And Sarai Abram's wife did not bear him [children]. And she had an Egyptian maidservant; and her name was Hagar.
Abram has God's promise of many descendants, but no child — and in the tents there is an Egyptian servant girl. This chapter turns on the gap between believing a promise and waiting for it.
One writer sets this chapter against the one before it, and names what drove the change.
The fifteenth chapter may be called Abram's faith chapter. The sixteenth is the chapter of unbelief. It was impatience which forced Sarai and Abram to act for themselves. Unbelief is impatience and impatience is unbelief. Faith waits patiently for the Lord, and on the Lord, to act.
The failure was not in trusting God's word at the start. It was in the stretch of time afterwards.
It is one thing to believe a promise at first. It is quite another thing to wait quietly for it to be kept. We see this difference in a child all the time. If I promise my child anything, he has no idea of doubting my word. Yet I can see the greatest possible restlessness and impatience about when and how it will happen.
Sarai's childlessness was a real fact, not an imagined one. The mistake lay in what she reached for to fix it.
Had Sarai said, "Nature has failed me, but God is my resource," how different it would have been! That would have been her proper ground, for nature really had failed her. But it was nature in one shape, and so she wished to try nature in another. She had not learned to look away from nature in every shape. In the judgement of God, and of faith, nature in Hagar was no better than nature in Sarai.
The verse names Hagar's nationality. One writer thinks that detail points back to Abram's earlier stay in Egypt.
Hagar the Egyptian (Genesis 16:3) later caused great sorrow and trouble in his household, and she became the mother of Ishmael. Was she one of those maidservants given to Abraham for Sarah's sake in Egypt? It seems very probable that this was the case.
Another writer ties the same detail to what came of the arrangement.
Abram, urged on by Sarah, tried to anticipate the will of God and the keeping of the promise in its time. So in Hagar we have the covenant of the law, the source of distress and unrest… Man is in haste. He will not wait God's time, and he will not wait on Him about how the promise is to be kept. This is full of moral warning to us. It is always the source of unrest and sorrow. Hagar, too, was an Egyptian — a reminder also of the lack of faith in Abram.
Sarai made the proposal, but Abram acted on it. One writer weighs what he should have learned from the chapter before.
Abram's experience with the Lord in Genesis 15 ought to have strengthened him. He should have been sure that God's promise would stand, even though they had had to wait so long for it… But he listened to the voice of Sarai instead of listening to the voice of God alone.
Another writer follows Sarah's part right through the story.
Remember, it was Sarah, not Abraham, who took the lead in the whole sad affair of Hagar. She gave her to her own husband. She treated her so harshly that she ran away. And in the end it was Sarah who made the angry demand to cast out the slave woman and her son — a demand God approved.
Two women and two sons in one household carried a meaning no one at the time could see.
Who would have seen the difference between law and promise when Hagar and Ishmael quarrelled with Sarah and Isaac? The Spirit of God not only saw it. He intended the record of these events to be the beautiful foreshadowing of the two covenants. The covenant of law has only a child of the flesh. The covenant of promise brings forth in due time the child of the Spirit.
God's own answer came years later, when Abram had nothing left to contribute.
Chapter 16 is a parenthesis. Abram has a promise, and now tries to make it good without God. But then Abram is set aside. His body is now dead at ninety-nine years old. God reveals Himself and says: "I am going to give you many descendants."… That is, now that you are viewed as dead, I can do something with you.
- Promise. Abram believed God in chapter 15; the test in chapter 16 is not belief but the waiting that follows it.
- Impatience. Unbelief and impatience are the same thing wearing different clothes — faith waits on the Lord to act.
- Substitute. Nature had failed Sarai, so she tried nature in another form. She led and Abram followed, and to faith Hagar was no better than Sarai.
- Egypt. Scripture names Hagar an Egyptian. That word points back to the earlier lapse of faith that likely brought her into the tents.
- Death first. God waited until Abram's body was as good as dead. Only then could the promised seed be His gift and not man's device.
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold now, Jehovah has shut me up, that I do not bear. Go in, I pray thee, to my maidservant it may be that I shall be built up by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.
God had promised Abram a son, and Sarai was still childless. So she proposed a shortcut through her Egyptian servant Hagar, and Abram agreed without a word of protest. What do you do with a promise God has not yet kept?
Commentators place Abram's failure here not in his faith but in his patience.
Here we find unbelief casting its dark shadow across the spirit of Abraham... "And Sarai said to Abram, Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children." These words show the usual impatience of unbelief. Abraham should have treated them as such, and waited patiently on the Lord to fulfil His gracious promise. The poor heart naturally prefers anything to the attitude of waiting. It will turn to any expedient — any scheme — any resource, rather than be kept in that posture. It is one thing to believe a promise at the first, and quite another thing to wait quietly for it to be fulfilled... Abraham shows faith in Genesis 15, yet fails in patience in Genesis 16... God makes a promise, faith believes it; hope expects it; patience waits quietly for it.
Sarai names God as the reason she has no children, and draws a wrong conclusion from it. The results reach the whole household.
Faith does not reject earthly blessings when God gives them; but when someone tries to run ahead of God's time, it always brings sorrow. God will certainly perform His promise, but in His own way and time. Nature was impatient and could not wait. Unbelief made Sarai say that she was not included in the promise. Failure in this case seems greater in Sarai than in Abram. Still, he, like Adam, listened to his wife instead of trusting God. Hagar's son Ishmael is born. Sarai becomes envious, Hagar presuming. The result is strife in the household. This is always the case where the head of the house forgets his responsibility to God.
Hagar did not appear from nowhere. She most likely came from Abram's earlier stay in Egypt — an old failure supplying the material for a new one.
In the famine mentioned earlier, Egypt was near at hand, offering a refuge from worry about daily supply. The same thing happens here. "An Egyptian maid" — one of those maidservants, no doubt, that Abram had picked up during his stay in that evil place — was held out to him as relief in his worry about the promised seed. "And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai."
The goal was right; the method was not. Abram wanted the son God promised, but took a road God never opened.
To see the promise fulfilled, Abram did not need to fall back on a means that was merely human, and morally wrong as well. But he listened to the voice of Sarai instead of giving his full attention to the voice of God.
Later Scripture reads these two women as a picture. That is what gives the episode its lasting weight.
Flesh is impatient and wants the result at once, in its own way. She proposes her Egyptian servant Hagar, and Abram listens instead of walking by faith... The Letter to the Galatians gives the certain clue to what we might otherwise never have understood. It is the covenant of Sinai that she represents... The law brings not peace but wrath, not the fulfilment of the promise but fleshly pride, and a child born in sorrow who cannot be the heir... The believer has no more to do with it for himself now than Abram then should have taken Hagar.
The same pull works on believers today. It starts where grace itself looks barren.
Sarai stands for the principle of grace. And here is one of the strangest, saddest things in a believer's experience: what ought to be the source of fruitfulness in his life and walk looks barren... It is Sarai's barrenness that troubles us. And how, in this distress, Sarai herself seems to urge us to leave her, persuading us that Hagar may build her up!
Sarai devised the plan and Abram agreed to it. The blame does not fall evenly.
Without doubt Sarah was more to blame than Abram. In short, it was haste, springing from an obvious lack of faith. So she gave Hagar to her husband, and the results of that union soon appeared. As always, the one most to blame suffered the most.
- Promise — God pledged a son. Abram believed it in Genesis 15 and stumbled over the waiting in Genesis 16. Faith believes a promise; patience waits quietly for it.
- Impatience — Waiting is the posture the heart resists most, and it will take up any scheme rather than stay in it.
- Blame — Sarai traces her childlessness to God and concludes she is outside the promise. Abram, like Adam, listens to his wife instead of trusting God.
- Shortcut — Hagar was Egyptian, likely acquired during an earlier lapse. The plan was human and morally wrong. Galatians reads Hagar as the covenant of Sinai, and her son cannot inherit.
- Sorrow — Running ahead of God's time always brings sorrow, and the one most to blame suffered the most.
And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her maidservant, at the end of ten years that Abram had dwelt in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram, as his wife.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.