details from the life of this most popular patriarch in the entire East (Gen. 17:24–25). The source of Zhivago seeing me. You might be interested in: