And the Angel of Jehovah said to her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, because Jehovah hath hearkened to thy affliction.
Hagar is a runaway slave, pregnant and alone in the desert, when a voice stops her and names her unborn son. The name carries a message — God had listened to her suffering — and it raises a question: who was speaking to her?
The one who meets Hagar carries the title "the angel of the LORD." Yet the promises He makes are God's own to make:
In these verses that speak of the angel of the Lord (vv. 7, 9, 10), the angel is clearly the Lord Himself. It is He who multiplies Abram's descendants. The term "angel" means a messenger, and Malachi 3:1 speaks of "the Lord whom you seek" as "the messenger of the covenant."
Hagar's mistress had treated her harshly. God's answer neither excuses her nor abandons her:
At this point the Angel of the Lord stepped in. By the customs of that time, Hagar plainly had no choice in the matter. And God is a God of pity, and of judgment. Even if she had been rude to her mistress, she should not be left in the wilderness in her need. Only, on returning, she was to be subject and submit to her mistress. Looking at her as a person, apart from what she stands for, she had sinned, but she had been sinned against just as much. God stepped in and held the scales of justice even.
This sets the true God apart from the idols people trust:
Can idols hear, or can they also look after people? No, the true God of heaven alone could hear and see when Hagar had run away. He is the same today. He hears you and sees you in the way you go.
The name points back to what God has just done. Hagar answers it by giving God a name of her own:
And not only this: God foretold the future of the coming son. He gave the boy his name and marked out his character. His name means "God hears." Hagar spoke of God as "You are the God who sees me," or "You are the God who reveals Himself" (New Trans.). The well where the angel appeared to her became known as "The well of the Living who was seen." So even poor Hagar gained blessing from this painful episode.
Besides Jesus, only a handful of people in Scripture were named before they were born, and Ishmael is one of them:
Five other people in the Bible were named before their birth: Isaac, Genesis 17:19; Ishmael, Genesis 16:11; Josiah, 1 Kings 13:2; Cyrus, Isaiah 44:28, and John the Baptist.
Years later Hagar is in the wilderness again, this time with a dying son. The name given here becomes the ground of her rescue:
The mother gave in to despair. She laid her son down to die at a distance from her. But "God heard the boy's voice," and His angel tells Hagar to hold him by the hand. Had not Jehovah called his name Ishmael, because He had heard her affliction? ... She may have forgotten God's promise that a countless multitude would spring from her, and that Ishmael would live in the presence of all his brothers. But God remembered him, and declares that He will make him a great nation.
Being heard is not the same as being chosen. Ishmael receives a promise and a future, but not the covenant line:
Before he was born, Hagar ran away because her mistress treated her harshly. The angel of the Lord appeared to her and told her to return to her mistress. Her descendants should be countless, and she was to call her son's name Ishmael, which means 'El shall hear.' ... Abraham prayed that Ishmael might live before God. But Ishmael pictures the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. So although God answered that He would bless Ishmael, and multiply him greatly ... yet the covenant should be established with Isaac.
- Heard. The name Ishmael records what God did before the boy was born. He listened to the affliction of a slave woman nobody else heard.
- Seen. The One who heard is the Lord Himself, under the title "the angel of the LORD." Hagar answers by naming Him the God who sees her.
- Sent back. Being heard did not lift Hagar out of her situation. God sent her back to submit to her mistress, and held the scales of justice even.
- Proved. Years later Hagar forgot the promise. In the desert God heard her son's cry — the name held even when her faith did not.
- Not the heir. God heard Ishmael and made him a great nation. Yet the covenant went to Isaac. To be heard by God is real mercy, but it is not the same as being the child of promise.
And he will be a wild-ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell before the face of all his brethren.
Hagar has run from Sarai into the desert. There the angel of the LORD promises her a son — and then describes the man that son will become, in words that sound like a warning. What does it mean to call a man a wild donkey? And how has that word held up over the centuries since?
The same message gives the boy a comforting name and tells Hagar what he will become.
Hagar was not to be the mother of God's promised child to Abram. Yet the Lord cares about her and about her expected child. He tells her to name the child "Ishmael," which means "God will hear" (v. 11). But the boy's character would match the fact that he was born from a union of opposite parents — the father a free man, the mother a slave. He would be contentious, his hand against all other men, and of course they would therefore be against him. This has been one of the characteristics of the Arabs from that time... Abram learned by experience, and all this history teaches us that a wrong union leads to trouble and sorrow.
The phrase is not a general insult. The Hebrew names a specific animal, and the New Testament later explains why that animal fits this child.
He was to be a "wild man." The word really means a "wild donkey." In the light of Galatians 4, this is significant, since "the son of the slave was born according to the flesh." Romans 8:7 tells us that the mind of the flesh "is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot." Man after the flesh has lawlessness stamped upon him, and the wild donkey is a fitting picture of him.
Scripture describes this animal elsewhere. The description matches how Ishmael's descendants lived.
No one ever drew a sharper picture than the one Scripture gives of Ishmael's descendants in the words quoted here. "Who has let the wild donkey go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift donkey, to whom I have given the arid plain for his home and the salt land for his dwelling place? He scorns the tumult of the city; he hears not the shouts of the driver. He ranges the mountains as his pasture, and he searches after every green thing" (Job 39:5-8). Such exactly are the Bedouins. No sober Christian supposes a perpetual miracle as to Ishmael, but that what God said of that race is as sure as what He said of Israel.
The verse did not just come true once. It stayed true while other nations changed beyond recognition.
The meaning of Genesis 16:12 is as plain as it is striking, and as applicable today as for thousands of years past. This is not true of any other notable people. Compare the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Israelites. Every one of them has gone through change after change. How little, if at all, has the Bedouin changed?
The last line of the verse settles something. Nobody would be able to remove this troublesome presence.
Man in the flesh is not only lawless in regard to God but antagonistic in regard to his fellows. The one characteristic springs out of the other. There could be no peace where Ishmael was. Worse still, there was to be no shutting him out and no getting rid of him. The decree was, "he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen." Hagar was a picture of the covenant of the law, given at Sinai. Now that did not abolish the man after the flesh. It only laid restraint upon him.
Ishmael had his father's love and the outward mark of God's covenant. Neither one changed him.
Abraham's heart yearned over Ishmael. His cry was, "Oh that Ishmael might live before you!" More than that, Ishmael was circumcised, so he outwardly carried the mark of the Covenant (Gen. 17:18, 25). Yet none of it worked... He remained wild, stubborn and quarrelsome — a fitting picture of the flesh.
The verse describes a temper, not only a tribe. One writer turns it into a warning for anyone quick to quarrel.
Do not be fault-finding or quick to criticize. Do not quarrel with unscriptural expressions from others, but be extremely accurate in your own statements and quotations from Scripture. Do not be an Ishmaelite (Gen. 16:12) among the people of God, for "the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness" (2 Tim. 2:24-25).
- Cause. Ishmael was born to a free man and a slave. The writers trace his character back to that "wrong union," which "leads to trouble and sorrow."
- Character. "Wild man" means "wild donkey of a man." He is untamed, deaf to the driver's shout, a picture of the flesh with "lawlessness stamped upon him."
- Conflict. He is lawless toward God and hostile toward people. "The one characteristic springs out of the other," so "there could be no peace where Ishmael was."
- Continuance. Abraham's prayer did not change him, and neither did circumcision. The law "did not abolish the man after the flesh. It only laid restraint upon him."
- Confirmation. The verse is still "as applicable today as for thousands of years past." Egypt, Assyria and Israel all changed. And the Bedouin? Hardly changed at all.
And she called the name of Jehovah who spoke to her, Thou art the God who reveals himself, for she said, Also here have I seen after he has revealed himself.
Hagar is a pregnant runaway slave in the desert, mistreated and heading nowhere, when God finds her and speaks. She answers by giving Him a name, which raises two questions: who was the "angel of the LORD" she met, and how much did she come to know of Him?
The title "angel of the LORD" does not always mean a created being.
This expression, THE ANGEL OF THE LORD [Jehovah] occurs over 100 times in the Old Testament, meaning messenger or agent. Sometimes it describes an angelic messenger, and sometimes it refers to the Lord Himself. The context makes clear which one is meant. Genesis 16:7 is one example: the context there proves that The Angel of the Lord is the Lord Himself.
So the verse says she named "the LORD who spoke to her." She was naming God Himself.
Translators have rendered her words in more than one way. One writer sets the options side by side, with the meanings of the son's name and of the well:
The angel also foretold the future of the coming son, giving his name and describing his character. His name means, "God hears." Hagar spoke of God as "You God see me," or "You are the God who reveals Himself" (New Trans.). The well where the angel appeared to her became known as "The well of the Living who was seen." So even poor Hagar gained blessing from this painful episode.
Those renderings come from older translations; the ESV has "You are a God of seeing." Hagar had not seen a form or a face. One writer weighs what her words actually claim:
Hagar was so impressed by this intervention of God that she called Him "the God who sees." "For," she adds, "Have I also here seen Him who sees me?" She had not seen God in person. But she recognized Him in the words He had spoken to her, and she was clearly subdued. We cannot be certain whether she was born again. Yet no one is ever the same after meeting the Lord of glory.
Hagar is no hero here. Her trouble was partly her own doing, and she was not looking for God when He came.
In her own story Hagar is an example or picture — hardly a type — of how divine grace deals with a helpless and despairing sinner. She ends up in the worst misery and danger, partly by her own fault and partly through injustice and misfortune. Yet a God of compassion remembers her and sees her. She is dying of thirst, though a well of springing water stands at her side (Gen. 21:19). She does not seem to remember God or seek Him. But He sends His angel with the gracious question, "What ails you, Hagar? Arise."
Commentators differ on how much Hagar grasped. One writer weighs her words and finds them limited:
She was the slave woman, and knew nothing of the freedom of grace. She might look after God, but all she reached was this: "You God see me." The simple awareness that God sees us never goes further than this: that He is a Judge who notices our ways in order to deal with them, or, at most, a guardian who protects us in the hour of difficulty and danger. But love, liberty, rest, joy in God are never known through the bare truth that God sees us.
Another finds more in the name of the well:
How blessed to learn that God heard Hagar's cry! For her refreshment He provided the well Beer-lahai-roi, "Well of the living who was seen." God not only sees me. He has revealed Himself in grace so that I may see Him.
Readers take this verse two ways. First, as a restraint, when nobody else would know:
He can slip off to questionable places of amusement, and nobody be any the wiser. Nobody the wiser? "YOU GOD SEE ME" (Gen. 16:13) was a great deterrent and safeguard to the writer in his youthful days. God sees, God knows, God notes.
And as comfort, because the God who sees is not indifferent:
Can idols hear, or can they also look after men? No, the true God of heaven alone could hear and see when Hagar had run away. He is the same today. He hears you and sees you in the way you go. And not only that, but He loves you too.
- Sought — Hagar was not looking for God; He found her, "a helpless and despairing sinner" who "does not seem to remember God nor seek Him."
- Spoke — the "angel of the LORD" who met her was the Lord Himself, not a created messenger.
- Seen — she knew Him by His words, not by sight. Her son's name means "God hears"; the name she gave God says that He sees.
- Stored — the meeting left a landmark: the well "of the Living who was seen," where God revealed Himself in grace.
- Settled — God's seeing restrains us when no one else is watching. It also comforts us, because the God who sees hears and loves.
Therefore the well was named Beer-lahai-roi behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.
God met a runaway slave woman alone in the desert. The well where it happened took its name from what she said about Him, and that name stayed on the map long after her.
Most English Bibles leave the Hebrew name untranslated. One reference work places the well and gives its meaning:
This means "well of the living and seeing one." The well lay between Kadesh and Bered, "on the way to Shur," and so in the south. It was here that the angel of the LORD met Hagar, when she fled from Sarai. Her cry at that moment, "You, God, see me," gave the well its name. Isaac lived near the same well Lahai-roi (Gen. 24:62; Gen. 25:11).
(The ESV renders her words in verse 13 as "You are a God of seeing.")
Commentators differ over which side of the name to stress — God seeing her, or her seeing God. One writer gives both readings, and notes that this hard episode still ended in gain for her:
Hagar spoke of God as "You, God, see me," or "You are the God who reveals Himself." The well by which the angel appeared to her became known as "The well of the Living who was seen." So even poor Hagar drew blessing from this trying episode.
One writer thought earlier English Bibles handled names like this better:
Some of the early versions wisely and correctly translated the Hebrew words that our present Bibles leave untranslated. It is true that many Bibles put the translation in the margin. But then the reader asks: is the margin correct? And if so, why is it not in the text? The well of "Beer-lahai-roi" (Gen. 16:14) is rendered in the old versions the well of Him that "lives and sees me."
One writer links the well to God's answer to her cry, and to what she could then see of Him:
How wonderful to learn that God heard Hagar's cry! For her refreshment He provided the well Beer-lahai-roi, "Well of the living who was seen." God not only sees me, but has revealed Himself in grace so that I may see Him.
Another writer sets a limit on how far Hagar herself got. He warns that the bare truth that God sees us brings no rest by itself:
She was the bondwoman: she knew nothing of the liberty of grace. She might look after God, but what she reached was this: "You, God, see me." The simple awareness that God sees us never goes beyond two thoughts. Either He is a Judge noticing our ways to deal with them, or, at most, He is a guardian to protect in the hour of difficulty and danger. But love, liberty, rest, joy in God are never known through the bare truth that God sees us. No one denies that it is true. But as believers we are entitled to something further and more precious: seeing God — seeing Him who is invisible.
Isaac later came from this well and settled by it. One writer draws out what that says about the One waiting at the end of a journey:
In all these wilderness scenes Isaac has taken no active part. Yet he kept in mind all that was happening. He comes from the well Lahairoi — a word of deep meaning, for it means "the well of Him that lives and sees" (Genesis 16:14). How good to know, as we travel on our way, that at the end of the journey we shall find One who has kept His people in mind. He sees and He lives — indeed the word is "He always lives" (Heb. 7:25).
One writer turns the name into a question about where we live:
Don't you think it would do us good if we as Christians dwelt more by Lahai-roi? If we knew a little better what our God has given us, and so knew better the blessing in it? Hagar called it "the well of Him that lives and sees"! That is what it is. It is the "well of Him that lives and sees" us, the well of God, the living water.
- Named — a runaway woman's words about God named the well between Kadesh and Bered: "well of the living and seeing one."
- Seen — Hagar found that God saw her in the desert. One writer adds that God also revealed Himself, so that she could see Him.
- Limited — the bare truth that God sees you gives you a Judge or a guardian. Love, liberty and rest come from seeing Him.
- Lasting — Isaac later came from this well and settled by it, so the name became a home address, not just a memory.
- Ours — the call is to live where Isaac lived: beside the well of the One who sees us and always lives.
And Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.
Genesis 16 opens with a plan to help God's promise along, and it closes with a baby boy. The plan worked — so why do the commentators read this birth as a warning?
Abram had God's promise of a son, but no son. Instead of waiting for God's time, he took Sarai's advice.
At Sarah's urging, Abram tried to get ahead of God's will and to bring about the promise before its time. So we have the covenant of the law pictured in Hagar, the source of distress and unrest. God, however, still takes care of the child born in the natural way. The application of this as a figure is clear from Galatians 4. The pride of man under the law is marked in Hagar's spirit, yet her son cannot be heir. The haste of man, who will not wait for God's time and will not wait on Him as to the means of fulfilment, is full of moral warning to us. It is always the source of unrest and sorrow. Hagar, too, was an Egyptian — a reminder of Abram's lack of faith. Law and flesh, and indeed sin, always go together.
Sarai's plan had been to build her own family through her servant. The verse gives her no such credit.
Verse 15 records the birth of Ishmael. It calls him Abram's son, not Sarai's.
Abram gives the name, but the name is not about Abram. It looks back to God's answer for the mother, and forward with a warning about the child.
The name of the son, Ishmael, was to mark that God heard Hagar in her affliction. It pointed to her, not to him. He was to be a "wild man" (ESV: "a wild donkey of a man"); the word really means a wild donkey. In the light of Galatians 4 this matters, since "the son of the slave was born according to the flesh." Romans 8:7 tells us that the mind set on the flesh "is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot." Man after the flesh has lawlessness stamped on him, and the wild donkey is a fitting picture of him.
The plan produced a son. That is the trap: it appeared to work.
But we can read even more into this. Ishmael was not the child of Hagar only, but of Abraham also. The man of faith had taken the bondservant to his heart, and Ishmael was the fruit of it. Though Abraham's seed, Ishmael is cast out. Is it not easy to see here that even the man of faith, if he uses law as a way to produce fruit, will find that the law is the "power of sin", not of holiness? The wild donkey nature will show itself in the fruit which God cannot own, instead of the fruit He has promised!
Scripture itself interprets this birth. The letter to the Galatians takes Abraham's two sons as a picture of two natures at war.
In Galatians, just as the apostle uses Isaac to set forth all that we are as born of the Spirit, so he uses Ishmael to set forth our old man — all that we are as born after the flesh. He shows, too, that the man who is after the flesh is entirely opposed to the man who is after the Spirit. "Just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now" (Gal. 4:28-31).
Scripture dates this birth, and then dates God's next word to Abram. The gap between the numbers tells its own story.
Abram was eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born. The next chapter tells us that Abram was ninety-nine years old when the Lord spoke to him again. So for thirteen years Abram's life seems to have been barren of communications from the Lord. What a harvest of the flesh.
The silence was not the end. God spoke again, and He gave a new name for Himself.
When Abram was 99 years old, another great revelation reached him, and God established a further covenant, as we find in Genesis 17. Here for the first time we get "Almighty God" (El-Shaddai) — the God who can raise the dead, and to whom nothing is impossible. God Almighty was the name that belonged to the unconditional covenant made with Abram. That covenant depended altogether upon God, and His almighty power guaranteed its final fulfilment.
- Haste — Abram would not wait for God's time. Impatience with the promise is always a source of unrest and sorrow.
- Flesh — the child was real fruit, but the fruit of human effort. Even a man of faith who works this way gets what God will not own.
- Name — Ishmael means God heard. The name marks His care for Hagar in her affliction, not a promise to her son.
- Silence — then thirteen years pass with no recorded word from God. That is the harvest of the flesh.
- Almighty — God speaks again as El-Shaddai. He rests the covenant on His own power, and only that power could ever fulfil it.
And Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
Genesis 16 ends like a legal record — a name, a birth, and a number. That number fixes Abram's age at the birth of Ishmael, and the next chapter gives another age before God speaks again.
In the chapter before, Abram believed God. This one closes with a son he arranged for himself. Commentators put the failure not in doubting the promise, but in the wait for it.
The poor heart naturally prefers anything to waiting. It will turn to any device — any scheme — any resource, rather than stay in that place. It is one thing to believe a promise at first. It is quite another thing to wait quietly for it to be fulfilled… Abraham shows faith in Genesis 15, and yet he fails in patience in Genesis 16.
Sarai looked for a way round the delay. She found it in another person.
Had Sarah said, "Nature has failed me, but God is my resource," how different it would have been! This 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 Sarah.
Set this verse beside the opening of the next chapter and count the years between.
Abram was eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born. The next chapter tells us that Abram was ninety-nine years old when the Lord spoke to him again. So for thirteen years Abram's life seems to have been barren of communications from the Lord. What a harvest of the flesh.
Those years are not just quiet. The record skips them — a long stretch of a great man's life left uncounted.
Nearly fourteen years had passed since the birth of Ishmael, this son of the slave woman: this effort of man's own energy to carry out the thoughts of God. He was born in Abraham's house and grew up there for twice seven years. For a while everything looked promising. But for those fourteen years Abraham had walked a path he chose himself. His history passes over these years as a blank — completely unrecognised. And oh, how many histories of God's saints will turn out to be a blank one day!
God had a reason for waiting. Writers tie the silence to the moment when Abram's own strength had nothing left to offer.
In the letter to the Hebrews we read of Abraham that "when he had patiently waited, he obtained the promise" (Hebrews 6:12-15). The story of Hagar and Ishmael has shown that under pressure he failed in patience… For thirteen years he patiently endured… God waits until all hope of obtaining the blessing by the efforts of the flesh is over.
Commentators read Ishmael as more than a person. He stands for a way of getting what God had promised.
We have had the seed promised in a general way; and now Abram wants to get it according to his own will in the flesh, and he takes Hagar (chapter 16). Ishmael is "he that is born after the flesh," which is really of the law, an attempt to get the heir on legal ground and take the promises. It was an attempt to get the heir by the flesh, and it all came to misery and confusion.
The son is born and the years are counted. Abram will spend them learning what his shortcut cost him.
An Ishmael was Abram's measure, an Isaac was God's. In the meantime Abraham must learn what the fruit of his impatience is. He learns it through quarrels, strife and sorrow. In the end he must do what was very "grievous in his sight" — send away his son. So our inventions only postpone our real blessings, because we have to see the end of them.
- Promise. Abram truly believed God in the previous chapter; nothing here cancels that. The failure was in the waiting, not in the believing.
- Impatience. Sarai swapped one human resource for another. She never looked away from both to God.
- Ishmael. The child of that shortcut stands for the man born of the flesh. Trying to secure God's promise on human ground ends in confusion.
- Silence. The two ages, here and in the next chapter, frame thirteen years with no word from God. The record leaves that stretch of a great life blank.
- Set time. God spoke again only when every hope from human effort was gone. Our own inventions do not speed the promise up. They delay it.